Do you ever feel confused and conflicted when you’re looking for direction from the Holy Spirit? Do you ever wonder how you’d recognize His answer if it came?
I believe that, as Christian highly sensitive people, our feelings can give us clues about the Holy Spirit’s leading.
Although the Holy Spirit speaks English just fine, I’ve observed that He rarely answers our requests for guidance with clear English messages straight to our conscious minds. Even when the early church was evaluating whether or not the Gentile believers needed to follow the Jewish Law, all they could say was, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…” (Acts 15:28).
My underlying assumption is that the Holy Spirit, because He indwells the followers of Jesus (John 14:17), communicates constantly with the inner human spirit. And our inner human spirit understands His intentions and desires far easier than our conscious minds ever will.
Rule of Thumb
I have a rule of thumb developed from lots of trial and error over the decades. A “yes” from the Holy Spirit:
- Does not feel desperate or grasping.
- Does not feel excited or pushed.
- Does not have a heavy, stoic, practical feeling.
- Does have a very calm, peaceful, “Ah, of course; I get it” feeling.
And Your Understanding Will Mess With It
Beware though. Your understanding will mess with it. That’s why Wisdom says, “Trust in YHWH with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). It is with our heart that we trust, not with our understanding.
Our understanding is well-trained and well-practiced in spiritualizing, rationalizing, and justifying, and speaks fluent shoulds, oughts, maybe’s, and buts.
Below is a little graphic example of what we often do to our answers to prayer.
This is your answer to prayer at last revealed in your heart. Such lovely clarity in that elusive heart of yours.
This is your understanding. It likes to dominate and be in charge.
This is what your understanding will do with that answer to prayer. Spiritualize, rationalize, justify. Should, ought, maybe, but...
Now try making sense of this.
Understanding is useful, but not as useful as it likes to think.
Blessings!
Gail Ruth
P.S. No eggs were squandered in the making of these photos. This one went into our fried rice :-)
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I very much liked the article. The pictures brought it home:)
Good Afternoon Gail. I am happy to have met you at Loraines party this past monday. I just got through going through your site a bit. When I have more time I should like to throughly look into it. Your card you gave to me was appreciated. Thanks.
Hi Grace, welcome to my site. It was a great pleasure to meet you. I hope to talk with you more Jimmie Sue’s retreat this Fall if you go. Blessings!
Gail, you really have a beautiful gift of putting things we’ve experienced into words. Thank you for sharing your gift with us. It is so comforting and affirming to hear these things explained, knowing others are experiencing them as well. How long have you been doing this site? – and doing this that you do for others?
Hi Cindy. I started this site in August 09, but I’ve been “translating” for highly sensitive people even before I knew there was such a trait. When the Holy Spirit acutely manifested Himself to me in ‘01 for six weeks, upending my entire life, He began the long process of upgrading my ability to do this translation, and He eventually lead me to the concepts of high sensitivity and giftedness. I have thoroughly sown all into this with sensitive and gifted friends, people he has brought into and through my life, and years of doing prayer ministry at church. This whole process refined my understanding and my message to the point that it was time to start the blog. And the revelation and refining continues at a rapid pace.
Thank you for sharing your insight. I just discovered this site, and am still blinking in amazement; it’s like you have peeked inside my head and explained myself to me. I’m in the process of seeking God’s will right now, and have been feeling a suffocating pressure to choose the “heavy, stoic, practical” answer. I feel like that choice will kill me, but it seems to weigh so heavily on me as a duty. Instead, I will continue to pray and seek His “calm, peaceful” answer.
I’m so glad my battles have been helpful for you. It seems there’s some dark swirling undercurrent out there trying to pull us into “heavy, stoic practical” decisions. But whenever I have done that, my Holy Spirit fruit (Galatians 5:22-23) shrivels, falls off, and rots. And I become as grim and dour as the decision I’ve made.
The promise of Jesus that “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” has never been rescinded. Neither has the reality that Jesus called the truths of the Kingdom of God “good news!”
The problem is that it requires so much more faith to believe and live out of the still, soft, peaceful leading. It takes far less faith to live either in harmony with our own understanding or out of our own appetites, yet those ways are in the end very unsatisfying. I bless your journey.