Late one Sunday afternoon in the mid-1970s, as minister of a Methodist church in Worcester, I was at home doing final preparation for the evening service. My sermon would be based on the Easter story found in chapter 21 of John’s Gospel and especially the record there of Jesus’ conversation with Simon Peter. But as I sat at my desk a sudden impression came across my mind. ‘Abandon everything you have prepared and when the time comes to preach just say simply what Jesus has done for you’.

Clear as the impression was I did not act on it. I managed to suppress its demand out of nervousness in acting on an impulse. Very likely I believed that my intended message was straightforward and Jesus-centred in any case. So I followed my service order and in the sermon I spoke as I had planned, probably making three points as preachers often do.

Standing at the front of the church during that service I saw that in addition to many usual attenders there was a young man at the back whom I did not recognise at all. In conversation afterwards he said he had decided to come to church that evening because there was currently a lot of difficulty in his life. I asked him whether being at the service had felt all right and whether what I’d said had been any use to him. He replied with unembarrassed honesty that he had paid no attention to my preaching at all. He said, ‘I sat there and wished someone would get up and simply say what Jesus had done for them’.

Over some weeks and months we did get to know him. The contact with the church had meaning for him. He felt that God was actually at work in his life and some of the pain was being sorted. Life did open up afresh for him. But the point of telling the story here is that on that initial Sunday evening God did speak to me. Of course this does not devalue the labour that is normally required in preparation or suggest that preaching should usually take the form of straight individual testimony. But in this case there was a plain way for one person to be reached and the rest of the congregation would have survived it. There was evidence of God’s profound love for a particular seeking individual contained within the ‘crowd’, something which the Gospel record of the ministry of Jesus frequently illustrates.

From experiences of my own through the last thirty years and from very many experiences recorded by others I have learned more about listening to God in this mysterious way that comes through impression. Of course we should recognise what purely human elements may be at work. To be proved right in one instance does not necessarily mean being right next time. We do need to be guarded against making mistakes that can affect others. This sort of guidance should not be emphasised at the expense of standard ways of God’s leading - obedience to main truths of Scripture, rational thought processes and sharing the insights of others.

Yet it can be an authentic way in which God communicates. The New Testament regards prophetic sorts of inspiration as an ongoing stream in the Church’s life. Paul’s familiar advice is ‘Don’t quench the Spirit, don’t despise prophetic messages, but test everything; keep the good, avoid evil of whatever kind’. (1 Thess. 5.19-22).