Spiritual prompting guides us in life (1)

Spiritual prompting guides us in life (1)
Lonely vigil in the bare ash tree (1)

What is 'spiritual'?

Many of us cruise through life without thinking very much about whether we are spiritual or not. It's become more of a topic recently. A generation ago there was a fashion for following the 'hippy trail' to the Indian subcontinent to experience eastern mysticism. More recently it has been under the banner of 'new age'. Spiritualist groups and churches seek to connect those who are in bereavement with their lost ones.

God is Spirit and He became a person to help us make sense of the spiritual part of us that He created. That person is of course Jesus, born in very humble circumstances, who grew up to become the most extraordinary and self-giving person who ever lived. The Bible tells us He is the exact representation of God.

Jesus was a spiritual person

And He was a spiritual person! Day by day He maintained a close spiritual connection with His Father, and He consulted His Father about everything He did and kept to the plan.

Most of us would say that we're not like that. Because we're not Jesus. And we like to make our own path in life. But wait... the Bible tells us that we are made in God's image. His blueprint for us is described from Himself. There are similarities. And there's a spiritual part of us, which we hardly know exists because it is in background mode. But sometimes we get a prompting which we can't really explain, but after the event we can see we were guided.

Turning towards God

This is what happens when we turn towards God. when we take the attention off ourselves, and what we think, and begin to consider what God has to say. That change of focus is how we start to feel a spiritual connection with the Father. This is the part that gets energised when we become Christians. And we become Christians simply by turning to God, deciding to believe Him rather than disbelieving, and in particular taking hold of who Jesus is and what He has done for us.

This is something we do for ourselves. No one else can do it for us. It's between us and God and it's our choice, our decision. It needs faith to take hold of what is unseen and only partly known.

Here's a verse from the New Testament, in Paul's letter to churches in Galatia:

“And so that we would know that we are His true children, God released the Spirit of Sonship into our hearts — moving us to cry out intimately, “My Father! My true Father!” Galatians 4:6 TPT

Read on to part 2

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