Luke 24:32
“Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?”
When I was younger, I would sometimes hear a sermon and my heart would begin pounding in my chest. At the time, I had no idea what was happening but then I was in a service once and the pastor was giving an altar call. He specifically called out to those whose hearts were pounding - saying that they needed salvation and that the pounding was the sound Jesus literally knocking on the door of their hearts. Although I was already saved and was no, at that time, experiencing the pounding I have since experienced it from time to time and have come to understand that when I do, it is a sure sign that Jesus is speaking right to me.
This “burning” spoken of in Luke 24:32 is the same thing as the “pounding”. It is the knocking of Jesus on the door of our hearts. If we were to read the entire story surrounding Luke 24:32, we would see that the people who made that statement were Jesus’ disciples. So this burning affects not only those in need of salvation, but those in need of understanding.
There have been many people who are in the practice “Fleecing” God. This term comes from the story of Gideon in Judges 6. Gideon thought he heard the voice God and to be sure he had, he placed a fleece down two nights in a row and told the voice verify its identity by either putting dew on or off the fleece. People do this today in a different way. They will say things like: “Lord if you want me to get this job, then let the interviewer say thus and so or wear this or that.” There all kinds of “fleecing” that people put God through because they want to be sure of His will and that it is indeed He who is speaking to and instructing them. There is one glaring problem with this practice, however. That is that the devil answers prayers too! I’ll bet you didn’t know that, but it is true. There have been many many circumstances when the we will pray for something and the devil will hear us and placeable sorts of circumstances that appear to be the answer to our prayers. If we are not perceptive we will fall for these false answers and then we will be stuck. This happened to Jesus when He was tempted by the wicked one. Jesus knew that He was the Son of God and that He would have all the authority returned to Him if He completed His mission- the will of the Father. So the devil offered Him a short cut to the answers to the prayers in His heart and the prophecies given about Himself. The devil will answer our prayers by offering us a solution to our issue that is based solely on natural and worldly principles. Therefore, God, in His supreme mercy has given us the Holy Spirit as an “inner witness.”
When we are praying about something and the Father answers our prayers by directing our thoughts in a certain way, then we can know that it is God by the peace that we feel when we think on that situation. As well, when we believe we have heard God and that we have peace about a thing, then sometimes a pastor will say something that will be a “confirmation” for us, and our hearts will pound in our chests. As well, the Lord will use this inner witness to verify that whatever a pastor is preaching about when we receive the pounding is what we ourselves need- even if it is correction in that area.
God has provided this inner witness to us because it is a better, more effective and sure way to be directed by the Father into His perfect will for our lives. It cannot be tampered with by the wicked one and therefore cannot be mistaken, as long as we understand its purpose!
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