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-- © GodSpeak International 2004 --
-- Do not republish without written permission from <copyright@godspeak.org> --

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CONTRIBUTING RESOURCES
Author: Teresa Seputis ts@godspeak.net http://www.godspeak.net
Editor: Kevin Nolan

Dreams, Visions And Experiencing God

Lesson 2
God Speaks In A Visual Manner

By Teresa Seputis

God is a communicating God, and He loves to speak to us. God has a variety of ways that He does this. There are three primary ways God that speaks to His children. They are:

Visual
God uses pictures and images to communicate to us.

Verbal
God speaks to us with words, in a conversational manner. This is not usually an audible voice, it is usually a still small voice that sounds very much like our own thoughts.

Sensory
God speaks to us through the other senses. It may feel like you just know something, or it may be a strong impression or even a physical sensation (warm or tingling hands when He wants you to pray for someone who needs healing, etc.).

John 10:27 tells us that all of God's children can hear His voice, and the verse implies that He is constantly speaking to us, teaching us of Himself and drawing us closer to Him. One of the primary ways that God speaks to His children is pictorially. This type of pictorial communication should not be confused with having a vision, as they are two separate things. Pictorial communication is God speaking to His children in any/all aspects of their day-to-day life. It is not intended to be unusual, but a normal part of their daily walk with God.

If God uses pictures to speak to you personally, this does not necessarily mean you are a "seer" in the Old Testament sense of the word -- a prophet. God uses pictures to speak personally to many of His children who He has not gifted as prophets. The reverse is also true -- you do not have to see visions to be a prophet. In fact, some prophets in the Bible do not appear to have ever seen a single vision -- such as John the Baptist.

We are going to spend the rest of this lesson talking about how God speaks to His children in a seeing (pictorial) sort of way in their day-to-day communication with God, because we need to understand this to understand the difference between this and a vision.

God sometimes uses pictures to speak to His children. There are different forms that a picture, or image from God, can take. God may give you a picture that you see with your physical eyes. Sometimes you only see them when your eyes are closed. Other times you see this picture whether they are opened or closed. Much of the time, most people don't see the pictures with their physical eyes. Instead they see the pictures as a flash in their mind. It looks very similar to when you close your eyes and try to remember what something looks like. As you do that, you create a mental picture or an image in your mind, drawing from your own memory. Many times the pictures that God gives us look very similar to those mental images, except that the source is God instead of our memory.

Images from God may be in color or in black and white. They may be a "still shot", like a photograph, or they may be in motion, like a movie. You may see them in their entirety, as if someone was holding up a photograph before your face. Or you may see them in bits and pieces. You may start with a close up and then the picture might change... it may pan back over a larger image to give you a context. Or perhaps you start with a broad-based picture and then it seems to zoom in on a specific detail, explicitly calling that detail to your attention.

Or, you might see the picture superimposed over a real scene you are looking at in the natural, like a double-exposure photo negative (where the photographer took a picture and forgot to advance the film before taking another one on the same frame. You may see something in real life and see a supernatural picture superimposed over it.

Let me share another story about seeing pictures being superimposed over the real. I took one class at Fuller Seminary where Cindy Jacobs (the founder and head of the Generals of Intercession Ministry) was in our class. She was a student, except one afternoon when she got up and taught. I had never heard of her before the class, but it soon became apparent that she was a very powerful and very anointed intercessor. Three months later, I went to visit a women's prayer group at an inner city church. When I met the leader of the group, I could not get over how much she looked like Cindy Jacobs. And when she prayed, it was very clear that knew how to hear God and that she was a very effective intercessor. I was struck by how similar her anointing was to Cindy's and how much she resembled her in physical appearance. At the end of the evening, I took a good hard look at her, and realized that she did not look much like Cindy at all. I could not imagine why I had thought she looked like Cindy. So I asked the Lord about it. He told me that I had been seeing her anointing in the form of Cindy's image. He explained that He had superimposed a face of someone I knew over another person's face to show me they had a similar anointing. Sometimes God does that when He wants to show me someone's anointing.

When God shows you a picture, it may be very quick, where it flashes before your "mind's eyes" and is gone and then you have the memory of this picture. Do not discount a picture from God if He shows it to you quickly. He sometimes does it that way. Usually, when God shows me a picture, it goes away almost instantly, but I can remember it in great detail. On the other hand, some people find that the picture stays before them for several minutes, so that they can take a good long look at it and note specific details. Some people forget the picture shortly after seeing it, but others can recall it for a long time.

Pictures are good, because they communicate a lot of details very rapidly. You have, no doubt, heard the idiom that "a picture is worth a thousand words." This is very true. A picture allows you to very quickly and very precisely communicate a lot of information. I could spend four pages writing an essay to describe my house... what color it is, the style of building, what the yard and fence look like, where the windows are located, the type of tiles on the roof, it's proximity to other houses, the general condition of the exterior, etc. Or I could get a Polaroid camera and take a photograph and hand it to you. Chances are that you would get a much more precise perception of what my house looked like from that photo than from the four page essay. And it would take you a lot less time to process the information from the photo that it would take you to read the essay. Pictures are a good way to communicate a lot of detail in a short amount of time.

But the problem with pictures is that you don't always understand what they mean. And sometimes it is like that with pictures from the Lord. You can see a lot of details. You can gather a lot of information. But you may not understand what it means and why God is showing it to you.

Sometimes the picture is very clear in and of itself, or you can easily draw the meaning from the context of the situation in which God gave you that picture. For instance, pretend you may have misplaced your keys and spent 10 minutes looking for them, to no avail. You stop and ask God where they are. Suddenly you see a picture of them sitting on the coffee table, mostly covered by a magazine. You would understand precisely what that picture means, wouldn't you? It means go to where the coffee table is, pick up the magazine and you will find the keys under it. In this case, God has communicated very clearly and precisely through a picture.

There will be times when you will see the picture and you will also understand, through the Holy Spirit's quickening, precisely what that picture means.

However, there are times when you will get an image but you won't know what it means. This is the frustration we can experience when God gives us pictures. So, how do we handle this? What do we do about it? The solution is actually pretty simple. If God shows you a picture or image, then He must have something He wants to communicate to you. If you don't understand that that is, then go back to Him and ask Him. Since His goal is to communicate, He will usually explain it to you.

How does God communicate the meaning of a picture to us when we ask Him for clarity or understanding? He can do it in any number of ways. Sometimes He will whisper the meaning to you in that still small voice, or give you a Scripture that gives you a strong hint of what the picture means. Other times you will "just know" what it means. Sometimes He will explain it pictorially, by changing the image itself. Perhaps you see a picture of a huge crowd and you ask Him what it means. Suddenly the image changes and zooms in on one individual. You look at the individual more closely and realize it is you. And you become aware that God is paying personal attention to you, that He cares about you and you are important to Him. He has, as it were, chosen you out of the crowd to let you know just how precious you are to Him.

Sometimes God gives you more information when you ask Him. Perhaps you see a picture of a close friend driving in his car, with his entire family in it with him. The car is stopped at a stop sign, and he is waiting to turn left. You have no idea what that means, so you ask God. Suddenly the picture changes and you see a large truck barreling full speed towards your friend's car, about to rear end them. You suddenly feel a sense of danger and an urgency welling up in your spirit. You immediately drop into prayer and intercession for your friend's protection. After a while, the urgency leaves you and you no longer feel impressed to intercede.

What happened in this type of case is that God used several different mechanisms to communicate to you. He showed you, through the picture, that your friend was in danger. You sensed the urgency and the leading of the Holy Spirit to intercede for your friend, and you instantly obeyed. In this case, God started with a picture to get your attention and then used various means to give you a more complete understanding and action plan.

God speaks to each of us in slightly different ways. Some of you may never get a picture, God may choose other ways to speak to you. But many of us will receive pictures from God as part of our day to day communications with God. We must not confuse these with visions, which have a very specific purpose and are a special (and infrequent) type of communication from God.


-- © GodSpeak International 2004 --
-- Do not republish without written permission from <copyright@godspeak.org> --

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