“One Sunday I became very ill and had to go to the hospital. All I could do was sleep the first two days. On the third day, my wife came to visit, and we began talking, because God had impressed upon my heart the need to go back to the very beginning of my life and review it up to the present point. I felt He had something to show me, and I needed my wife to help me see it.

Every afternoon we talked. We talked the rest of that week, and all of the next week. For three weeks she wrote and she listened. Toward the end of the third week, my wife looked over a mountain of paper where she had recorded the conversations and said, “I believe God has shown me what the problem is.” When she told me, the problem in my life became clear to me for the first time. God absolutely spoke through my wife and showed me something that brought about one of the most dramatic changes in my ministry. Had I not listened, I would have missed a magnificent blessing.

Actually, the people we ought to listen to the most are those we live with every day. Those people who love us the most, those who pray for us the most, are often the instruments God uses to reveal Himself to us. I can name several people who, in a passing conversation, have said something that has altered the course of my life to some degree. Just a simple word in passing, just a word here or there from someone close to us (or on rare occasions from a casual acquaintance), can have dramatic consequences.

That is why we need to be careful about what we say. Recognizing that we can be used as God’s spokespersons should cause us to soberly examine our dialogue. Perhaps God has a message for the listener that he has chosen us to deliver, and our talking about the weather or a football game would detract from that message. Thus, we should seek to be alert, sensitive, and available to God’s Voice.”