I write down every thought I can, to the extent it can be written. I have different places where I write things, depending on the theme, content, and clarity of the thought. It all gets aggregated, percolated, and processed over time.
I have one particular file where I save the clearest, most direct things that God tells me, whether it be for me or through me to someone else.
I remember one of the first times God gave me something specific to say to a specific person. It was about ten years ago. I did not know the person well, though he lived in my neighborhood and attended the same church as me. It was a particularly difficult day, I was exhausted physically and emotionally, and getting into bed. The Lord spoke to me. He told me to get a pen and paper, which I had handy and grabbed, and he told me what to say, word for word, and who to say it to. As I wrote the message, I protested that this conflicted with everything I understood about how revelation works, I had a lot going on, and this guy was going to think I was nuts. The message was personal, about a situation he was having with his wife, who had a serious illness. The Lord, in customary bluntness, said that I could choose whether to do what he was saying or not, but to understand that if I refused, I would be choosing to curtail his voice in my life. That made the choice easy, and the next morning as soon as the time had arrived where normal people wake up, I was at his front door with a post it note in hand. He answered perplexed, and I told him that the Lord had told me that I was to tell him something, and then I read the message, fully expecting this man to politely shoo me away. Instead, he immediately burst into tears. He said, "thank you so much for coming here." He said he had been praying every day about that very specific thing, and to know that God had heard him and knew about what he was going through made his burden much lighter.
From that moment, I decided I would never impede any information that God gave me, no matter how uncomfortable it made me, how tired or busy I was, or how uncomfortable it made others.
From that time, I have extracted deep value from the volume of information God has given me to give to others. Because of God's impartiality, all information has value, even when it is meant for someone else. One of the payments a servant of God receives is the gift of hearing everything God says to other people through him, because he can fold every piece of information into his own understanding. This not only increases his ability to serve God and his fellowman--as the greater your understanding, the more God can use you to help others--but also increases what God can teach the servant, as all knowledge is sequential and progressive.
Anyway, the reason I hopped on here quickly was that, as I was writing, I was looking through my notes and found something God told me to tell someone once that appeared to be something others could extract value from without distracting me too much from my task at hand. Here it is:
<begin>
I have heard your prayers and I know what you desire.
A path to all desires exists, but you must trust me as I lead you along, step by step, through the necessary sequential situations that will cause you to grow into the fulfillment of what you seek.
Were I to show you the full path to what you seek in your present state, you would reject it and reject me.
Even now, can you honestly say you have fully trusted me, even when I have plainly shown you the next step of your journey? How can you ask for more when you have not yet reconciled to what I have already made known to you?
Remember that the desires of mortals are necessarily articulated in the limited vocabulary of their limited understanding. The actual fulfillment of what you seek will be different than what you are expecting. Always remember that I know what you truly seek better than you do. When you arrive, you will know this is true. Do not trust your expectations of how the outcomes you seek will look. Do not try to create shortcuts to your expectations. Trust me and trust where I am leading you.
<end>
For the record, I have absolutely no idea what this person desired, let alone the path to it. However, the principles in this revelation perfectly match all my experience and observations. There are serious gems here. This is highly concentrated truth.
This revelation dovetails with a moment I had last night. I had the impression to quickly glance through the book I wrote called, "Through Faith" for reasons unimportant to this post. I reflected on the value of the things in that book, and mourned that so few people have taken advantage of them.
I hope this helps. Back to the grind!