My husband asked me yesterday what I feel God is calling me to do, since he read my post.  The thing is, I don’t know what it is He is calling me for right now, because I haven’t been listening to Him much lately.  Don’t get me wrong – I’m in worship sometimes twice weekly.  I hear the sermons and find something every time that’s meaningful to me (not just because it’s my husband preaching, either: I’ve actually heard three other people preach in the last month).  I read from the Bible almost every day.  I’ve been preparing for teaching a Bible study starting this Sunday.  I follow a few other Christian blogs.  It’s not like God hasn’t been talking to me.  But I’ve been too scared to really listen and ingest what He’s saying to me.

As a Lutheran, I’ve been taught to be cautious about direct revelation.  Everything we need to know God has revealed to us in His Word.  However, I know that God continues to reveal Himself to us through that Word.  There have been many times in my life where I’ll be reading or hearing the same verse of Scripture I’ve heard a hundred times before, and God will open my eyes to understanding it in a new way.  Some people call it conscience, others intuition.  I know it’s the Holy Spirit guiding me.  That’s what the life of sanctification is all about – being transformed daily into the image of Christ.

But lately I’ve been tuning out the little pokes of the Holy Spirit, or I let them wash over me and then move on with whatever I was already doing.  I know this is a dangerous place to be.  I’ve been here before, and depression is right around the corner.  Satan is good at what he does, convincing me that it’s no big deal until I’m so far steeped in self-loathing that I can’t see the sun.  But I know God is better at what He does – reminding me that I am first and foremost His child.  Every time I’ve been in that dark scary place, God has lifted me out.  Right now I know He’s teaching me how to avoid falling into it in the first place.