Let the Spirit Direct your lives

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart find favour in your sight, O Lord - my redeemer, my rock! Psalm 20:15

The above is a good prayer to start a prayer time with or even to use as just a short plea to God asking him to guide our day.  After all what we say and think are precursors to our actions.

My perception is that my days are better if I have made time to think and pray in the morning. The truth be known it might even make me better tempered!

St Paul advises us to "Let the Spirit direct your lives" (Galatians 5:16) and if we are going to do that we need to find the time to let that happen. We so easily fritter our lives away watching adverts or waiting for computers to boot up or gazing at the back of a cereal packet. All things we have chosen to do in a way albeit unconsciously perhaps. Can we find a little time for God in the midst of this?

But if we take St Paul's words seriously the Holy Spirit should be what gives our lives strategic direction. And listening for it's guidance should be what makes our Christian life move into a more authentic level of being.

In this life when we have so many choices, may one of them be to try and listen to the Spirit.

I can promise that doing this will change your life, lifting it to a different level. Letting God's love break in.

There are plenty of examples in the news of what happens when people make decisions without listening to the Holy Spirit. It's easy to look at the extreme examples of violence and hateful behaviour and say it's clear that whatever they were listening to it wasn't the voice of God. Inevitably too there are cases of so called religious people doing hateful things. Let's make it clear that kind of action is from the deceiver and is the opposite of what God wants.

To listen to the Spirit is to listen to the voice of God who is love. He will inspire us to walk joyfully in his peace, to love as he does.

Dear Lord, help me to see that your Spirit is for me! Help me to listen for your voice for my life and above all help me to respond. Amen