Exploring Senses

Growing means doing things differently

Those of us who love to talk can learn to practice listening. We may have a lot to offer, but we must realize sharing from our hearts is part of spiritual development and others may need to talk too. As we relate together through our experiences we can help each other. Being a responsive listener is a powerful part of the process. Jesus asked a lot of questions and listened affectionately with patience. Jesus wanted people to talk sincerely and truthfully. We can grow through a balance of sharing and inviting others to share sincerely and truthfully.

Those of us who do not like to talk can practice speaking. We must learn to share our truth, even if it's messy or doesn't seem to make sense. Finding ways to describe how we feel and what we do teaches us how to search inwardly for spiritual truth. Formulating our experiences into words can help us to understand our spiritual reality better. Explaining things brings learning much deeper. We ought to regularly take time to reflect upon and explain our experiences with others. 

As a child I learned to respond to fear, anger, pride, and resentment. I learned to hide feelings and not to trust. When I read the Bible, setting aside what others said about it, and saw what was written in it, I began to see things which validated my experiences. It took a lot of time to gather together the evidence from the Bible and my experiences to gain a new understanding. I needed to unlearn things that were incorrect and teach myself things that were correct despite what others would say or think. I was to dedicate myself to God's truth whether others would agree or not and trust God instead of letting the crowds ideas affect me. I was to cease trying to fit in with the group and instead seek to fit in more with God. This takes discipline.

I was to look inwardly at my heart, mind, and soul to uncover the mechanisms that blocked me from choosing God. I was told to get down to the causes and conditions of my fear, self-pity, and anger. I was to humble myself, stop arguing and finding fault in others. I was to look more at my own thoughts, choices, and actions.

Did I seek to experience God's goodness today? Did I wait upon and trust God? Was I thinking about love, peace, mercy, truth, justice, and forgiveness?

Every system has a structure. We need structure. In our spiritual growth, which is individual, we need to develop frequent prayer with God to sense what God wants us to do. We can listen to our inward senses, evaluate reality around us, think of God's character, collaborate with our spiritual family for feedback and then make decisions based upon all the information that can best fit with God's ways.

At first, our seeking contact with God may seem unproductive. Our prayers may feel empty. Our meditation may seem like a waste of time because we do not instantly understand the benefits. It's like going to the gym one day and waking up the next day expecting to be in good shape. Development takes participation and time. We will need to develop patience, perseverance, and endurance to see what happens. Use a mentor through the process and stick it out.

We can evaluate and quantify the level of participation we are applying. If I go to the gym every day and hit treadmill for 10 seconds that would be good. Of course some people around me who do much more than that would think I was silly. Yet in all practicality I can say I go to the gym every day and I hit the treadmill. I could even add reading every day about running, but that wouldn't help my conditioning. It's a simple fact that what really matters in conditioning is how much time I'm on the treadmill. But wait, what if I spend 30 minutes on the treadmill every day, but it's not moving? I'm still on it longer! So time and participation are important, but so is new and improved action. Am I going to raise the bar? To grow our condition requires time, participation in new action that challenges us, and we ought to keep challenging ourselves to grow.

I don't have time can be an easy out. We can ask God how to help with that. It can go something like this, "Hey God, I know you want my 'all,' but I'm pretty busy right now. Can you please help satisfy my wants and expectations the way I want it to happen so I can give you more time?

The bottom line is that God wants us to be with God. God doesn't exist to satisfy our wants and preferences. God can lead us into Godly experiences if we participate with God's character at a level which can shape and condition our minds and hearts. And like any form of conditioning we will need to follow a structure to grow. See Deuteronomy 6, how to practice the first commandment or John 15.

 Willingness to create and follow a plan is essential.

I used to run some groups and one of the first things we would do would be an emotional check in. New people would often be very challenged to describe how they felt. Many of us just don't look inward to see what lies within us.

God is an invisible and intangible entity alive and active within and around us. God is Spirit which we all have access to if we can only look long enough with our inward senses to find God. Emotions and how the way we think affects our feelings are essential to understand. The more we can understand this better we can understand what the Bible is describing. Remember, God is love and compassion. We cannot sense love or compassion without being attentive toward our inward parts.

We may need some help identifying feelings if we have not done it before. Through continued self-evaluation of our feelings we can improve our ability to see and understand our inward condition as we experience and grow God's character. 

As we set structure we will need to seek an attitude of humility and willingness to come to God with our minds and let God teach us. In order for us to learn what God is teaching we will need to pay close attention to God's principles within our experiences. 

We can practice and participate with love, compassion, patience, peace, mercy, forgiveness, truth, and justice. Humble sincerity in our actions with a willingness to learn new things can be of great help.

In order follow God we must seek with our God senses. We can't follow light blindfolded or sound with our ears plugged. We must set our minds toward God's spiritual truth, mercy, forgiveness, peace, justice, and love each day. As we get distracted we can redirect ourselves.

Loving God involves thinking about God and trying to be more like Christ.