Mother Teresa & How God Speaks To Us
I’m going to Albania in a couple of weeks, home of that great saint, Mother Teresa. I look to her for inspiration and to understand how God speaks to us.
Mother Teresa showed us that God uses both our conscious and our subconscious mind. We make To Do lists, we go through our day checking …
By sethbarnes
I’m going to Albania in a couple of weeks, home of that great saint, Mother Teresa. I look to her for inspiration and to understand how God speaks to us.
Mother Teresa showed us that God uses both our conscious and our subconscious mind. We make To Do lists, we go through our day checking our boxes. Yet it is our subconscious mind, working away in the background that often gives us the solution to a complicated problem, seemingly out of thin air.
For those of us who are Christians, we may see this as the work of the Holy Spirit. Yet all humans have a subconscious mind that surprises us from time to time. How then do we distinguish between this subconscious work of our brain and the Holy Spirit?
Some people make it sound so simple – they give the Holy Spirit credit for everything. But everyone struggles at times and even the most godly Christians are left to wonder why God can be strangely silent. The reality is, it can be confusing.
That’s why I look at Christian leaders I respect like Mother Teresa and find it oddly comforting that they have struggled.
Here is a woman who was made a saint. Jesus spoke to her. She records him giving her a calling in a very direct way by saying, “I want Indian Nuns, Missionaries of Charity, who would be My fire of love amongst the poor, the sick, the dying and the little children.”
And, isn’t this how we imagine Mother Teresa? Hearing her calling directly from Jesus in a way that made it all but impossible to resist.
Yet, she endured a time of great discouragement – a dark night of the soul. She doubted God and felt abandoned when he was silent. Paul Murray noted, “Given the reality of her own interior anguish, it clearly took a huge effort, on the part of Mother Teresa, to keep her hope and her courage alive every day.”
So I conclude that yes, the Holy Spirit speaks to us and the Bible tells us to seek him “with our whole hearts.” (Jer. 29:13) But the form of the answer may not be to our liking or in our timing.
The conscious mind and the Holy Spirit
Sometimes we think waiting on God is the next step in solving a problem when he may be waiting on us. He may be waiting for us to read more about a tough problem, providing our subconscious with more raw material so that he can work through it to produce a solution.
There is a role for the conscious mind to release the Holy Spirit to work through our subconscious. As David Olgivie said, “your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant.”
Give your conscious mind a break
God is not a vending machine and doesn’t give us the answers we seek on demand. Sometimes what we need is to stop using our conscious mind to problem solve and to leave space for the Holy Spirit to use our subconscious mind.
Sometimes you can’t solve the problem by working harder at your desk. Solvitur ambulando is a latin phrase that means “it is solved by walking.”
Going for a walk allows your conscious mind to take a break from the problem and your unconscious mind to engage. Often, walking stimulates good thought.
Many people use their walking time to talk to God and get his wisdom on what they are facing. During the pandemic we walked all the time. It gave us time to work out the issues we were dealing with.
Some of you may be going through a season of discouragement as you wait on God to speak. Consider the possibility that he is ready to speak, just not in the way you were looking for him to. Mother Teresa teaches us to wait on the Lord and to not lose hope when he seems silent.
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My devotion this Sunday morning!!!
That is good!!
Thanks Seth
Great devotion this morning
Thanks Seth