It was 2:00 am, but the light from the moon cast a glow that illuminated the darkness and allowed me to see into the night. I looked up into the sky and a voice within my being proclaimed, "I love you like the moon." I immediately smiled because I recognized the voice of the Spirit that often spoke directing me to listen and understand God's truth.



It was a voice of kindness that knew me completely. A Spirit that comforted me when my journey in this world was hard. A loving Savior that helped me carry the difficult burdens of life with lightness and a freedom that could only have been sent by a supernatural power.

1 John 2: 27, "But as for you, Christ has poured out his Spirit on you. As long as his Spirit remains in you, you do not need anyone to teach you. For his Spirit teaches you about everything, and what he teaches is true, not false. Obey the Spirit's teaching, then, and remain in union with Christ."

Listening to the voice of the Spirit of God is one of the most difficult things to discern. You must be trained by God's Spirit in order to know the difference between His Spirit and the voice of Satan's evil spirit demons, who want to destroy a person's life.

When Adam and Eve ate the apple our world changed into a battleground. A war between good and evil where the Spirit world interacted with the human world. Our minds became the greatest battle field of them all because that is where the Spirit interacts with our consciousness.

1 John 3: 19-21, "This, then, is how we will know that we belong to the truth; this is how we will be confident in God's presence. If our conscience condemns us, we know that God is greater than our conscience and that he knows everything. And so, my dear friends, if our conscience does not condemn us, we have courage in God's presence."

The first lesson you must learn as you endeavor to understand the voices you hear within your consciousness is the difference between God and Satan. Remember the Spirit of God is the voice of truth and love. Satan is the voice of condemnation and hate.

I have been an upholster for over thirty years and God taught me to listen when I needed help on a difficult pattern match or if I needed insight when I was changing the style of a piece of furniture. God's voice was a flash of an idea that led me to do my job easier. It was a whisper that directed me to cut fabric in a certain way. The Spirit of truth never forced an idea on me, it came gently. When I obeyed the voice it made my work easier. The loving voice of my Savior made me an excellent upholster, who loved my job.

God, helping me in my job and directing me so I wouldn't make mistakes, shows how much He cares about people. He wanted me to do well and He gave me the gift of knowledge that helped me to do upholstery work. This taught me that He cared that I had the money I needed in order to live.

The Spirit directed me on how to behave in my relationships. I was never to give into anger, jealousy or rage. I was to be peaceful, caring and loving to those around me. This is not an easy thing to do because everyone is easily persuaded by their emotions to hold onto offenses that others do to them.

1 John 19-21, "We love because God first loved us. If someone says he loves God, but hates his brother, he is a liar. For he cannot love God, whom he has not seen, if he does not love his brother, whom he has seen. The command that Christ has given us is this: whoever loves God must love his brother also."

Reading my Bible and allowing it to control my human nature with the right way to treat people helped me to know God's will for my life. We must love others in order to do what is right. We are not to give into our own selfish desires which lead us down paths that are not God, but Satan.

Satan's voice leads us down paths that abuse our bodies through excessive drinking or smoking that is geared to rob us of our life. He frustrates our ability to make a living by having us fight with our co-workers. He makes us blind to what we are doing wrong in work so we will fail.

Satan wants to make us take revenge on those who do us wrong. This is the reason so many countries are at war today. This is why there are gangs who fight against other gangs. Violence and murder are an everyday occurrence with those who give into their human nature and listen to Satan's evil voice.

1 John 3: 7-10, "Let no one deceive you, my children! Whoever does what is right is righteous just as Christ is righteous. Whoever continues to sin belongs to the Devil, because the Devil has sinned from the very beginning. The Son of God appeared for this very reason, to destroy what the Devil had done.

Whoever is a child of God does not continue to sin, for God's very nature is in him; and because God is his Father, he cannot continue to sin. Here is a clear difference between God's children and the Devil's children: anyone who does not do what is right or does not love his brother is not God's child."

Now we can see clearly through scriptures the spiritual battle that surrounds each person's life. To acknowledge the unseen spiritual battle is to gain wisdom on why bad things happen to people. Interpreting the voices help us when we go through difficult things in the world like sickness, natural disasters, loss of a loved one and tragedies that normally come to people.

I have a Christian friend who went through a severe sickness that put her in the hospital where she almost died. Her whole life was in crisis because when she was sick she could not earn the money she needed in order to pay her bills. In her hopelessness she began hearing a voice that repeated over and over again that she was going to die. When she confided in me over what was happening, I told her the voice was not God, but Satan. God is the giver of life in a corrupt and evil world. Satan wants to destroy life.

Learning to hear the voice of God directs us so we can live! God cares about every part of our life. He wants us to succeed in our work. He wants us to love each other. He wants us to know the difference between good and bad. He desires that we have a close relationship with Him so we will not be led into sin by Satan's evil voice of lies.

When God stated He loved me like the moon. I knew it was Him, because God loves people. The moon's light is like the rays of knowledge that opens up a person's mind to truth. Just like the moon lights up the world at night, God's followers are to be a shining light of love for the world.