Sound Waves...

Shane Deike wrote a great post on kingdom expansion. He named listening to God as one of the most important parts of being a disciple of Jesus. 

I completely agree with that, as my life definitely reflected that. Before I learned what it meant to listen to the Spirit, there was mounds and mounds of carnality, and a small pile of spirituality. After I learned what it meant to 'walk in the Spirit,' I began to see dramatic life transformation.

The challenge I have sensed in leading post-modern college students is the different answers they would give to the question: 'what does it mean to listen to the Holy Spirit?' Many would not include reading the Bible as the primary way. Combine that with so many people coming from broken homes, broken families, and a string of broken relationships, and there is really a dramatic lack of foundation. 

I remember a talk from a while back from Mark McCloskey. He shared that all of the disciples knew the OT; knew in the sense of the 'cover to cover' type of knowledge, not just the 'I know of' type knowledge. When they 'heard' from the Spirit, it was out of a deep base of scripture. 

I don't believe that a person can hear from the Lord apart from a connection to the Word. The Corinthians are a great example. They had every spiritual gift, God had set them up as a church with the tools to flourish, yet their lack of a deep scriptural base left them immature and struggling with sin. 

We can as an organization empower more people as they sense the Spirit's leading. This goes along with my tirade about honoring failure and risk and courage more, but I think the underlying challenge we are facing is a dependence on skill and a fear of failure.