Here are a couple of examples of what happens when I don't heed the revelations that God sends me:

Several years ago, in my old house, I had been working in the garden all day. In bed that night, as I was falling asleep, I had a vision of the faucet in the garage running and flowing over. I thought, "No, I definitely turned it off," and rolled over and went to sleep. The next morning I got up, went out, and found my garage flooded and the faucet running, exactly as I had seen.

When I came back last year, I felt led to start investing in the stock market. I did, and made some money. A few months ago, I sold a particular stock at a moderate profit, then that night, or rather the next morning, I had a dream that I should buy it back, and heard that if I didn't, I would miss the biggest bubble in history. So I bought it back. Then it plummeted, and stayed down for a long time. I lost faith, as part of this whole struggle I've been going through, and when it got back up to a point a little above where I'd re-purchased it, I sold it again. Then it went through the roof--over another hundred dollars per share over where I sold it, and still rising--in other words, "the biggest bubble in history," at least in the history of this stock. 

These are relatively minor things--especially the flooded garage. But what holds true of the small holds true of the great. The money I lost (or rather didn't make) by not following the Instruction I had received about the stock is less valuable than the lesson I learned to hear and obey the Voice of God when it comes to me.

I've told you several times about when He spoke to me to put my seatbelt on, just before my brakes went out on that mountainside in West Virginia. What would have happened if I hadn't obeyed? I would either have died, or been much more seriously injured than I was--something truly awful, like paraplegic, or brain-damaged, or worse. When the state trooper came into the hospital, he said, "There was only one place inside that truck where a human being could have existed, and that's where you were sitting." That was a literal truth and a metaphor: You have to be in God's will to receive His blessing and protection. Disobedience and sin puts you outside of both. It's not that He is angry and punishing you, it's that He withdraws His Hand from you, like He did with the Israelites when they disobeyed. And when He withdraws His Hand, then you are back under the governance of the god of this world, who hates you. And THAT is when things really start to go wrong.