Spiritual Ponderings

The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit. (John 3:8) For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. (Romans 8:14 NRSV) As I was praying yesterday morning on my way to work sitting in a van with my friend who was driving, I found myself thinking about how much I want to be in sync with God's Spirit and will. I was thinking about a number of people that I wanted God to touch with His Spirit and was praying for my own spirit to perceive them through God's eyes more than how I feel about them. I want to be led by the Spirit of God every moment and to see reality and every situation through heaven's eyes and to remember who I really am from that perspective. Then an analogy came to my mind that I found very compelling and I thought of the verses I just quoted above. I want my life to have the kind of relationship to God's Spirit just l...

Blessing. I found myself blessing God this morning. Then I began to ponder just what is involved in blessing. I remembered that blessing is speaking well of someone, affirming their good characteristics, praising their good qualities. Of course that is very easy to do with God because that is all that He has, He doesn't have any negative character traits. So to bless God is simply to acknowledge and affirm all the good things about Him that I can think of and to dwell on those in my mind and heart. That in turn begins to allow my own heart to begin to reflect those same things in how I relate to others. But then when I immediately think about wanting Him to bless me, I start to think about all the reasons in my life why it would be much harder for Him to affirm my positive traits. But that is not how God sees me. He looks beyond what I tend to view as my identity, those things that I have failed to become, the many mistakes I have made, the screw-ups in so many relationships t...