(Or, to be more precise, he repeats what he inspired biblical authors to say.)
That’s why, for example, when I was looking through some resumes in 2010 for a job we had open here, I quite clearly and without equivocation heard the words:
“Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.” (I Sam 16:7)
So at that time, I closed up the file of resumes because I realized we already had the guy with the heart. And he still works here to this day.
More recently, as I have thought about the connection between prayer life and personal health, I keep hearing Romans 8:26:
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through groans that words cannot express.
And I have sensed the Lord adding a phrase to that verse for me: “Talbot, I want you to pray like that again.”
But what does it mean to have the Spirit intercede for us through groans that words cannot express?
I believe it means this: when we run out of words, the Holy Spirit runs in and prays through us. Our prayers become as much conduits for the Spirit’s work as they are communication with the Spirit’s heart.
This happens for me when I am desperate enough in prayer to acknowledge that I don’t have words anymore. That for me to have authentic union with God, he will have to pray through me. Many folks in the church world experience this as praying in tongues or a prayer language or the most technical term, glossolalia.
Whatever you call it, it’s been part of my prayer life since 1990, though I don’t always take the time to enter into prayer that deeply.
Which is why, I think, God has been encouraging me to use that prayer gift more often.
As in daily. Because I realize when I allow that to happen in prayer, the rest of the day and the rest of my life goes so much better.
Much like God had already indicated through Romans 8:26.
When God speaks, he tends to repeat what he has already said.