It becomes very personal…

So how do you know when it's GOD giving you impressions?

1.     It always will agree with the Bible.

2.  All of a sudden the Scripture becomes alive.  It takes on new meaning.  It becomes dynamic, exciting.

Illustration:  Let's say I am speaking in a Sunday morning service and I say to the group, "I love you."  Now if I said that to my former congregation in Las Vegas, Nevada that would be very true.  I loved my church.  But that is a general word to a large group of people.  Now if my wife's sitting in the back and she's part of that group and when I say, "I love you," does that include my wife?  Yes. 

But it didn't do anything for her.  Big deal!   It's a logos – a general word to everybody.  However, if I were to walk over to my wife, lean down close and whisper, "I love you," all of a sudden I get a different reaction.  Her eyes light up, her heart starts pounding (I hope) because all of a sudden a logos became a rhema.  I didn't say anything different.  I said, "I love you". 

Was she included in the first one?  Yes.  But all of a sudden, it got personal and took on new meaning.  This is a secret to answered prayer.  Get this.  It became a rhema – a word to her specifically.

That's what happens when we're converted, when we become CHRISTians. 

How many times did you hear before you became a CHRISTian that GOD loves you?  I must have heard it a hundred times.  "GOD loves you!" and it was like water on a duck's back, it just rolled off. 

Then one day, all of a sudden, GOD burned that truth into my life and I realized, "GOD loved me!"  Wow! All of a sudden it hit me.  Bill Williams, with all of his hang-ups and all of his faults and all of his habits that are bad and weaknesses, frailties, fears and problems, GOD loves me!  And it changed my life and I was born again.  I was converted.  All of a sudden, GOD's word to everybody in general became very personal. I realized it.  I'd heard it many times but all of a sudden it came alive and made a difference in my life.

One of the results of getting a word of GOD, a personal promise of GOD, a personal rhema is that it builds tremendous faith in your life.  It always produces faith.  Faith comes by hearing the rhema of GOD, not the logos of GOD but the rhema of GOD.  Faith comes from hearing GOD speak to me personally.  All of a sudden I've got confidence. 

Have you ever had a quiet time, a devotional time, when you get alone with GOD, sit down and read the Bible and maybe you've read the verse a hundred times, but all of a sudden the verse just jumps out at you, and you think, "I've never seen that before!"

Or all of a sudden you see a new way to apply it, and at the end of the day you find out it was exactly what you needed for that day.  That's a rhema.  GOD's SPIRIT took a general word to everybody and applied it to you in a personal and practical way.

Just a thought from the front porch…