When God Speaks: How to Recognize God’s Voice and Respond in Obedience
We met at LB’s home tonight to recap the week and I must admit, it was far more relaxing. He even had pizza and wings waiting for us, I told him that’s why he’s the most eligible bachelor at the church!
Day 6: Be Enabled by the Spirit
I didn’t do a very good job, if my job was to lead the review, because we really didn’t cover day by day stuff. I should have focused in on the basic lesson for the day, that through the Holy Spirit, God can do the impossible through us.
Day 7: Be Acquainted With The Spirit’s Work
Perhaps a pattern is developing. I didn’t focus on this day either. Bummer. It was a good day for me, going through the different aspects of the Holy Spirit.
Day 8: Be Filled With the Holy Spirit
Spent a lot of time on this one. Lose your mind. That is the essence of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Making that conscience choice every morning to allow the Holy Spirit complete control. Not an easy thing, especially for a man. CH talked a lot about this one.
We spent a lot of time on this. I related my experience in marriage and how the relationship with SU has grown. CH commented that he has never given his all, sacrificed his complete self to his family. I noticed a bit of a change in him tonight. More subdued? A bit less testy? Something.
Day 10: Be Obedient to the Spirit
LB talked a lot about this. He talked about how he didn’t like the daily question of “what are you gonna do about it?”. We all talked about how it is becoming clearer and clearer that it is all about the “doing” and little about the knowledge.
Overall, it was a nice evening. Three guys sitting around, reading the Bible and telling each other about our lives, the shape we are in, the changes that we need to make and what we are going to do about it.
Like I said, I noticed something different about CH. Almost as if he was thinking about letting his guard down and in fact, he did at times. I sense that he has this great well of emotion that is going to spill out one day. He doesn’t feel good about his chances of reconciling with SH, thinks it might be over. To be honest, I think that is an important thing for him to acknowledge.
I have no idea what is going to happen with his marriage and his family. But for him to say that tells me that, regardless of that outcome, he sees the need to change internally. And that is the only true change he can have. If he were trying to get his life together simply to latch onto his family, he would ultimately fail. His change must be for himself, to reconcile with his Creator.
And I sense that he is trying to do that. I wasn’t sure earlier in the week, especially when I pissed him off so badly. We talked about that briefly but not much. I’m sure I’m going to piss him off many times in the weeks ahead; we are two very different people.
LB really opened up tonight. You can tell we are becoming more comfortable with each other and not afraid to say things that we might normally reserve.
This is a rambling recap but it’s been a pretty long day, so whatever. I’ve written worse. The main thing is, we did the studies, we met again and we talked about Jesus, things spiritual and our lives. That is an accomplishment in and of itself. As I told them, regardless of whether they get anything out of this study, it is worth it for me because I have been blessed.
We ended the evening by reading Galatians 5:13-26 aloud. There is something magical about reading the Bible aloud in a setting like that, it pierces the heart.
Leave a Reply