In Reply to: result of praying or a natural human sense? posted by Lyle (reposted) on June 16, 2003 at 08:47:30:
This is a very good question. First of all I can totally identify with this kind of experience. Whatever causes it, it happens and it's real. I've experienced it myself many times. As a Christian my natural inclination is to say that it's definitely the working of the Spirit of God.
However, my mother, who most of her life was not a beleiver, has had similar very strong spiritual experiences like this. Two separate times, for example, she felt a super clear prompting to immediately go check on two ofher children (myself and a sister) and both times she arrived barely in time to save our lives.
It doesn't seem it's either JUST a spiritual gift given to Christians, nor that it's some kind of natural esp thing that we all have, as some people definitely don't have it. I tend to think that God gives spiritual gifts freely to Christians and non-Christians, without discrimination. His rain falls on the just and unjust, right?
Having said that, I do think that it's something that spiritually senstive people in the Spirit of God can experience in greater measure.
THis then begs the question: if we were so spiritually in tune we knew what someone was doing fifty miles away, or we knew to turn right or left in a certain situation, why on earth didn't we have a clue that the Family was oppressive, abusive and to our own spiritual harm?
I think the answer lies in the fact that that kind of information may be outside the scope of that particular gift. For the most part at least. Being "spiritually in tune" is not the same thing as being sensitive. Making the right moral choices, being fed up with injustice, is not the same kind of thing as getting sudden jolts of knowledge or inspiration.
Any thoughts?