What to do when you actually have to do it by yourself! When there is no one standing over your shoulder telling you what to do next.
We might call this the Masterchef challenge!
The readings for this week are those for 9th May 2010 the 6th Sunday in Easter. Acts 16:9-15, Ps 67, Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5, John 14:23-29
What the early Christians had to learn was how to be Christian, how to be Christ indeed, when Christ was no longer with them.
Jesus’s promise to be with his disciples always was fulfilled through another promise. That of the Holy Spirit.
It is the Spirit who will teach us how to know God’s life active and present in our own lives.
We might note:
Intuition: part of our spiritual training is to learn to trust the leadings of the Spirit. When we feel deep within the promptings, perhaps to contact somebody, to be silent, or to speak, to go somewhere.
Can we pray for discernment and trust to be guided?
The early apostles seem to develop this. Paul finds he is able to trust his intuition about dreams, about plans, about people.
The Positive Movements of the Spirit
What do you make day by day of how God’s Spirit has dealt with you? And can we trust that?
If we think back over the last day or so and ask: For what am I most grateful, we begin to detect those places where we have been on the same side as God! Or if we ask Where am I most alive? This is the resurrection question, of course, because where we are ‘alive’ there Christ is!
Is it when we take time to be with someone, or when we prepare ourselves properly, or in a particular place….
Gradually we build up a profile of how we work well with God and how God works well with us.
If we flip the coin, perhaps asking “where do I experience death, or where do I feel awful?” we also find those dark places where we have chased God away.
What we see in the Acts of the Apostles is how the disciples learn to trust these discernments of the Spirit.
The fulfillment of the promise of Jesus, that he would not leave us friendless is in the person of the Spirit, who we have to learn to trust.
Developing our intuition,. And interpreting our experience!
New Learning
This week can we pray each day for the Holy Spirit to be close to us and to lead us. This is a surprisingly effective prayer!
Can we take a little time to
o Be a little more intuitive
o Note where we function well, feel alive, discover we are close to God!
o Note, also, where the reverse happens and pray for strength to act differently
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