Holy Spirit - Practical Decisions

I’ll admit: my Bachelor’s Degree in Arts in Humanities isn’t doing a lot for me right now. Granted, I didn’t soul search long and hard about what course I should have taken when I transferred to WSU Vancouver, or even when I entered Clark College. I didn’t pray or seek God’s direction when taking creative writing or Soviet-Chinese Relations From 1950 to Present Era. I merely took classes I figured I could use to supplement my future career as a writer.

            You’re reading my writing now, but I haven’t turned it into a career. The work that pays the bills and funds my growing Nerf collection is cleaning toilets, teaching other people how to clean toilets, and loving people despite what a mess they made of those toilets we just cleaned ten minutes ago. Not my ideal situation.

            As we continue our study of walking with the Holy Spirit, I can’t help but wonder what decisions would have looked like if I had sought God in them a lot more. Tim taught recently on how to do that and how the Holy Spirit prompts us in making practical decisions and so forth.

            A brief summary of the Holy Spirit – He is personal, relational, powerful, a communicator, and is God. He convicts the world of sin, guides us into all truth, and seeks to make Jesus known by glorifying Him. These actions in us hone our abilities and hearts into better loving and living for God, producing the fruit of the Spirit (see Galatians 5:22-25).

            For us to be changed by the Spirit, however, we must care more about others. We must have a strong foundation in God’s acceptance of us as his children. We must make an active choice to follow through in our belief in Jesus Christ as our loving savior.

            Throughout the book of Acts, the early church is full of people who follow Christ and spread the gospel based on those truths. We can also read that the Holy Spirit acts in different ways through them and towards them in their efforts. In the first few verses of Acts 13, we see a gathering of Christians who are spoken to directly by the Holy Spirit. In the midst of their fasting and praying, the Holy Spirit reached out and gave them specific instructions. They cared about following Christ, sought His direction, and the Holy Spirit guided them in a direct manner.

            Further on, in chapter 15, we read of Paul and Barnabus having an argument over whether to take a certain disciple, John (called Mark), along with them to visit the churches they had planted. It turned into such a disagreement that the two split up and went opposite directions, Paul taking Silus to Syria and Cilicia while Barnabus went to Cyprus with Mark (sometimes known as John). Through this account, we see no evidence of the Holy Spirit speaking to them directly as He did in chapter 13. However, each sought to visit and strengthen the churches they had planted and even though they disagreed over how to do it, they used their God-given wisdom and drew upon the basis of following Him above all else to bring the gospel to the Gentiles. “Paul came also to Derbe and to Lystra. A disciple was there, named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer but his father was a Greek. He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek (Acts 16:1-3).” Once again, Paul was not in direct interaction with the Holy Spirit. Instead, he drew upon his desire to follow God, using wisdom and acting in faith to take Timothy along. Also, listening to other Christians played an important role in ascertaining Timothy’s character.

            There were times when Paul and others sought to spread the gospel, as they were called to do, earnest in following Christ and in wisdom, but the Holy Spirit told them differently. In Acts 16:6-10, they were “forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia” and kept from entering Bithynia by “the Spirit of Jesus.” Instead, Paul and the rest went to Troas; there, Paul received a vision of a man of Macedonia asking them to help him and his people.  “And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them (Acts 16:10).”

            Through these examples, we can see how the Holy Spirit guides people directly and indirectly. But our own natures and tendencies can block our ears and hearts towards Him. At times, we might care more about the outcome than following God. We might ask for something that we think is good for us and put our hope in that instead of God giving us what is right and what He knows is good for us. This is not submitting to the Spirit. Another possible barrier is our earnest desire to follow Christ and walk in the Spirit plagued by a fear that all will be lost if we take a wrong step. This is doubting the Spirit, forgetting God’s promises that He will never leave us nor forsake us. Paul was not punished for attempting to spread God’s word in Asia or blasted by a lightning bolt for trying to go to Bithynia; he was turned away in both cases and given a vision on where he needed to go instead. As we seek to follow God and do the work to which He has called us, He will guide us in the right way. Or maybe another barrier is we don’t hear God’s direction because we want specific guidance. Suppose a man had three choices at a certain point in life – 1) he could attend a school and get a degree in art therapy, or 2) he could bypass school and get an internship at a hospital, following an art therapist around and learning how to be one that way, or 3) he could fly to New Zealand on a missions trip to teach art and Jesus to little kids. In each of these scenarios, he is confident that God will provide everything he needs to follow Christ, to use his talents, and that he will grow in the fruits of the Spirit. But beyond that, God does not tell him specifically which one he should take, even after praying a lot about it. So instead of taking one of the three choices, the man does not choose any, stagnating and never moving forward to follow the Spirit fully. He does not trust God to guide him in the event his chose path is the wrong one, like God did for Paul and the rest at Bithynia.

            Going back to my story, I never sought to follow the Holy Spirit in specific cases during my college years. I regret it now, but I look back on those years and can see His work despite that. Through those years, I did some deep questioning about why I believed in the Bible and what that meant, eventually winding up at Glenwood and entering a job in which multiple mentors and peers lived out a Christ-centered life and encouraged me to do the same. So perhaps the Holy Spirit was very subtle in pointing me to where I am, to a place where I could grow and learn to follow Christ in everything I do, seeking to increase in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. No matter where we are in life or where we go, that is the ultimate path in which the Spirit will direct us, specifically or otherwise.

           Something to consider and a warning to take to heart: we might ourselves feel a stirring within us, a sense that God has called us to do something and the Holy Spirit's prompting. However, if we leap into it without supplementing it with the wisdom with which God has bestowed upon us, then we can easily go astray. It might be that we latch on to the Spirit's first promptings and not follow Him in other instructions to continue to do His work in a different and new way. For example, I have long believed that God has called me to write and reach out to others through my writing. I even received a prompting from the Holy Spirit. However, I thought the writing alone was what He wanted me to do and I paid no attention to growing in faith and the fruits of the Spirit. Instead of directing me to a job where I would earn my living writing, He directed me to a job where I could grow and be nurtured. Now, I am following Christ, seeking the Holy Spirit's direction, and using my writing talents for Christ in a way I never expected. 

          Whenever we experience what we believe to be the prompting of the Holy Spirit, we must always pray for direction, for discernment to ascertain whether it is the prompting of the Holy Spirit or not. Mentors, believers mature in faith, and God's word are all resources which can help us to determine whether or not that feeling is of God or of something else. If we focus on following God first, then we can trust that He will redirect us when He needs to.