“If any of you is lacking in
wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be
given you.”
— James 1:5 (NRSV)
We worry a lot, us human beings.
We know—or at least Christians should—that we have prayer with which to take
our anxieties to God; in order that we would be, in some way, delivered of
them.
But we may pray and still worry, at least subconsciously—beneath the
layers of conscious thinking we are aware of. We are so close to the answer,
but to continue to worry is a sign we still haven’t let go.
There are conscious
things—deliberate things—we can do to let go at a subconscious level; to assist
the experience of true peace of giving the matter to God. But to finally
realise this is, with God’s help, a miracle we couldn’t engineer despite our
most committed efforts.
But still we must strive and
search—but not too hard.
We need a balance between passion
and the wisdom of surrender, for it is in surrender we will finally find God
working this way:
We think on a problem or decision that must be
made, and then we actually invite the Spirit to speak.
Then we leave it completely, unless we are
required to act in the meantime. Having left the issue with God, many times, at
the least expected moment, God provides an answer, as the Holy Spirit works in
and through our subconscious to bring the way forward to the awareness of our
conscious realisation.
Suddenly, this thought for a solution or way
forward emerges from nowhere (it seems) and we check its veracity to see if it
will work.
Having confirmed ‘this’ thought was from
God—the answer of his Spirit—we go on in obedience joyfully knowing God has
spoken.
And we remain casually watchful for how this
matter plays out.
Then we see the evidence of God’s wisdom
operating through us in these ways.
The Role of the Subconscious With the
Spirit of God
There is far more to our thinking
and mental capacities than we know consciously. How can we possibly plumb the
depths of the subconscious, or unconscious mind? It is literally like the
iceberg; much more of our consciousness lies beneath the waterline.
The point is this is one way how
the Spirit works. God wants us to be sure that the idea has come from him and
not from us. The Spirit works miraculously, and we could call some things that
emerge from our unconscious minds “the thoughts of God”—though we need to be discerning.
Our role is to trust what comes up
from the subconscious and be obedient in putting into practice if it seems
right to us.
***
We ask God to help through prayer
and then we take the matter off him. But God’s Spirit works better when we
leave the matter. Then God works through our subconscious layers of thinking to
provide an answer; an answer we couldn’t have worked out for ourselves. Then all
we need do is obey.
© 2013 S. J.
Wickham.
No comments:
Post a Comment