Cultivating an Awareness of God

Being an “everyday” disciple means that we are working to follow Jesus in our everyday lives. This means that our work, our play, our home lives, our school, all become predominant places where our discipleship, and our role in discipling others, play out. If you think about it, even if you are highly involved, at most you spend 3-4 hours per week at church functions. But Jesus doesn’t intend for our personal discipleship and the discipleship of others to stop there. Don’t get me wrong. These hours gathered with the local body of Christ are vital and cannot be removed from the life of the disciple. But the arena of your discipleship is all of life.

The immensity of this can be overwhelming. Where do you start? How do you know what to do? When to do it? What do you prioritize and spend more time doing? What do you do less of? What are the next steps you’re supposed to take?

Thankfully for us, God personalizes discipleship by inviting us to join His presence and work in the life you are living right now, to be discipled and
make disciples. Megan Fate Marshman likens it to a dance:

Discipleship is about getting into rhythm with God. It assumes He is already at work in your world. Everyday discipleship is all about becoming aware of what He is doing in you, in your family, at your church, at your work, in your role at the PTA, in your position on the soccer team. Your discipleship is keyed into the ever-present, ever-working Spirit of the living God.

The Spirit: The Breath of God and a Personal Companion

Three important images foster the idea of God’s Spirit being at work in our lives. One is of the present Spirit which “hovers” over the earth (Genesis 1:2), the second is the life-giving Spirit that fills the lungs of everything that lives (Genesis 2:7), and the third is the personal “advocate” Jesus tells us will come and fill each of His disciples (John 14:16-17). These three images of the same Spirit are important when it comes to understanding how we think about God in our everyday lives.

To live Spirit-aware, Spirit-filled lives, we must remember that God has been present and at work in creation since before the dawn of time.

"The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters." Genesis 1:2 (NLT)

God does not move Himself in and out of history. He is always present and always at work. If the creation narrative tells us nothing else, it should show us that God has intentions for our world and our lives, and He is actively involved in shaping the world. This is true of the plan of redemption and the culmination of all things. Like a partner that is grabbed from the audience and whisked into a dance that has already started, we step into the always rushing stream of God’s work in the world. This is His creation, He loves it, and He is involved (Psalm 104, 145, Matthew 6). All of creation benefits from His providential and sustaining hand. Some call this God’s common grace (Matthew 5:45). This is why even those who do not know the Lord enjoy the goodness of creation, relationship, and human life. It's important we remember that in being an everyday disciple, we do not bring God’s presence to the places we go. He is already there. When we follow Jesus and step into the Spirit-filled life, we are invited to see our lives in the grand narrative already taking place around us.

We also see this in the way that God’s Spirit animates all life. The Spirit exists to give life to all beings, whether they are aware of Him or not. This means we cannot discount the ways in which God is already at work in the lives of the people around us, even if they seem far from Him. He is using the everyday of their lives to awaken them to the reality of His presence. That includes you. When we live lives aware of the Spirit’s work, we see the good and the bad of life as a place where God might already be doing something to awaken and grow us into a greater relationship with Him.

While these first two principles are important, they are not the complete picture of the role God’s Spirit plays in this world. The Spirit is not just some ambiguous force that moves through the world; He is a person, God Himself, who interacts with His disciples in personal ways. Jesus tells us that He planned to send us an “advocate.”

"And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you." John 14:16-17 (NRSV)

Some translate this as “comforter,” but the word is more akin to a patron, someone who provides for, protects, gives guidance to, and empowers someone to act on His behalf.

This means that the Spirit, in His love and knowledge, is the presence of the living God in our lives. It is Jesus' presence through the Spirit that gives us everything we need to live the life of faith as God calls us to live it. So as we go about our everyday lives, we don’t do this on our own. We are given the God who has been present from the beginning of time, who has the power to sustain the life of every living creature, and who knows us personally and intimately. This is the God who helps us know who needs care, the words to speak when we are speechless, the conviction to know that we are going the wrong direction, the comfort we need when the world doesn’t make sense. We see this throughout Acts as the church is miraculously provided for in every way. As the church prayed and looked for what the Spirit was doing, they matured, they cared for others, and they fulfilled God’s call to make more disciples.

How Do We Live a God Aware Life?  
There is no trick to this, it is a matter of saturating our lives with God and becoming familiar with who He is and what He does. It takes...

Prayer: This type of living is rooted in simple and ongoing prayer.

• “Holy Spirit, open my eyes to what You are doing in me.”
• “What are You already doing in my home/at my workplace/in my community?”
• “Is there anyone You want me to pray for/talk to today?”

Scripture Reading: We saturate our mind in the ways God has already shown Himself at work. In other words, we must spend time reading Scripture. A chapter a day will begin to give you an overview of the stories of Scripture. Start with the Gospels first (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Become aware of how Jesus lived and acted, as He is the perfect picture of God in the flesh. We read and ask these questions:

• “What is God doing here?”
• “How is He interacting with the people in the story?”
• “What does He command/forbid/correct/encourage?”

Discernment: As we pray and read, we start to pay attention to what is happening in our hearts and minds.

What comes to mind as you read and pray?

• Does something dominate your thoughts that you are encouraged/challenged/bothered by/tempted to avoid?
• Talk to God about it and pay attention to see if those thoughts reoccur. Does the topic come up in conversation with people who don’t know what you are wrestling with? Does the topic come up in a sermon or group conversation?

Taking Steps of Faith: Once we begin to get a sense of what God is doing, it's time to take steps of obedience. This is the crucial and important part of partnering with God; this is where our faith matures and our awareness of and confidence in Him grows.

God did not give us a discipleship program with five steps towards maturity. He gave us Himself to dwell with us and in us and we must learn to become aware of how He is at work shaping our hearts and minds and the hearts and minds of those we encounter every single day. We are called to pursue Him, recognize Him, and to join in the "everyday" work of being discipled and discipling others.

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