God puts desires in our hearts. When you feel it, recognize it and pay attention. It can be a calling. It can be a prayer request. It can be a message for a friend or even someone you don’t know. It can be instructions to go somewhere or to teach an idea, which is often called “preaching”.
Spiritual gifts come to us in our hearts, perhaps a knack for administration or extreme people skills. God might give us business or political savvy, again beginning in the heart.
Having a topic in your heart does not make you an expert, however. Preaching starts with a fire in the heart from God and can’t be faked. A Bible preacher once said, “An ongoing preacher without God’s anointing will kill people spiritually.” Just because you have a desire for a job does not mean God wants you in that job right now—or ever at all. Perhaps God wants you to pray for people in that job or study it. A classroom or coach can help us refine some skills, diligence and experience are equally vital, but we must also have both the fire and the calling from God in order to be effective in any line of work.
It all comes back to the heart. In the early years around Jesus’s birth, Mary stored things up in her heart to ponder them. She knew that many people would not be able to have peer-level conversation with her as she saw the small blessings while carrying the Son of God in her womb. At times, we all encounter events in life that others could never identify with. Keeping them in your heart to ponder them with God will open up a universe in your inner self.
Never neglect the heart, but keep it as strong as your outward family, social, and work life. In the day Jesus reigns, God’s Law will be written on our hearts. We won’t need anyone to teach us about God because, ultimately, the fire in the heart from God is and comes from God Himself—to know God to love God. As the Image of God, God will speak to our hearts first.
2 Chronicles 29:10, Psalm 40:8, Luke 2:19, 51, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11