Prophecy & naptime
Joni writes: Reading back over my last post I realized that some of you may not completely understand what I meant when I said “receiving the Lord’s Words in our minds” and I wanted to explain a bit more about this. We call it "hearing from the Lord" or prophecy and while it may not be a completely foreign concept to many people, we in the Family believe that it is a wonderful gift from Jesus that can enhance and make our lives better and easier by being able to hear specifics from Him for our personal lives. Since we know that Jesus is with us, by our side 24/7, we also believe that He likes to be involved in our everyday affairs—from the simple to the more complicated—and He is happy to speak to us and tell us anything we need to know about any subject we desire. We call this “asking Him everything”.
I myself couldn’t be more grateful for this aspect of our beliefs as the Lord has numerous times now given me practical specific counsel on things that were mind boggling for me or situations that I didn’t have a clue what I should do about. To give an example: since moving to a new city and this already existing missionary home, we’ve been adjusting to our new home and a slightly different schedule. My two youngest daughters, Tiffany (3) and Andie (1) were accustomed to having an afternoon nap after lunch. Lunch is served later here (at 2:00—Mexican lunch hour, which I personally really like). Still, it was too long for Andie to wait to take her nap and she was often tired and cranky long before this. I decided the best way to fix this was to give Andie a snack and put her to sleep around 12:30 each day and then she could sleep till lunch time and wake up and eat… but I didn’t know what to do about Tiffany because she also gets tired during the day and if she doesn’t have a nap by dinner time the tears are rapidly falling for just about any reason.
It was a dilemma for me because after lunch Andie would be napped and fed and ready to play and my two older kids don’t nap so the last thing Tiffany wanted to do was lie down to sleep while the others are having fun—this was a situation where I wanted to ask the Lord for the solution. After praying, expressing to Jesus what my dilemma was, and then getting quiet to hear the “still, small voice” in my heart and thoughts, He spoke. He told me that Tiffany still needed to have her daily nap (since I was contemplating just not making her have a nap) and that if each morning I let her have some playtime to ensure she gets some exercise outside, like jump on the trampoline, etc., that she would be tired enough to sleep at the same time as Andie (and meanwhile my older children could have some more scholastic studies.)
I tried out this idea and… it worked! As any of you who are parents know, raising children is hard work. with a number of little ones like I have… each one an individual with different needs and likes and dislikes, I need a lot of wisdom. And being human, I only have so much of that 
. All that to say, being a mother with Jesus’ help is so much easier than trying to figure it all myself.
Admin: For a study on the "gift of prophecy" and how you can use it in your everyday life, check out the booklet Hearing from Heaven. Or read this issue of the Activated magazine; God still speaks!