When the Spirit Speaks

Last week I had a certain friend on my mind  for quite a few days. I hadn't talked to her in a while but for some reason I couldn't stop thinking about her.

I happened to talk to her sister a few days later and during our small talk I asked her how her sister (my friend) was doing. She said she was doing great. That was good to hear but for some reason I still couldn't get her off of my mind. I didn't know why.

The very next day I woke up in the morning and pulled up my author blog. I was very shocked, confused and a bit embarrassed at the nameless post I found. I thought it was a prank. I had just spent the day before heavily promoting my author blog and this post was going to taint my professional reputation. A very personal post about someone's frustration with her husband and marriage was starring back at me. Whomever it was, was clearly in a state of depression and she spoke of unkind things about herself. It was very sad to read and I didn't know who had written it. At first I thought it was my friend who shares the blog with me. I reached out to her and she had no clue who had written it. Then I thought it was some kind of joke or that someone had hacked into our blog. I hurried and changed the password.

As the day wore on, I read through it again and noticed that this person stated the names of her children and their ages. As I thought about the names it finally clicked that this cry for help was from the very friend I had been thinking about all week - it was a match. She had posted this the night before - the day I was most concerned about her. But how did this post end up on my blog?

I realized instantly that it was the spirit who had sent her very words to me. The spirit wanted me to reach out to her but I wasn't putting any urgency into it as everything appeared to be okay. So, the spirit needed to show me exactly what was going on so that I would make it a priority and know how to help. I remembered that a week prior I had written her on facebook and asked her to troubleshoot a bug on my blog. She needed my username and password so she could take a look - she must have forgotten to log out.

Right away I went to go visit my friend and bring her a treat to cheer her up. I struggled about how I was going to share with her what had happened without making it awkward for her. She didn't answer the door so I left the treat on her porch and called her. She didn't answer the phone so I left her a message. Later she called me to thank me for the treat - I asked her how she was doing and she said she was fine. It was then I told her what had happened and that I knew.

My friend began to profusely apologize and said that it was an accident. She kept a private online journal and didn't realize she was still logged into my blog. Realizing that her private plea for help had been so very public really worried her. I assured her that I had taken it down early in the morning and I doubted anyone had seen it. I then told her it was a good thing because the spirit had been trying to tell me all week but I wasn't understanding - so this needed to happen. I told her that my heart ached for her and I wanted to help. She became emotional and in her tear filled voice told me that she had been suffering from depression and was having a very hard day that day (the day I asked her sister how she was doing). She thanked me for asking and being so willing to help - and though there was nothing she felt I could do for her at the moment at least she knew that I was aware and that her Heavenly Father was aware and that we both cared.

This was an amazing testimony builder for me that the spirit speaks to us often even when we think it's just our own thoughts and we brush them off.  I don't believe in coincidences and I believe that our thoughts are not always our own. When the spirit speaks we need to act and if we don't we might be missing out on a very important opportunity to help someone. If we are trying to act on a thought or prompting but we don't know how or we don't understand it, we can pray to know what to do. In my case the spirit needed to speak in a very loud way to get my attention. When the spirit speaks - heed the prompting. You may never know what resulted from your efforts or in my case you may have some intense revelation - either way you will be blessed and you will be blessing others.

I say this in the name of Jesus Christ amen.