I read a fascinating chapter in Forgotten God tonight. It was all about the will of God via guidance by the Holy Spirit and the way we're intended to respond to that guidance.
Lots of good quotes:
"And to expose our hearts to truth and consistently refuse or neglect to obey the impulses it arouses is to stymie the motions of life within us and, if persisted in, to grieve the Holy Spirit into silence."
- A. W. Tozer
To grieve the Holy Spirit? What a crazy thought! How could I, being lowly and weak and totally unworthy, grieve the Holy Spirit by refusing His leadership? I haven't yet realized how to discern what might be the Spirit and what just might be my own desires for my life. For instance, I know it's the influence of the Spirit that is driving me to go to Uganda because it's so inexplicable to me. I've never wanted to go work in Africa before this - it was never in my "life plan", so I'm giving that up to Him. But right now I'm dealing with a big life decision - do I stay where I am or do I change paths? The moment I feel like I've made a decision, something happens to change my mind and drive me the opposite way; the next week the opposite happens. Maybe both paths take me to the same place eventually so it doesn't really matter which way I go. Hmm. I hadn't thought about that actually.
Furthermore:
Chan goes on to talk about not focusing on what God has willed for our long term life plan, but also learning how to abide by the Spirit each day, each minute. He says, "Jesus Christ did not die in order to follow us. He died and rose again so that we could forget everything else and follow Him to the cross, to true life" Let me tell you, it's hard for me to give up my life plan. I have a darn good plan and it makes me really happy to think that one day I'll own a big piece of land with chickens, cows, solar panels, windmills, a big self-sustaining garden and greenhouse, a husband that can hit a tin can with a rifle from (insert appropriately long distance here) yards away, and a couple of awesome kiddos that love and revere the Lord. That sounds like an awesome plan to me. I'm not apt to give up on it - so when things look as if they are going to take me away from that life plan, I get a little frustrated, honestly. Anyway, I have a hard time listening to the Spirit right away. I typically like to weigh my options a bit - but NOW I don't want to grieve Him into silence! I need to work on my instantaneous response and graciousness.
Finally, the last thing I underlined:
Chan writes, "Like yeast and flour are both necessary to bread, both God's action and our response-action are necessary in this relationship with God." And so, yes, Christ promised the Spirit to us before he was crucified, that he would be sending the Helper to guide us, but our relationship with God cannot develop unless we also respond to that Spirit. Amazing. I suck at communicating, by the way, and that translates over into my relationship with God as well. I get frustrated and worrisome and feel abandoned and just totally ignore Him which makes me even more miserable until I get some serious alone time with Him and just ask, once again, for His peace. It's really scary to think about what He might ask me to do. Like I said, I really really don't want to let go of my life plan, but I believe in His promise to take care of me, so I know that wherever He leads me, if I follow, it'll be best. I just hope He's leading me to this farm......
Good night <3
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