Hearing God By Melody Denson

Our group, the Sojourners, hasn’t always been one group. Several years previously, there was a girl’s group given the name the Sundari Jewels, and the guy’s group was named the Silver Knights.
As we began to grow and mature, God brought us together into one BIG group (there are twenty-one of us).
We haven’t been a group for very long and we’ve been learning how to become true friends. In order to become friends, we had to get to know one another, and in order to get to know one another, we had to spend time together. And so we did…
A few months ago, several adults in our community came up with the idea of a summer retreat (kind of like a church camp).
They wanted to provide for us the opportunity to be together and start getting to know each other, but most of all, for us to learn more about God. The main theme for the whole trip was ‘Hearing God’.
So the planning began. But so did all the complications. Dates were set, meetings were held, topics were discussed, but, (as was to be expected) it seemed impossible to find an open weekend. Finally, we conquered the circumstances and were to embark on our adventure on the third of September.
Upon our arrival, we were greeted by an elderly woman, Mrs. Martin. Amazingly, she ran the whole place on her own. There were two main buildings: one lodge for the girls and another for the guys.
The evening session was taught by Papa Shammah on hearing God. I won’t go into too much detail, but one of the things that helped me personally was this: You will never really know if the task set before you is God’s will until you do it.
I often second-guess myself on whether or not God is really speaking to me, and so I don’t do the very thing He actually was telling me to do – I miss God. So that has been a question in my mind for a long time, but the answer was given to me that evening.
Have you ever felt the urge to go talk to someone you didn’t even know, or go help a stranger with their grocery bags, or encourage a friend? Have you ever wondered if it was God who was speaking to you or if it was just a thought inside your head? I have.
So I asked Mrs. Hadassah, “How can I know if it’s really God?”
Her answer was one of my favorite things said all weekend…
She said, “By nature, there is nothing good in us. Anything good in us comes from God. So if you feel an inclination to do something good, it must be God speaking to you.”
To sum everything up, the weekend was amazing! Not only did we get to spend almost three whole days together and come away from those three days feeling much more acquainted with each other, but we got to learn about God from some of the wisest people we know.