A Faith and Health Journey

When I pray each day, as God’s beloved child, that He will send the Counselor, the Spirit of Truth (John 14:16-17) to abide in me and me in Christ (John 15:4), I can be confident that I am doing God’s will for my life by making that request. Jesus told us to do that because it is the means by which we declare we are subject to His sovereignty and reap the benefits of His guiding us through each day with Him in control. I talked about this commitment to God being in control rather than my natural inclinations being in control in the first essay of the book Jan and I wrote Living Today as Though you might Die Tomorrow (cf book on this website).

Well, this is nothing you have not seen before. However, it does highlight a critically important determinant of our choices during the day: Do we follow our natural inclinations, or are our choices guided by the Holy Spirit? I have found this to be no small thing in how my heart and mind work together in the choices I make during the day. For me, praying for the HS to abide in me and take control over my heart and mind is as relevant in making me functionally able to have a successful day as being able to have the car keys in my hand, my eyeglasses on, and my iPhone in my pocket. By asking for the HS to be my counselor throughout the day is to claim the promise of Proverbs 3:6: “In all thy ways acknowledge him and he will direct thy paths.” ASV. I take this literally—if I want Him to be in control of the process by which I make choices in “all areas of my life” each day, He is promising to guide me throughout the day in doing exactly that. This is as essential in my being able to successfully function as being able to use the “tools” of my trade. So, when I start each day, as millions of other Christians do, by praying for the HS to abide in me and me in Christ, I’m asking that every area of my life will be under His control each day,

nothing held back, and that will be true all day, big and trivial things inclusive.

What I have discovered in making this heartfelt prayer is that I have been able to see clear and convincing evidence of it being answered. I know from experience how I would have acted under those circumstances, and what the HS caused me to do is nothing at all like what I would have done by following my natural inclinations. The building contractor/sliding glass door illustration described in Living Today as Though You Might Die Tomorrow is an example of this difference,

plus this one that happened yesterday:

I had an appointment with the PA at Michiana Hematology Oncology yesterday at 11:15am. I arrived on time but had to wait for more than an hour before they called me back for a 4-minute meeting with her. When they took my BP, it was 110/64. I assure you it would not have been that without the presence of the HS. What I was thinking during that hour was also different. I meditated on the difference between worldly peace and God’s peace (cf. my essay “Finding Peace in Perilous Times” on this website), and I concluded that worldly peace can change with your circumstances (e.g., waiting for an hour for a 4 minute meeting), but God’s peace does not wax or wane based on your circumstances. This is why martyrs could be at peace when they were about to be stoned to death or burned at the stake. And peace is one of the nine fruit of the Spirit we get when He abides in us (Galatians 5), so that further confirms that my prayer for the filling of the HS each day has been answered.

I mention these examples because I have been trained during my doctoral work, to use hard evidence as the means to test out whether a theory should be supported or rejected as a explanation for an observed phenomenon. I find these examples as supportive of my conclusion that God answers my sincere prayer for the filling of the HS each day. The evidence increases my trust in His Providence each day. As my trust increases so does my gratitude for all the mercies I see that He provides each day. This sense of overwhelming gratitude causes me to be alert to seeing even more mercies, to the point where I am constantly aware of Christ’s presence during the day. Consequently, I find myself in continuous commune with Him. This makes it easy for the HS to need but whisper the guidance He gives (“and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it” Isaiah 30:21) to keep me centered on His path each day.

One other observation is worth mentioning here. We are told repeatedly in scripture to “wait forGod”:

This patience is hard to work into our fast-paced work and private lives. We are conditioned to make decisions quickly, and not pause and appeal to the HS to guide us in those choices. However, when we pray that the Spirit will be our counselor in “all our ways” (cf Psalm 73:24 and Proverbs 3:6) we are seeking the wisdom that comes from God alone as a critical input in our decision making. When we maintain close communion with the HS during the day, this pause to hear that voice whisper “this is the walk, walk ye in it” will become more and more clear and present to us.

All this is an organic rather than formulaic process that I do not “work at” to become my modus operandi during the day. In fact, I do not even realize it was happening until I was asked to describe it. But looking back on how this came to be, I would say that it occurred over a long spiritual journey defined by a rich devotional life that eventually became a state of mind more than a state of time. I am not trying to be obtuse here, but I guess the closest I can come to succinctly describing the process is this Bible verse:

The more time I spend contemplating the love of God revealed in scripture and evident in my experience, the more I seek Him with an undivided heart. God wants each of us to “find” him. But that happens only when it becomes the most important thing to us in our life. Everything else

I’ve tried to describe just naturally follows.