1. “I Can’t Hear You Praying!”
Have you ever been at one of those ‘powerful’ prayer meetings where the leader calls out passionately, “I can’t hear you praying!” urging everyone to be louder? I have, many times. The call is sometimes made as if the prayers were meant for them, or as if it were in their power to answer the petitions. The impression is also given that the louder the voices, the more impressed God is, and the more effective the prayer. In other words, apparently, God doesn’t hear or is not impressed with whispered prayers. Such orientations tend to induce the notion that noise means anointing, and manual intensity means spiritual force.
There is certainly a place for the thunderous voices and joyful sounds, loud as they can get, but the tradition that diminishes the place of whispered fellowship misses much; the tradition that insists on the amplification of our religious sounds even when God bids holy silence is hollow. How satisfied we get with the volume of our ‘powerful’ sounds is not the measure of how effective the prayer has been.
2. Voluble Thoughts
God hears words (James 5:16); He also hears thoughts (Ephesians 3:20), and He answers both, just as He judges evil words spoken aloud and evil thoughts left unspoken. In Psalm 14:1 and 53:1, God publicly reports what the fool had secretly said “in his heart.” God could report it because He heard it, even though it was never spoken aloud. The fool didn’t want to be heard saying it, because he probably feared reprisals from those who might hear it, but God heard it – from his heart.
In the New Testament also, an “evil servant” is so judged for the audible evil “in his heart” – not in his hand (Matthew 24:48). Does God hear hearts also, or does He hear lips only? Does He respond to thoughts also, or to words only?
Satan’s manifesto of rebellion against God was first ‘published’ in the heart, where God caught it and promptly acted, before anyone had heard it from his lips. The initial charge against Lucifer was not what he had done with his hands or said with his mouth, but what he “said” in his heart: “For thou hast SAID in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne … I will sit also …” (Isaiah 14:13-15). He got cast out of heaven. Can God go to such drastic lengths for a thought, even when the lips said nothing? Are thoughts so tangible and audible that God should take them so seriously?
Psalm 10 is classic for its several reports on the fact that God hears the heart, even when no words are spoken. Verse 6 reports the boast of the wicked, who had “said in his heart” that nothing was going to move him. Verses 11 and 13 give further reports of what was “said in his heart,” which mortal ears did not hear. Other verses further report on the loud voices from the silent heart. In other words, God hears not only words but also thoughts. He hears not only our lips but also our hearts.
3. Soul Talks and Thought Transfers
In the spirit realm, thoughts are as loud as words. Something need not be spoken before it is heard and judged as spoken from the lips. Even the occult world knows a thing or two about telepathy, when soul talks to soul, when spirit communes with spirit – without the lips moving or the pen writing.
Beyond soul talks, the occult world also knows how to project or transmit thoughts into a human soul, making someone think thoughts they think are their thoughts. Sometimes the projected thoughts are so strange, so unlike the ‘thinker,’ that they are surprised they could be thinking such thoughts. The more discerning would usually reject them, forcing those invading thoughts to bounce off. The undiscerning receive them as their thoughts; then they become their own; then they do such stupid things as they otherwise would not have done, such as suicide, rape, stealing, killing, and so on.
Thought transfer was how Satan got Judas to betray Jesus. He “put” the thought “into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him” (John 13:2). First, Judas received the devil’s thoughts; then next, the devil himself moved in: “Then entered Satan into Judas” (Luke 22:3). First, he “put”; then, he “entered.” So, invading evil thoughts often prepare the ground for (and open the door to) resident evil spirits. Wrong thoughts ‘furnish’ the house for the devil to move in later. In other words, as you can tell from the story I shall narrate next, sustained or entertained wrong thinking can lead to demon possession, which is also why the Wise Man warns, “guide thine heart” (Proverbs 23:19).
In his book, I Believe in Visions, Kenneth Hagin told how a pastor’s wife got demon possessed and died. Brother Hagin was troubled why that should happen to a pastor’s wife, then God showed him the vision of how it happened. A monkey-like demon sat upon her left shoulder and whispered into her ears, “You are a very beautiful woman, too beautiful to be the wife of a pastor.” She rebuked the thought, and the monkey jumped off, but came back upon the same shoulder. True devils don’t give up at first attempt. Ask Jesus in the wilderness (Luke 4:3-13; 11:24). The money-demon repeated the same seduction, and for the second time, she rebuked the thought, and the monkey jumped off, but came back upon her right shoulder, and told her again that, pretty as she was, she deserved much more than being the wife of a pastor. Then she received the thought, and in the vision, Kenneth Hagin could see the thought, like black ink, flowing down from her head to her heart, staining her soul. We do not know how long the process lasted; maybe one day, or one week, or six months, but when she agreed with the demon that she was unfortunate to have been married to a pastor, she began sleeping out, then she got demon possessed, and she died.
In the Kingdom of Light also, thought transfers occur. That was how God got a heathen king to sponsor His second temple, and Ezra reported, “Blessed be the LORD God of our fathers, which hath put such a thing as this in the king’s heart, to beautify the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem” (Ezra 7:27). (May God put you into the heart of a king that should do you good. Amen.) That was also how Nehemiah got into his ministry of rebuilding, for, according to him, it was “what my God had put in my heart to do” (Nehemiah 2:12). He further acknowledged that the thought that led to his actions had been “put into mine heart” by a spirit agency he identified as “my God” – the Spirit Entity he served (Nehemiah 7:5).
Thoughts are portals, spiritual highways. They are not abstract ramblings or frail mental rituals less potent than audible supplications or incantations. Ask the occult masters who engage in psychokinesis, moving physical objects (like chairs and tables) with the ‘power of the mind’; ask modern neurotechnolgists who, with a chip implanted in the brain, enable the translation of intangible thoughts into technical control commands and actual physical actions, in other words, the mental manipulations of material space; ask the mystics who solace in deep meditations – in wordless, soundless transcendental transactions in hours of enraptured hallowed prostrate stillness of soul and body, when even the hand does not dare the profanity of that disruptive move to drive off a trespassing fly or scratch a nagging itch somewhere down the body.
From The Preacher’s diary,
August 10, 2026.
