Spiritual Agility – Knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do
I am a Human Resources professional. It’s how I earn my keep and find purpose through the world of work. It gives me immense satisfaction because it intermingles with the lives of others, leaders to be specific. Through a series of processes and methodologies, I and a team of other HR professionals and business leaders identify talent in different level of leaders and support my organization in ensuring the pipeline of next generation leaders globally are ready with individuals who have the potential to take up senior positions in 2-3 years. Part of this identification process entails assessing something we call ‘Learning Agility’ which in lay terms is ‘knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do’. In HR jargon, it is the ability of an individual to succeed in first time situations drawing from experience, learning from mistakes.
During one of my reflective moments I realized this can well be applied to our spirit man even more so as this is part of our daily battle with life’s challenges, succeeding, failing, falling, getting up again, through it all leaning on God, His Son Jesus who is the Author and Finisher of our faith. I embraced the notion that as spirit beings, we are to be spiritually agile, knowing how to meander through life’s many first-time situations and challenges e.g. financial difficulty, trusting God for health miracles, going through a family trauma, dealing with heartbreak and disappointment from a child or spouse, betrayal of a friend, approaching a new job when you are least qualified….the list varies for us all.
Some may call it a gut feeling, some call it conscience. Regardless of what society or science describe it as, I know it’s an intuitive guide from the Holy Spirit telling me what the next best move is…..telling me what to do. My job as a learner is to be agile enough to act. Move when He says move. Stop when He says stop. Be quiet and still when He says or speak with courage when He says to speak.
Going back to Human Resources, to be learning agile, one needs to possess to an acceptable level the different facets of Learning agility – Mental, People, Change, Results, Self-Awareness. Again, to a large extent, if not the whole extent, this applies to our daily walk with God and our journey in this adventure of following Christ. In my own journey, here are a few things I learnt along the way.
Mental Agility: Working with concepts and ideas.
Spiritually how does this apply? Sometimes the Holy spirit would ask me to do many things that sound crazy, unbelievable, not adding up; or would drop a word in my spirit totally disconnected to my current situation or context. I would debate and find this word totally abstract. To walk with God, you need to sometimes walk beyond the natural and step into the supernatural and abstract. Sometimes you need to step out of the earth realm into the realm of the spirit where he makes ALL things possible. To imagine the impossible by natural laws, made possible and true by the one true God. Think about it – a messiah born through a virgin? Noah obedient to building an ark in a day when they never heard of rain? Remember that even the message of the cross itself is a mystery. All our earthly wisdom equates to Gods foolishness by comparison.
Apostle Paul said, “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are.” (1 Cor. 1: 25, 27-28)
To truly walk with God one needs to be spiritually agile step out in faith and literally ‘work’ with God’s concepts and ideas, not man’s.
People Agility: Working with and relating to people.
This is an amazing one. The books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and some of the letters from Apostle Paul are focused on how we interact with people. How we behave and conduct ourselves as believers. Romans, Thessalonians, Ephesians (to name a few) teach us many things. Most of my personal character flaws and battles border on how I interact with others; how I stand as a child of God representing Him in all things. Spiritual life and secular life are not two separate entities but mesh as one as we enforce Gods kingdom upon the earth. Our role and main purpose is to bring God glory; we were created for and to bring Him glory.
A dying world and thirsty generation needs healing….look around you. The world needs us and we need to accept responsibility. “For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.”
(Romans 8:19) The world is waiting for our manifestation and it only comes through my authentic, sincere Christ-like interaction with people on a day-to-day basis. I ask myself often (not in judgmental but an assessing way), “Am I representing Christ in my daily living?” It’s food for thought always.
To be continued…..
Your Best Life for God series
written by Bee