As the church year is drawing to a close, I have been re-reading the devotions I wrote since the beginning of Advent last year. The first six months were shaped by the Church Year from Advent to Pentecost. The next six month were all over the place. Idea after idea just popped into my head, and I just jotted them down–frequently on the backs of envelopes. It was very strange.

Even stranger, the directions particular devotions took were unpredictable. I put down whatever came to me. But then came the discipline. My devotions never exceed 260 words. I go through the rambling stream of consciousness pruning it ruthlessly. As my seminary advisor Dr. Robert Fischer once told me, “If you can’t say what you mean while you’re standing on one foot, you don’t know what your talking about.”

What does this have to do with today’s devotion? Glad you asked. We always need to be open to the prompting of the Holy Spirit through Scriptures, sermons, other people, our thoughts and dreams. The Spirit is boundless. But in addition there are a whole lot of other things that bombard us, and we can confuse that noise with the Spirt’s influence. We have to sort through things and edit out what really doesn’t come from God. We have to turn things over in our minds and maybe discuss them with a trusted spiritual advisor to get down to the real prompting of the Holy Spirit. It’s not easy, but necessary and beneficial.

May your spiritual editing be blessed in the coming new year.

Read Philippians 1:9-11 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne