The Holy Spirit: Our Ultimate Influencer
How the Holy Spirit longs to influence our everyday lives and bring healing to our souls.
Hi, Friends! A quick interruption before my post today!
My son E and I are headed on a mission trip to Brazil in July with our church and Amazon Outreach. Our trip is fully funded, but we are still pulling together supplies we’ll need for ministry to a few of the 30,000 unreached villages on the Amazon. I’m organizing our women’s ministry team, and part of our plan is to provide manicures for the teen girls and women we meet.
My aunt is generously helping me acquire enough Color Street nail polish sets (100+), and we’ve opened up an online party to invite y’all to be a part of this effort. For every $10 in sales online (any product type), she is donating one set of nail polish strips. Y’all can purchase for yourselves, or you can make a purchase and have it shipped to me.
We have 50 sets already purchased, but we need 50+ more. You can shop here!
P.S. Thanks so much for letting me interrupt our usual Steadfast Soul Care post with this. My Facebook account was hacked and stolen in March, so I’ve lost access to 20 years of my personal network. I would ordinarily spread the word about this over there! 🧡 - sja
During COVID-19, I spent a lot of time in my yard pruning decades of overgrowth (which, as I write this, begs again for its annual trim). While I pruned, I listened to podcasts to occupy my mind and distract me from my physical labor. And as I caught up on all my usual podcasts and ran out of backlog episodes, I found myself looking for new podcasts to try.
I remember one particular pruning project–cutting through two-inch wide ivy vines that had attached themselves to a cypress tree and were choking the life out of the tree. I was listening to a podcaster talk about Christianity as it related to American politics and responding to what was happening with racial injustice around the country. And I remember thinking, “She’s saying things that sound Christian, and she comes across as smart and logical, so maybe I’m the one who is off track with how my faith intersects with these matters.”
But there was also this check deep in my spirit. She had this know-it-all tone that smacked of pride and not humility. Her arguments, her articulation, her Zoom backgrounds, heck, even her eyebrows had an inauthentic perfection to them. I had the sense that even if I had empirical biblical evidence to disagree with her, she might make the argument that I’m not a Christian because my faith, logic, and experience pointed to a different conclusion than hers. I listened to a few more episodes to give her a fair chance, but every time, that check in my spirit grew stronger.
Five years later, that podcaster–and a few more that I tried and abandoned–are squarely in the Christian nationalist space. Even though I couldn’t name the particulars at the time, I believe the Holy Spirit was raising red flags in my spirit to get that influence out of my ears and out of my head. If I had followed my mind and believed that her logic was sound and that I wasn’t smart enough instead of following the Holy Spirit, I would have landed in a totally different place.
Podcasters are one subset of people who have an influence on me, but we all have varying sets of influential individuals and groups in our lives. They may be…
People in our church small groups
Late night talk show hosts
Friends in book clubs
Journalists on the radio
Coworkers around the staff table
Authors of our favorite books
Spouses
Parents
Children
Pastors
Neighbors
In my own life, as seasons and roles change, I have needed varied amounts and types of influences. I have wanted teachers, encouragers, bossy big sisters, Monday morning quarterbacks, and more. No one ever gets an equal voice at my personal influencer table, and what continues to surprise me–even as someone who has walked with the Lord her entire life–is how easily I neglect to invite and listen to the influencer I need the most: the Holy Spirit.
Learning to invite the influence of the Holy Spirit into my life has been a long journey. For me, the most recent part of the journey has been relearning how to listen with more than my thinky, brainy tendencies and more with my body. Ignoring my body for nearly 40 years–and the emotions that run through it–led to burnout in a ministry I loved, compassion fatigue while caring for others, and a disconnect between the life I was living and my personality and values.
Allowing the Holy Spirit into these difficulties has allowed Christ to do his healing work on more than my body. He continues to heal what was under my performative and perfectionistic tendencies. He continues to heal those raw spots where I judged others harshly because I was actually judging myself. He continues to heal my tendencies to fall asleep to myself, others, and the world when it all feels like too much.
Those checks in my spirit while listening to that podcaster? At the time, I couldn’t tell you precisely what those checks were saying to me. Years later, I can see one piece of it: That that podcaster’s judgmental, know-it-all, perfectionistic persona was poking at my own sin-sickness that the Holy Spirit wanted to heal. I didn’t need another voice in my ears telling me I wasn’t good enough.
Even today, years into this healing process, I needed the Holy Spirit to nudge me. My body has been exhausted from multiple modes of exertion the past several days. I haven’t been sleeping well. Words for this post did not come easily yesterday. So as I drove home from dropping off my son at school this morning, the question, “What can I do this morning to feel like myself?” rang in my head.
That might not sound like the Holy Spirit to you, but years ago, on a similar morning, what rang in my head was less of a question and more of a directive to put on my big girl hard pants, squeeze every iota of full-time work into part-time hours, and smile through the exhaustion. Believe me when I tell you that this morning’s question is absolutely the influence of the Holy Spirit in my life.
And so, I write today in my sweats from my couch next to a very snuggly pup. We are doing our very best to match the overcast, cold spring day vibe.
My hope for you today–and in this week’s practice–is to tune your ears to how the Holy Spirit is longing to influence you. And for you to say yes to whatever the Holy Spirit’s invitation holds.
A Practice for Niggling Gut Checks
Settle into a comfortable position in a quiet place. Breathe in the solitude and allow your whole body to recognize the silence and stillness around you.
Allow your deep breathing to evolve into a breath prayer…
Breathe in: Holy Spirit
Breathe out: Let me hear you
Focus on the words of this prayer and continue to repeat it while synced with your breath for 4-5 minutes.
Let your attention fall on a niggling check in your gut. A question that keeps troubling you. A person that isn’t passing the vibe check. A sensation in your body that won’t go away. Anything that has been subtly but persistently niggling at you lately.
Invite the Holy Spirit to shine light on your gut check.
How can you see this from another perspective?
What might be happening underneath this niggle?
Where could compassion and empathy be applied?
Do you sense that the next right thing is to be or to do?
What is that next right thing?
Close with prayer: Holy Spirit, let me hear you as I continue with my day. Help me pay attention to you speaking within me and through me. Point me in the direction you would have me go. Help me to say yes to your invitations. Amen.
Community & Comments
I’m always curious! What has been niggling at you lately and how might the Holy Spirit be longing to influence you with that niggle?