Prayer Tip--Made for More: When the Spirit Grows You

I can count on one hand, maybe two, the moments in my life where I knew, without a doubt, that the Holy Spirit was moving. Not gently suggesting. Moving, like a hand on my back I couldn’t see but could absolutely feel. One of the biggest was deciding to come work at Resurrection, which sounds like a tidy testimony until I tell you how it actually went.

I read the job posting on a Monday morning, half convinced I wasn’t qualified and hit send anyway before I could argue myself out of it. I was screened that same afternoon. A Zoom interview by Tuesday. I drove to Kansas City on a Friday to shadow a Sunday service I hadn’t even attended yet, and two weeks later I was signing a lease in a city I’d visited exactly once. My mother asked, reasonably, if I had lost my mind. I hadn’t. I had just run out of ways to say no.

I say no all the time, if I’m honest. Not to the big, obvious, whirlwind moments… those are almost easy, because they don’t give you time to think yourself out of them. I say no to the small nudges. The quiet suggestion to check on someone. The feeling that I should put my phone down and actually look at the person in front of me. I say no because I’m tired, or my calendar is already full, or because saying yes would cost me something I’ve already decided I can’t spare. And then I wonder later why I feel far from the Holy Spirit, as if I didn’t personally block the number.

What gets me is that the Spirit doesn’t seem to take it personally. I say no, and the invitation just waits, quietly, like it has nowhere else to be. He doesn’t storm off. He doesn’t stop asking. He also doesn’t bring it up again later to make sure I know how many times I’ve done this, which is more than I can say for how I handle being ignored. I don’t know what to call that except grace, and I don’t know why it still catches me off guard every time.

I wish I could tell you that being led by the Spirit eventually starts to feel comfortable. It hasn’t. Not once, not in any of the big moments and not in most of the small ones either. What I get instead is peace, and for a long time I confused the two. I thought if I was really following the Spirit well, the discomfort would eventually go away. It doesn’t. Peace was never the absence of hard. Peace is knowing who’s doing the leading and choosing to trust the plan even when I can’t see or understand it.

So, this is less a resolution and more a confession. I want to be someone who looks up. From my calendar, from my phone, from the version of my week I already had planned before the Spirit interrupted it. I don’t know if I’ll get better at saying yes. I’d like to. I’m working on wanting to want that, which feels like a very small, very honest place to start.

Prayer

God, thank you for the big moments where your leading was impossible to miss, and thank you, too, for the small ones I keep managing to miss anyway.

Holy Spirit, forgive me for the nos. For the times I’ve ignored you because I was tired, or busy, or comfortable enough that I didn’t want the interruption. I don’t want status quo to be my default answer to you.

Teach me to look up. Help me notice you in the ordinary moments before you have to turn them into a whirlwind just to get my attention.

I don’t need this to feel comfortable. I just need to know you’re the one leading, and that the plan is good even on the days I can’t see it. Give me that kind of peace.

Make me someone who says yes more often than I say no. Not because it’s easy. Because I trust you with what happens next.

Amen.