Make Room For The Holy Spirit
Make room for God’s Spirit in your day.
It’s not enough to put the Holy Spirit on autopilot, running in the background, passively abiding. It might seem like a suitable posture to go about your day and let God go about his. After all, God’s Spirit is a boundary-breaking, mountain-climbing, ocean-trench-plunging spirit that fills all things without any need for human permission. Psalm 139:7 ESV says, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?”
Is it enough to just have general faith that God is presumably with us and give no further attention to the Spirit? I think faith in God’s all-encompassing Spirit is good, but Scripture invites us to a much more active and intentional life in his presence.
Paul teaches us in Galatians 5:25 ESV, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.” God has provided the Spirit for life and freedom, but our calling is not just to receive the Spirit but to pursue him and walk with him faithfully.
I’ve observed there are three categories of people: those who would rather ignore the Spirit, those who are open to the Spirit, and those who are hungry for the Spirit. Which one are you? What would it take for you to hunger for the Spirit to the point that you begin to lean in and draw near daily?
Remember that it is only God’s faithful love and abiding presence that allows us to find communion when we finally do turn. It’s only God’s grace that, after countless days numb to his word and spirit, we turn to him and encounter his love, goodness, and acceptance.
The gift of God’s boundless presence is that there is no special place we need to pilgrim toward to live in the Spirit. There’s no secret time that God can be especially found. God has extended his Spirit to us, and we only have to respond to his voice.
I’m astounded at the simplicity of building a life of intimacy with God. Sometimes, I’m tempted to think I need to make big pledges to God, backed up by rigorous religious devotion, to earn an audience with God’s spirit—as if I need to prove to God that I’m worth his time.
Instead, we just have to turn in humility and call on the name of the Lord. Jeremiah 33:3 ESV shows us this posture of prayer, “Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.”
Can you believe that the path to abiding is just turning, following, and calling on the name of the Lord? I’m not trying to sound reductive in light of the glorious depths of what it means to know God. Yet I have so often found my inability to walk in the spirit is just because I haven’t stopped long enough to call out to God in humility. When I pause, asking God by his Spirit to rule and reign in my life, the most tender and steadfast gifts of grace begin to flow again in my heart. If we live by the Spirit, let’s also keep in step with the spirit.
