Many times, I have not wanted to hear from God because I came to Christ mentally ill and demon possessed. After the possession left me, I was still mentally ill.
And yet, I am in the spirit-filled section of Christianity where God speaks to us. And God has spoken to me before I was mentally ill and afterward.
In some instances I have physical proof God spoke. And other times, God has used me to pray for healing in others and see them healed. Just last week God miraculously healed a skin tag under my arm.
My mental illness included light hallucinations and then also "thoughts" which were like voices. God did eventually heal me of it.
To hear from God, as a mentally ill person I might suggest the following things:
- Thought voices were never God in my case. I always wanted to think they were but they were not. A lot of the time it was my own mind playing tricks on me. A lot of the time it was also corrupt thoughts in my mind causing mental illness, and those thoughts should be resisted, and alleviated by healing through faith in Jesus.
- Even if I heard auditory voices which happened perhaps a couple times, I would always substantiate those voices against God's word. Once I was begging God what I should do with my life, and an auditory voice said, "Love your family." I shot up and went looking around to see who had spoken to me. But I only trusted that voice, not because it was an auditory voice, but because in the Bible, you will read that if you fail to love your family as a Christian, you are a worse than an unbeliever. So I knew that even if that auditory voice was hallucinated, it was a good reminder that I should love my family. I personally think it was not hallucinated, but either way it is irrelevant to loving your family. But other voices, I think were maybe hallucinated or something else strange that I should ignore.
- If you visually hallucinate, I would suggest ignoring it in all cases. Everything has to be tried and tested against God's word. Voices or visual stimuli. With visual stuff, you can't on-the-fly figure out what is going on from scripture, so ignore it first, and then reflect on it later if you want to. If you start finding things in scripture about it, or think there is something in your life you need to change according to the Bible with correct interpretation, then move in that direction.
In my case, I have had mental illness but then also have had discerning of spirits in operation where I would see a demon that was legitimately there spiritually. So sometimes I would see a fake hallucination in the past, and then other times a real thing that I am supposed to address according to the word of God.
What I did was ignore both. If it was a God thing, God will remind me of it, and continue at reminding me of the issue until that issue is resolved spiritually. If it's just a one-off thing, it's better to just ignore it.
But if you go chasing every little thing you see as if it had any significance, you're doing it wrong. Demons never have significance, nor really angels of God that much, nor spirits... just Jesus. Chase after Christ according to what you see in scripture.
Just the other day, I had discerning of spirits where I saw a demon trying to come into our prayer group. I saw the demon and what did I do about it? Nothing. Whatever he will try will fail, by the atonement of Jesus Christ, so I am not threatened by it.
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How to Hear from God
Learn from the Bible with humility. A stronghold of delusions is pride. People want to be special, people want to have this big thing from God, and we get into pride and it feeds the mental illness.
No, rather being led by God is doing that simple thing you read out of the word, that thing you probably didn't feel like doing but knew you should. Pray to God and ask for help with it, and then try to do it, and God will show up to help you. This is when you have heard from God.
For example, I saw one thread here about someone wanting to be a prophet, but he has a mental illness and deleted his post. He decided it was just delusions. What the devil will do, is try to use your mental illness against you, and just have you dismiss everything both good and bad.
If he is wanting to be a prophet in his delusions, then in his heart, he probably has that desire to prophesy. But he probably has pride and is not doing it right, and this is causing the issues along with the mental illness so to be safe he has to give up on all of it, which is a good move, but there is a way out of that!
I would suggest just keep seeking God, and to also realize that many of these spiritual gifts are not so big and grand as our delusions would have them be. I used to think prophesy was a big thing. But it's not a big thing, every Christian should desire prophesy and most of us should be doing it to some degree 1 Corinthians 14:5.
But how do you do it correctly with mental illness? What you will end up doing is either be healed of the mental illness, or learn to identify your mental illness and prophesy in-spite of it, not because of it.
I am not an expert on prophecy, though, so to actually teach on it, you would have to talk to someone who was. But I am just saying it can be done with mental illness, but you see, doing it wont involve your mental illness. You will have to have succeeded in shoving that aside with God's help, or just being completely healed by the grace of God, in order to manifest the gift of God correctly. Being very cautious is good because this is wisdom from the Bible, and it is how you will begin shoving out that mental illness so you can learn to have spiritual gifts correctly not associated with mental illness. Admitting our shortcomings is good, and after we do so, we should get hope and faith going to realize we can surpass our shortcomings in Christ. But hope and faith in scripture, is not pride, or hurts, or needs which delusions work off of.
If you're a mentally ill person in Christ, I would not neglect the very basics!
Acts 2:38 - Repent to God of that you're a sinner and it is hopeless without Christ, receiving Christ in your heart by making him your Lord, be water baptized, and then also receive the Holy Ghost with speaking in tongues and/or prophecy.
When I was mentally ill, there were a couple times it got bad and I knew not what to pray to God, so I spoke in tongues as a prayer language which speaks mysteries to God (1 Corinthians 14:2). I could feel the illness leaving my body and my condition would improve.
But my mental illness persisted, and even after I was healed, it tried coming back once. I had forgotten to be water baptized, and one of the reasons it was neglected was because I was mentally ill!!! I had forgot this important step where I bury the old man into the depths, the old me who was mentally ill. After my water baptism I have been mentally healthier than a lot of "normal" people I know.
And yet, I am in the spirit-filled section of Christianity where God speaks to us. And God has spoken to me before I was mentally ill and afterward.
In some instances I have physical proof God spoke. And other times, God has used me to pray for healing in others and see them healed. Just last week God miraculously healed a skin tag under my arm.
My mental illness included light hallucinations and then also "thoughts" which were like voices. God did eventually heal me of it.
To hear from God, as a mentally ill person I might suggest the following things:
- Thought voices were never God in my case. I always wanted to think they were but they were not. A lot of the time it was my own mind playing tricks on me. A lot of the time it was also corrupt thoughts in my mind causing mental illness, and those thoughts should be resisted, and alleviated by healing through faith in Jesus.
- Even if I heard auditory voices which happened perhaps a couple times, I would always substantiate those voices against God's word. Once I was begging God what I should do with my life, and an auditory voice said, "Love your family." I shot up and went looking around to see who had spoken to me. But I only trusted that voice, not because it was an auditory voice, but because in the Bible, you will read that if you fail to love your family as a Christian, you are a worse than an unbeliever. So I knew that even if that auditory voice was hallucinated, it was a good reminder that I should love my family. I personally think it was not hallucinated, but either way it is irrelevant to loving your family. But other voices, I think were maybe hallucinated or something else strange that I should ignore.
- If you visually hallucinate, I would suggest ignoring it in all cases. Everything has to be tried and tested against God's word. Voices or visual stimuli. With visual stuff, you can't on-the-fly figure out what is going on from scripture, so ignore it first, and then reflect on it later if you want to. If you start finding things in scripture about it, or think there is something in your life you need to change according to the Bible with correct interpretation, then move in that direction.
In my case, I have had mental illness but then also have had discerning of spirits in operation where I would see a demon that was legitimately there spiritually. So sometimes I would see a fake hallucination in the past, and then other times a real thing that I am supposed to address according to the word of God.
What I did was ignore both. If it was a God thing, God will remind me of it, and continue at reminding me of the issue until that issue is resolved spiritually. If it's just a one-off thing, it's better to just ignore it.
But if you go chasing every little thing you see as if it had any significance, you're doing it wrong. Demons never have significance, nor really angels of God that much, nor spirits... just Jesus. Chase after Christ according to what you see in scripture.
Just the other day, I had discerning of spirits where I saw a demon trying to come into our prayer group. I saw the demon and what did I do about it? Nothing. Whatever he will try will fail, by the atonement of Jesus Christ, so I am not threatened by it.
-----------------
How to Hear from God
Learn from the Bible with humility. A stronghold of delusions is pride. People want to be special, people want to have this big thing from God, and we get into pride and it feeds the mental illness.
No, rather being led by God is doing that simple thing you read out of the word, that thing you probably didn't feel like doing but knew you should. Pray to God and ask for help with it, and then try to do it, and God will show up to help you. This is when you have heard from God.
For example, I saw one thread here about someone wanting to be a prophet, but he has a mental illness and deleted his post. He decided it was just delusions. What the devil will do, is try to use your mental illness against you, and just have you dismiss everything both good and bad.
If he is wanting to be a prophet in his delusions, then in his heart, he probably has that desire to prophesy. But he probably has pride and is not doing it right, and this is causing the issues along with the mental illness so to be safe he has to give up on all of it, which is a good move, but there is a way out of that!
I would suggest just keep seeking God, and to also realize that many of these spiritual gifts are not so big and grand as our delusions would have them be. I used to think prophesy was a big thing. But it's not a big thing, every Christian should desire prophesy and most of us should be doing it to some degree 1 Corinthians 14:5.
But how do you do it correctly with mental illness? What you will end up doing is either be healed of the mental illness, or learn to identify your mental illness and prophesy in-spite of it, not because of it.
I am not an expert on prophecy, though, so to actually teach on it, you would have to talk to someone who was. But I am just saying it can be done with mental illness, but you see, doing it wont involve your mental illness. You will have to have succeeded in shoving that aside with God's help, or just being completely healed by the grace of God, in order to manifest the gift of God correctly. Being very cautious is good because this is wisdom from the Bible, and it is how you will begin shoving out that mental illness so you can learn to have spiritual gifts correctly not associated with mental illness. Admitting our shortcomings is good, and after we do so, we should get hope and faith going to realize we can surpass our shortcomings in Christ. But hope and faith in scripture, is not pride, or hurts, or needs which delusions work off of.
If you're a mentally ill person in Christ, I would not neglect the very basics!
Acts 2:38 - Repent to God of that you're a sinner and it is hopeless without Christ, receiving Christ in your heart by making him your Lord, be water baptized, and then also receive the Holy Ghost with speaking in tongues and/or prophecy.
When I was mentally ill, there were a couple times it got bad and I knew not what to pray to God, so I spoke in tongues as a prayer language which speaks mysteries to God (1 Corinthians 14:2). I could feel the illness leaving my body and my condition would improve.
But my mental illness persisted, and even after I was healed, it tried coming back once. I had forgotten to be water baptized, and one of the reasons it was neglected was because I was mentally ill!!! I had forgot this important step where I bury the old man into the depths, the old me who was mentally ill. After my water baptism I have been mentally healthier than a lot of "normal" people I know.
