The other day an interesting thing happened in our house that gave me the opportunity to talk to my kids about hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit.  My two sons one day last week were talking about a challenge their dad once gave them about not getting in trouble for a year.  They were laughing about it saying they wanted to try that and I said, I bet you would have a hard time getting through one week.  So a challenge was made for $20 each if they could go one week without fighting, giving me a hard time, or getting into trouble.  Honestly, I figured there was no way they were doing that so I wasn’t too concerned about coming up with the $40.

However, just before the week was up, it was apparent that they were going to make it.  As a side note, let me say that the week of peace, was totally worth the $40!  Anyway, they started discussing what they were going to do with their $20, and spent time on Amazon looking for deals.  Then out of the blue my older son comes to me and says. “mom, I really feel like I am supposed to give my $20 to offering at church.”  I looked at him and told him then that is what he should do.  I explained to him that when something like that comes into our head, something that is totally outside of what we would normally do and something that lines up with what God’s word tells us to do,  that is the Holy Spirit speaking to us.  He looked at me with an amazed look on his face and said “it is?!” I told him, the best thing to do, is be obedient and do it right away.  So we agreed that I would go ahead and give his $20 to church.

Now that in and of itself was a proud mom moment.  My kids do NOT get any allowance or any money from any other source, so for him to give up the $20 without blinking an eye, was nothing short of the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit. So, you can imagine my surprise when his brother came up to me and said, “mom, I don’t want to get something just for myself, I want to split the money and get a $10 thing that I want and use the other $10 on my brother”  Ok, by this point, tears are in my eyes.  I hugged both my boys and was so thankful for the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit in their hearts.

As adults, it can be very hard for us to be obedient to the Holy Spirit, especially when it comes to money.  Many times I have felt the Holy Spirit nudge me to do something and sometimes I have been obedient and sometimes I haven’t but I have noticed that the more I was obedient, the easier it was the next time.  Watching my son so willingly obey was a challenge to me.  He didn’t question or argue, he just obeyed.

To me this was just another example of why Jesus must have said

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3

My prayer is that I would always be obedient to the voice of the Holy Spirit immediately, especially when it comes to money, just the way my son was.