Signs God Has Spoken: Truth, Love, Newness, Simplicity
I pray, and sometimes I believe, or want to believe, that what comes to the quiet of my thoughts is an answer to what I have been praying.
It might not be this.
How can I weigh whether the impression or insight that came in prayer really is divine, to some extent, and therefore more reliable that the biases that otherwise inform my thinking?
Here are four clues that lend credence to the hope that God has responded or spoken:
1. Truth
Truth is part of the Lord’s identity. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” Jesus explained to his disciples (John 14:6).
In science, one of the signs a theory is true is that it answers questions that weren’t even asked as part of the search. Newton’s theory of gravity explained not only a falling apple, but also the movements of planets and the pattern of tides—all previously assumed to be separate and unrelated phenomena.
Truth has this characteristic. A divine insight is so true as to be surprisingly revealing. It is so true that the insight jumps the banks of the problem I have laid before God, with the overflow also cleansing other problems I hadn’t expected him to address.
2. Love
Love is also God’s identity. “God is love,” says I John 4:8.
If God is leading me, then the way I am led should be clearly, powerfully, and even surprisingly the loving way. The fruit of the Spirit of God begins with love, according to the list that commences with Galatians 5:22, so any understanding that truly manifests him can only increase my capacity to be loving.
Meanwhile, the fruits of my own ego and my weariness include impatience, expediency, brusqueness, and recklessness. The presence of any of these things suggests the source of the leading I am hearing is not divine, but instead just some desire of mine wanting to dress up as God and claim his authority.
3. Newness
Both of the preceding points used the word “surprisingly.” God is surprising. The Creator is creative.
His originality provides an important contrast with the darkness that occupies the world and our souls, because the darkness does not create anything new. It merely claims, covets, or corrupts what has already been made. By tarnishing what used to be new, the darkness makes things old.
Meanwhile, a hallmark of the light of God’s will is the way it makes new things appear, including new possibilities, new joys, new friends, and—perhaps more importantly—previously “old” things made new again because God has washed them clean.
Is newness happening? Is renewal?
4. Simplicity
Complexity is what humans generate. It’s what we produce by grasping too much at once, and it’s what we accept or hide behind instead of seeking or facing the truth. Meanwhile, the way of the Lord is straightforward, testable, and plain.
Imagine this way as water. Jesus offered this analogy multiple times (John 4:14 and John 7:38, for example). One characteristic of water is that it always finds and flows through the simplest path available.
Is the answer found in prayer surprisingly simple and easy to describe to other people?