The Bible is a tangible Book that we can hold in our hands and read with our physical eyes. God is a Spirit and we can’t see Him and sit and talk with Him like we would with a human. To carry on a conversation with our heavenly Father can often be a one-sided conversation. We frequently spend our whole time of prayer telling God what we think, want, and need. For us to get Him to talk back to us verbally is something that few people ever experience.

However, our heavenly Father not only talks to us through the Bible, He also talks to us in our mind and in our heart. He doesn’t typically carry on a conversation by using words or sentences. He can, if He wants to; but, that isn’t the best way for Him to discuss things with us. Before you were a Christian, ideas would pop up in your mind and feelings would show up from your heart.

There were four sources that originated those ideas and feelings. It could have been a thought you originated by yourself; it could have been a temptation from Satan; it could have been an idea you learned from the world system; or it could have been from the Holy Spirit causing you to feel guilty about some bad deed you did or some lack of concern for others and their wellbeing.

Christians have six sources of thought and feeling originators:
   1. It can be a thought you originated by yourself.

   2. It can be a temptation from Satan.

   3. It can be an idea you learned from the world system.

   4. It can be from the Holy Spirit causing you to feel guilty about some bad deed you did or some lack of concern for others and their wellbeing.

   5. It can be from the Bible passages you have read.

   6. It can be from God giving you the meaning to His word or instructions for how to fulfill His will.

All of these sources typically just pop up in your mind as if they are thoughts you just created. The Bible and the training from the Holy Spirit deal with these ideas and explain to you, who originated them. It is important for you to know where each idea came from. Even your ideas can be harmful to you. Not because you typically intend harm to yourself; but because you don’t know everything, you make decisions based on inadequate information. Even when you have the best of intentions, you can try to be helping yourself and end up doing damage to yourself and others.

Ask God to teach you how to know where the source of the ideas that come into your mind are from. Ask Him to help you learn how to detect the difference between your ideas, the world’s ideas, Satan’s ideas, the Bible’s ideas, and God’s ideas. Ask Him to help you use the Bible to filter the thoughts and feelings that come to you. Let Him always give you Scriptures to support or reject those thoughts and feelings that come your way. God will NEVER disagree with the Bible. Thoughts and feelings that disagree with Scriptures are never from God nor is He supporting them.