The Five Tools That Help You Discern in Life: Part 4 “Spiritual Radar”

The Five Tools That Help You Discern

Part 4: Spiritual Radar

Repeat after me: Physical Sensations, Emotions and Feelings, and Heart Condition Filter. Hopefully you have been working on these three tools to help you strengthen your thinking skills. This is now the fourth tool, and well, it’s a big one. They are all important, but this one should be something you work on between you and God. The fourth tool is your Spiritual Radar.

Spiritual Radar is another term for what you like to call a gut feeling or your intuition.  You could be in a situation where nothing out of the ordinary has happened, everything seems totally normal, but all of a sudden you get a feeling like something is wrong. Your gut is telling you something just isn’t right even if there aren’t any indicators. That can be your spiritual intuition, a.k.a. Spiritual Radar. If you learn to hear God’s voice, he will often bypass your brain and speak to your spirit even though sometimes it doesn’t make sense to your mind.

Let me give you an example. Recently I was driving a friend home and just felt to go another route that was actually longer and I was unsure why. There was no reasonable reason or logic that I could determine. I went with the gut feeling and in about 2 miles we came upon a horrible accident where a 10 year old boy had crossed the street and was hit by a car and the ambulance was just arriving. My friend and I parked the car and prayed for about 15 minutes while they were ministering to that child. I listened to that spiritual radar and I believed we were supposed to be there to pray for that boy and his family. I may not know what happened, but I know God doesn’t make any mistakes.

God speaks to us in numerous ways; you just have to learn to listen. Whether it is a still small voice, a Bible scripture, a friend speaking to you, the lyrics of a song, or your gut feeling; God is speaking to you. So learn to use your spiritual radar, and learn to interpret its truth. You need to learn the difference between your “gut feeling” and God showing you something, and your emotional feelings. Spiritual radar can warn you of danger, inform you that someone is deceiving you, or give you guidance and direction to God’s will. Spiritual radar can help you work through situations to understand and make good behavioral choices with the other discernment tools. The next time you have a gut feeling, think about it, don’t ignore it, and ask God to fine tune your radar.

Copyright  © 2012 by Michele Fleming Ph.D.