God will approach us with individual, routine guidance. Sometimes it’s a warning, other times it’s an encouragement. He might speak to us through a feeling or “sense” of an idea.
God also likes to talk to us through people. He will send a friend, coworker, classmate, cousin—and He especially likes to deliver messages through people that happen to irritate us most, right at the time they deliver the message. Those people probably don’t know that God’s using them to deliver important truth for our lives. To them, they are just getting something off their chests or bubbling over with some frustration we stirred in them by our recent action. But, for us, their words may be remarkably relevant to the situation in our lives, especially in light of recent events.
God can, and does, use anyone for this—some passer-by on the street, a drunk guy at a bar who doesn’t know you and everybody thinks is a fool, but his words address a riddle in your heart that you went to bed with the night before. He’ll send a teacher, supervisor, student, subordinate, spouse, ex, parent, child, older or younger sibling, or whomever we least want to listen to. He even uses billboards or other events in life. God spoke to Balaam through his own donkey and He spoke to Jonah through a crew of sailors.
Don’t look for it; it will find you, especially when you don’t expect it. It will never stop happening, no matter how old you get, no matter how much you grow in knowing God.
When God sends messages to us through such means, He makes a few presumptions. The messenger neither needs nor earns any “credibility” kudos for delivering the message, and may or may not even know that a message is being delivered at all. You’re expected to get the message and are responsible for understanding it. And, God may not tell you how to obey His message, only the results He expects. He’s already told us how.
God has revealed many things in His Word already, also through life. Every prophecy or message from the cosmos presumes we have read God’s Word and paid attention.