Receiving God's Direction in the Moment (a Story)
How Hearing God and Managing Our Thoughts Intersect
Consider This:
What would change if you
stopped asking God to bless your plans and
started asking what his plans are?
A Friend’s Story
I have a friend who I’ve been journeying with spiritually over the past few years. He’s been a faithful follower of Jesus for a long time, and is committed to being a disciple that looks like Jesus and equipping others to do the same.
In recent years, he’s become aware of his need to live surrendered to God. In recent months, he’s begun to apply this by intentionally setting aside his personal agenda and expectations in order to hear God’s. In other words, his desire is to experience every conversation, every opportunity, every challenge … with a consistently singular approach:
To receive God’s direction.
Not just to SEEK God’s direction, to RECEIVE it.
That may seem like subtlety, but they are radically and fundamentally different postures.
Previously he would come into a leadership team meeting with an agenda of what he wanted for and from his team. But now he comes with questions: “Lord, how are you working in my team? What does each person need? What do they not fully understand about this business and their role in it? What do they need from me?”
He used to come into a meeting with a demanding customer with a list of expectations and anxieties. But now he asks, “God, what do I need to understand about this customer? What is he afraid of? How can I/we best serve his needs? How can I help him understand our requirements? How can we collaborate together to get past this roadblock?”
This might seem like a haphazard management style for an owner of a thriving business. But it’s generated some noticeable outcomes, namely: more satisfied customers, better collaboration and smoother operations.
And the most surprising outcome has been something no one else outwardly sees: joy and peace in his heart.
Two Postures
My friend now has a more tangible and lasting sense of God’s presence. He's grown more aware of how God is at work in his life, his business and in the lives of everyone he has the opportunity to influence personally and professionally.
But this realization of God’s work and presence came after becoming aware of his prior posture of independence from God. In other words, he used to believe that God was there to help him accomplish God-honoring things. Now he understands that he’s being invited into the things God is doing.
The old posture assumes that …
We know what’s going on and what should be done.
We are gifted and capable of accomplishing that—with God’s help, of course (which we ask for in particularly challenging situations).
In other words, we operate from a posture of independence.
The new posture is 180 degrees opposite, and assumes that …
Only God knows what’s truly going on and what should be done.
By faith, we can receive God’s insight and direction—that often don’t make sense or fully align with what we do on our own.
This new posture doesn’t deny or dismiss our personal capacity, experience, gifting, skills … In fact, to the contrary: It actively puts them at God’s disposal and direction. It takes us out of the driver’s seat of our life, so that we become God’s servant in the moment—to bring his will and intention to bear.
In putting ourselves in a posture of dependence to receive God’s direction,
we become an extension of God
in the physical world.
We live out our identity as
“… the fullness of him
who fills everything in every way.”
(Eph. 1.23)
My Question
Though this had been an ongoing conversation between us over the last year, I recently texted my friend and asked him to describe his experience.
What moved and motivated him into this dependent posture?
What tipped the scales toward desiring to live dependently seeking the Spirit’s direction on a moment-by-moment basis?
His text response was interesting, and insightful …
His Response
“That’s an interesting question. This would take a while to unpack, but a few things quickly come to mind:
“Affirming that I can do nothing on my own. Realizing through experiences and personal reflection that I can do nothing apart from Christ. As a branch abiding in the Vine, I have to receive from him in order to have any fruitfulness at all. There is nothing in me that has the capacity to produce kingdom fruit. I have to truly discern the will of God, which is often contrary or counter to the normal ways of the world—even the ones that seem practical and logical.
“Recognizing outcomes from my own initiative. I’ve had enough difficult experiences resulting from acting on my own independent wisdom—even as a follower of Christ who professed that “he leads me.” These difficulties helped lead me to my knees and into a place of surrender. He’s pruning me.
“Comprehending that God speaks to his people. Accepting the truth that God speaks to his people—if they hear his voice and they follow him. Really? If so, we need to be listening to the Spirit with the fabric and filter of the word of God, the truth, thoroughly ingrained in our beings.
“Seeking intimacy with God. The joy of deeper relational fellowship with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. A life of faith just seems empty without the intimacy that allows for the give-and-take, the prompt-and-respond; the seeing and experiencing of miraculous things in result.
“Desiring to see God’s kingdom come. I have a greater desire to see the kingdom come and his will be done; to see the gospel advanced on the Earth. A greater sense of accomplishment from that than anything else on earth … Greater than family, business, other things … More of an eternal perspective.
“The fear of God. I’m gonna stand before him one day and give account for all I’ve said and done. It better be what he wanted … I don’t want that day to be one where I show up having done a lot of good things, depended on myself or done what I thought was right, and have them not be the things he had for me or wanted me to do. I want to be like Jesus and glorify him as well as finish the work that he (God) gave me to do (Jn. 17:4).”
[60-SECOND PAUSE … AND A SECOND TEXT]
“Hey, for some reason, I just thought more about your question … I paused for a moment, and a somewhat simple concept emerged:
I perceive myself more as a young child,
smiling, curious and just enjoying life
because I know I have a heavenly father
who is taking care of me
and will order my steps.
“Probably a more mature way than a child would actually think about it, but the sense I have is like being a kid again.”
Unpacking His Response
A couple of things in his response are worthy of note.
Wisdom (Not Just Information)
Thinking about the content of what my friend shared, I see four elements.
Our Identity. He saw himself as “a branch,” an embodied metaphor that describes who we are, not just how we function.
God’s Identity. Jesus is the Vine that provides life for us.
God’s Activity. God speaks to us, and desires intimacy with us. He’s advancing his kingdom and building his church. Everything he’s doing is moving toward a conclusion.
How We “See” Our Reality. We have the option of either choosing to be a part God’s activity, or not.
These aren’t theological statements or new strategy or methodology. This isn’t information.
This is comprehending reality
at a whole new level.
His thoughts are outcomes. They represent experiential knowledge and wisdom that came as a result of experiencing intimacy with God.
Renewing (Not Just Thinking)
Without realizing it, my friend experienced an aspect of mind renewal: thinking in ways that leverage his whole brain to process his thoughts.
I’ll be digging into this more in future articles, but the big idea is that we can be better stewards of our thinking by using both hemispheres of our brains in collaborative ways.
Take a look at the six items in the first part of his response. What do you notice? They’re …
Explicit.
Clearly defined.
Describable using familiar language (even if that language is developing deeper meanings).
Actionable, practical and somewhat measurable.
They create a clear contrast in our minds.
Now what do you notice about the thoughts after the 60-second pause? They’re …
Experiential.
Relational.
Identity-laden (“like being a kid again”).
Open, unbounded and limitless.
Curious.
Exploratory.
Joy-full and carefree.
The numbered list is RATIONAL processing. It came quickly to mind because his left hemisphere has become consciously aware of them. They are things that he’d recognized over the course of the year of walking with God experientially. They have become milestones and pulse-checks for his journey with Jesus.
The awareness of being a child is INTUITIVE processing. It came after a time of reflection, which allowed his right hemisphere (which is more attuned to unconscious processing) to present the deeper realities of his identity and relationship with God to his conscious processing in his left hemisphere.
Interestingly, it may appear that the explicit, left-hemisphere list produced the implicit child-of-God awareness. But it was actually the other way around.
His right-hemisphere’s implicit knowledge (being a child of God) UNCONSCIOUSLY created the environment that then produced his left-hemisphere’s explicit knowledge (concrete, rational descriptions).
His further reflection on the clear and concise nature of practically embracing his dependence (what I like to call “reintegration”) then allowed for him to become conscious of what he previously only knew unconsciously:
He’s God’s kid,
and God’s kids are confident
in what they do in life.
What Does All This Mean?
My friend’s story is a real life example of how …
Stewarding our thoughts, and
Embracing our identity
… work together in sync with hearing God.
Jesus affirms that he speaks to his followers, and that knowing him allows us to hear his voice (Jn. 10.1-16). This makes hearing God one of the most basic spiritual life realities for the church.
And yet, the church in the West
struggles to understand it—
much less consistently practice it.
I want to offer some insights that will help change that. I’ll be working in this theme in my upcoming articles for the next little while, so stay tuned.
Peace be with you …
Have any thoughts or questions about hearing God?
I’m eager to hear from you.
Leave a comment or message me to discuss.