Teaching the Spirit

Yesterday I had coffee with my teammate Caitlyn to talk about some things we learned about the Holy Spirit on our summer project last year.  She is hoping to do some similar teaching next month while she is leading a Destino project in the Dominican Republic.  While we discussed the difficulties of teaching something so abstract and experiential as walking in the Spirit, she thought of a real example from this past semester.

While at Cal State Fullerton one day, Janet (whom you've "met" before) was telling her about an encounter she had recently had.  She had met a couple of guys who started talking to her about God.  They seemed friendly and eager for her to come to one of their meetings.  Some things in Janet's story raised a red flag in Caitlyn's mind about the possibility of these men being involved in a cultish group.  Her gut reaction said to warn Janet that she shouldn't trust these people and shouldn't go to the meeting with them.  Then she began to wonder if it might be better to trust the Holy Spirit to teach rather than to try to protect Janet herself.  It's a risky move.  It takes all the "control" out of the equation.  But she followed what she sensed she was being asked to do and entrusted Janet to the Holy Spirit's guidance.

Janet is a fairly new believer without much knowledge of theology and the Bible.  However, like all believers, she has been given the gift of the Holy Spirit who was promised to guide her.  So the next time she met with Caitlyn, she told her about attending the meeting she had been invited to.  "Something didn't seem right."  She didn't have any theological reasons for thinking this group wasn't legit.  She didn't know anything about them other than the brief interactions she had.  That didn't matter.  The Holy Spirit was in her giving her the sense that something was off and she shouldn't get involved.

Caitlyn was excited to see not only how God came through in protecting Janet, but that she had learned a much deeper lesson than she could have learned by Caitlyn telling her to watch out for cults.  Janet learned what it looked like to listen to and follow the Spirit.  She gained confidence that He is active in her life.  She learned that she doesn't have to have lots of Biblical knowledge to know and be used by God.

This story was not only a great illustration, but a lesson to us all as we lead and teach those "younger" than us. Will we, like Paul with the early church, trust God's Spirit for their growth, or will we throw out an arm to keep them from making any mistakes and getting hurt?  Does giving them all the answers and telling them how to fit the proper Christian mold really help them the most?  What about when you're not around and all the things you've told them suddenly don't make much sense?  The only way for us to live and grow is by the Spirit of God changing us from the inside.  Will we deny our students the opportunity to learn and experience that change by putting the protective hedge of "the right answers" around them?  Can we give up that control and really trust that the Spirit will work even in the youngest of believers?