Like one being taught

Sometimes you get something stuck in your head and like a recurring dream, your mind just keeps settling back on it. This doesn’t mean it’s always necessarily good or bad. I guess sometimes we get obsessed with an idea. Sometimes we’re distracted in an anxious way. Sometimes we’ve got gluttony issues with really wanting to steal from the potty training treats (maybe that’s just me). And sometimes it’s something more. Like someone is trying to tell you something. Because it doesn’t feel like you are the one talking in your head.

I just happened to be reading 1 Corinthians 2 today. There’s an entire section in there about wisdom from the Spirit. In it, I saw three purposes of the Holy Spirit and for sure there are many more.

The Spirit is how God reveals himself to us.
The Spirit comprehends the thoughts of God.
We have the Spirit so that we “might understand the things freely given us by God.”

The Spirit is always with me. Teaching me. Talking to me. Reminding me. Almost everytime I read a verse about the Spirit, it’s about me listening and him communicating.

I came across a verse in Isaiah 50:4 the other day that strengthened me about how to continue to be a supportive wife and friend by God’s grace and exactly what that looks like. “The sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught.” This is what the Lord can do, and does. He can give us abilities and motivations we do not have and he does this over a daily process where we are students of his teaching.

I AM LIKE ONE BEING TAUGHT. Do you see yourself there too? Are you like one being taught? Do you feel like someone is wakening your ear to listen?

On a practical level I feel like the Spirit is always communicating a number of things to me but there’s a new one in the mix. He keeps saying one word to me over and over and I haven’t exactly responded to it yet, so maybe that’s why, for now, it’s just one word.

SERVE.

I cannot get it out of my head. I cannot stop thinking about it throughout my week. When I see people’s faces. When I am in community with believers especially. When I think about what I am going to do with my kids that week.

I do not know what I am supposed to do with this word. And honestly I think it’s pretty gracious that he’s just given me A word and not a twelve page document charting out an undertaking that might take the breath out of my chest like I might die if I have to go through with it. It’s like he’s working the value of this word deep into my core. And reminding me that this is what Jesus came to do. This is what form his love took for the world.

Matthew 20:28 “the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

The only other thoughts that have begun to formulate in my mind around this the past few days are that my life as a stay at home mom who loves Jesus should look different. It’s not all about my lovely little schedule and it’s not even all about my kids. I mean, in one light, it is…because God has first called me to give my life away to Him by giving my life away to my husband and kids at home in this season. But I think we can get stuck in that bubble and it can become a bit like we’re knitting an idealistic world at home. What I mean is that I want my children more and more with age and maturity to also learn that life is about giving our lives away like Jesus did. I want them to get their hands in that truth too.

So I don’t know where this is headed. And that’s okay. It’s not like I have an empty day every day and I need to run out and fill up all my hours. I’m already maxed with loving on my three little ones and somehow, slowly, graciously, accompanied by a growing heart burden, I see him kneeding in a new piece of our lives that he wants to make part of how we live.

All I know is that if I keep listening I bet the Spirit will keep talking about this. Because that is what he does. And my heart is perking up. And my ears are being awakened morning by morning. And I am like one being taught.