Nudges
Dear Beloved,
This week has been a battle. On more than one occasion, I found myself pushing back against my gut feelings. By gut feelings, I mean the feelings that the Holy Spirit gives us when he is reminding us of something. It's his way of nudging us in the right direction.
For example, when you're sitting there, about to open a different app on your phone, and you feel in you suddenly sense like you need to open the Bible app instead. Then before you click on your usual playlist, you feel like putting some Jesus music on instead of whatever you listen to regularly.
As human beings, we have to constantly choose to sacrifice our comfort for Jesus. Matthew 16: 24-26 says just that. Every single day we have to choose between doing the easy thing, and following Jesus. It's easy to stay in bed and watch Netflix all day. It's easy to connect to secular music. It's easy to be like the world. It's not easy to sit down and read your Bible without distraction. It's not easy to crave worship music all the time. It most definitely is not easy to say no to a lifestyle that looks so fulfilling for a God we can't see.
This whole week I would randomly feel convicted to read my Bible, to pray, to write, or to worship. And this whole week, I pushed back. I would tell myself, "I'm not even doing anything bad." and "I just read the Bible yesterday." I came to the conclusion that It could wait, or that it wasn't necessary at the moment. But I knew that if God was nudging me to do something, I had to do it.
In Robby Dawkins's book Doing What Jesus Did, he tells the story of a woman who felt a peculiar nudge from the Holy Spirit. Following his nudges without a second thought, she ended up at a gas station. She was then instructed to go inside and do a handstand in front of the clerk. When she did, the clerk broke down and revealed that she was an answer to a prayer. He prayed to God, asking that if He was real, someone would go and do a handstand in the store. Can you imagine if she had fought the urge because it was too strange? I get the feeling that the woman is used to listening to God when he says to pray or to read her Bible.
It is so important that we practice listening to those nudges. The more that we brush them off the easier it becomes. We might be faced with something more difficult a challenging than reading our Bible. One day we might be faced with a strange task like doing a handstand in a gas station or talking to a stranger in a grocery store. No matter what God has something in store for you. We have to be ready to follow His nudges. It starts with listening to the little things He asks of us. One day it may not be so little.
