What the Spirit wants

Ever wish you could spy on someone’s thoughts? In the movie What Women Want (2000), Mel Gibson’s character, Nick Marshall, gets the chance to do just that. Nick is a financially successful womanizer who accidentally develops the ability to hear the thoughts of any woman around him. At first, he sees the uncanny gift as an annoyance, but soon realizes its potential in helping manipulate one particular woman, his career rival Darcy McGuire.

So, what is the relevance of all this to this month’s article? You may recall that last month I posed the question, “What does God’s Spirit want?” as a step toward transforming our iCulture mentality (“I want it. I need it. Now.”) into one that focuses on God’s desires. We, like Nick Marshall, have the tools to get into the mind of God, on some level at least. True, we will never be able to fully understand God’s thoughts, but He has given us a glorified peephole in the form of His written Word, the Bible. To begin to answer the question, “What does God’s Spirit want?”, one needs only crack open His Word—let’s look specifically at Romans 8 and Galatians 5.

In Romans 8, Paul first describes how Jesus fulfilled perfectly for us what the law required—what we were unable to do. He goes on to explain that we, having been made righteous by Jesus’ death and resurrection, and having received Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit, now have a new mindset: “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit,” (v.5). In other words, this is where we seek to become Nick Marshalls—only we’re trying to understand the “things of the Spirit” rather than women (thank goodness!).

In Galatians 5:16-26, Paul gives us a closer look at the “things of the Spirit.” He explains that when we are led by the Spirit rather than the flesh, the end result will be “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control,” (v.22-23). This “fruit of the Spirit” flows directly from His desires. In fact, just by the Spirit dwelling within us, we gain insight into the desires of God. God’s desires are the Spirit’s desires, and the Spirit-led person naturally produces the fruit Paul mentions.

Next month, we’ll uncover what this sort of Spirit-following might look like in our culture today. In the meantime, let me leave you with an example from my own experience. Recently, my husband and I were on one of our late evening walks around the neighborhood when we encountered—or rather were accosted—by a lady running from her house toward us. “Hey you!” she kept shouting, frantically waving around a book which we later learned was about chinchillas. Sarah* told us how her sister was going to get a chinchilla, a story that somehow led to her sharing a myriad of other familial anecdotes in bullet-like fashion—rarely giving us a chance to speak at all. I immediately observed that Sarah was middle-aged, mentally challenged, and quite obviously very lonely. In the course of this long one-sided conversation, my husband and I discovered that Sarah used to go to church. She would ride with a neighbor every Sunday, but for some reason the neighbor stopped taking her. She now watches church on TV.

We were finally able to break free from the rather odd little chat with Sarah, but as our walk continued, my husband and I independently voiced a nagging question: Was there a reason God allowed Sarah to barge into our evening walk? My usual modus operandi in these types of situations is to silently pray for the individual and (conveniently for me) go on my way. This time I knew it was the Spirit nagging me and the more I tried to ignore the question, the guiltier I felt. Sarah needed our friendship and she needed God, and what better way to help satisfy those needs than to invite her to church with us. After much deliberation, we turned back and knocked on Sarah’s door. She has been attending church with us ever since.

In the story above, the Spirit showed my husband and me what to do in the midst of our indecision and fear. In fact, it was only by His power working within us that we were able to turn back and invite her to church with us. It would have been much more convenient to stay confined in our comfortable little church bubble, chatting merrily with friends before and after the service instead of spending time looking after Sarah. But sometimes following the Spirit’s lead requires us to ignore our culture’s craving for convenience and think more about someone else for a change. Acting out what the Spirit wants is challenging, but ultimately worth the cost.

*Name changed to protect the individual’s identity.

There's an app for that

I did it.

I finally caved and bought my first ever iPod about two months ago, calling it a combined birthday and anniversary gift (if you think it a strange anniversary gift, my husband got plants and a leaf blower from me—we're focusing on the practical this year). And I'm hooked. Apple has quite possibly garnered another loyal fan, though I've yet to get a MacBook and seal the deal.

In fact, after a hiatus from the real world into the dusty libraries of graduate school, I've spent the past two years recovering from my techno-starved condition. I joined Facebook in 2007, ashamedly at the constant prodding of my 50-something mother, who joined long before I ever knew that “writing on a wall” could mean anything other than graffiti. I also got my first laptop computer—granted, it's a work laptop, but it beats my 5-year-old desktop hands down. And more recently, I started texting on my cell phone and talking hands-free with a new Bluetooth headset. Don't get me wrong. I've always been a techno-geek at heart, but just hadn't had the money or the time before to enjoy all that the cyberworld has to offer.

My recently-purchased iPod Touch is definitely the crown jewel of all the technological advances I've made these past few years. I still remember the feeling as I walked away from our nearest Best Buy, shiny new iPod in hand. It was like I had received the keys to a whole new world of cyber-connectivity, luxury and freedom. During the honeymoon phase with my iPod, I rarely set the thing down. I quickly filled up my calendar, set up my email, synced my contacts and address book with my computer, and began adding applications (starting with Facebook, of course). I confess, I became so wrapped up in the organizational and networking features that I nearly forgot to download my music. So intense was my iPod obsession that I would sit up in bed surfing the internet and checking Facebook long after my husband fell asleep, all by the dim bluish light of its 3.5-inch screen.

Back up a few weeks—for this article series, I knew I wanted to write about today's culture, specifically the challenges of living in it as a young adult Christian. My first task was to discover our generation's perception of that culture. In a rather unscientific but informative survey of 20- and 30-somethings conducted via Facebook and email, I asked the question, “What three words would you use to describe the culture in which we live today?” The number one response was self-centered, followed by fast-paced, changing, materialistic, and technological. Although largely pessimistic, the top survey responses could have easily described my whole iPod experience to date, which revolved around the questions, “What do I need?” and “How do I get it right now?” Apple's newest slogan says it all: “There's an app for that.”

And then it struck me. We are living in an iCulture. I want it. I need it. Now. Even the things we do for others sometimes arise from a desire to feel good about ourselves. All this focus on self-gratification isn't surprising, nor is it anything new. In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul writes, “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires” (8:5a). So if the sinful nature in all of us seeks to please itself, how can we change our iCulture for the better? Paul continues, “but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” We cannot simply change our iCulture to a weCulture without first becoming a GodCulture. Thankfully, God in his grace rescued us from our sinful nature through Jesus' death and resurrection and gave us the gift of his Spirit. And so we ask, what does God's Spirit want? How can we respond to the Spirit's desires within us right now?