Gut Feelings

Colossians 1:9-10 For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; 10 that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;
I still remember early in my Christian walk telling my pastor how I try to trust my gut feelings. He laughed back at me and told me “that is the Holy Spirit pal,” almost like he was saying, “I hope you listen.” Do you? You know right from wrong as God’s creation, but sin has such a grip on you that you seemingly deny it. You can be so lost in the pleasures of temporal sin, that your heart seems cold to the truth that lies within you. These are perilous roads to travel, for only the grace of God can rescue you if your heart becomes softened through the Gospel. That rescue will likely involve pain and a life altering event; a reality that God puts before you of your mortality and your sin. Second chances are no guarantee’s, and sadly many of us think they are, or in my case I thought I would “get right with God” on my own timetable. God even gave me the breath of life that day to even have the ability to think that thought. You don’t get right with God when you are ready, you respond when he reveals himself to you so clearly you know it is God, and you feel this is your only chance. That is the power of God to soften even the hardest heart, to rescue them eternally, and to build powerful testimonies of his grace and mercy for them to share with others still trapped in sin.

After you have responded to the gospel, the work of sanctification begins in your life. God, for every day that he grants you life here, wants to conform you into the image of his Son. He wants you to reflect Jesus to all that you meet; he wants to use you to share the gospel with those still trapped by sin. You were commanded by Christ’s last words to live your life as a disciple, sharing the gospel to all that would hear. Both of these works of God and Jesus are combined with the work of the Holy Spirit living inside of you. God is living inside of you whispering those truths to your gut. He reveals truths to you when you study God’s Word; he warns your heart prior, or convicts your heart after that sin in your life. He shows you right from wrong every day and you either listen and grow closer to God, or you deny you hear him and grieve the Holy Spirit. Once you grasp that it is truly God living inside of you, your life is never the same. We all will continually fail, but thankfully the conviction is deeper and the understanding of mercy and grace grows. Once we understand how great our need for a Savior is, how great sin has a grip on humanity, the Spirit uses that revelation to draw us closer to God.

In study you will find this passage in Colossians speaks to James 3:17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. There is an entire message in that verse, but the closer you draw to God through diligently seeking him daily in his Word and prayer, the more you will reflect those attributes and Christ. The less you diligently seek him, the more the reflect him, and the more you listen to your gut. Listening to your gut produces Christ-likeness in you, and that is God’s desire for your life, until he calls you to your eternal home.