Following the Spirit at Work

A few years ago, the Lord began to show me what it meant to follow his lead at work. I felt like I was stepping into the wild frontier. I had no idea what I was doing, or where I was going. It was such a battle of fear that I would lose my job or say something wrong or offensive to a patient. It seemed like an ever-present struggle against the undeniable Holy Spirit prompting in my heart and my own fears and seeming limitations. 

Sometimes I felt that the Holy Spirit was relentless. Often his leading would be like a thought circling over and over in my mind, “go pray with that patient, go pray with that patient, go pray with that patient.” If I tried to ignore the thought and “just do my job” the thought would consume my mind until I was forced into a choice. I knew at that point this was not me. I am generally a very level-headed person. I do not have cyclic thoughts or struggle with anxiety. These thoughts, I knew, were not my own, but a prompting from the Holy Spirit.

Every time I would choose to obey, it was utterly terrifying. Would they get mad? Would I offend them? Would I say the “right” thing? Yet, every time I took the plunge and made the choice to obey, God showed up. 

There is one particular time of prompting that I will never forget. One day, as I was in a patient’s room, I felt that prompting. I was a few months into God’s “training” and I knew what I needed to do: tell my patient about Jesus, or at the very least, ask if I could pray for them. This particular patient identified as bisexual and her mother as lesbian. I never would have pegged either as receptive to prayer or even Christ, and yet, I could not deny the prompting in my heart and mind. 

I had cared for this patient many times over the previous months and years, and during this admission she was in excruciating pain. Nothing we did as a medical team seemed to be working.  So that afternoon, as I hung another bag of fluids, heart thumping in my ears, I chose to obey the Holy Spirit, despite of all my fears and how counter intuitive the prompting seemed to me. As I cleaned and flushed the line, I asked the patient and her mom if I could pray for them. I told them that I was a Christian and I liked to pray for my patients in their time of need. As soon as the words burst out of my mouth, I thought, “Welp, today is the day. Today I’m going to lose my job.” To my complete surprise, they both eagerly assented. 

As I opened my mouth to pray, the Holy Spirit whispered a thought in my mind, “you can always share the gospel in prayer…” And so, I did just that. I thanked God for my patient, for creating her purposefully and beautifully. I thanked him for her life, for her supportive mother and for even the slight improvements and small victories. I thanked him for offering hope through his sacrifice for our sins. And I thanked him for calling us by name to journey with him. Then I asked him for healing, complete healing and for her pain to reside. I asked Jesus to give them hope and encouragement. And I probably said more that I don’t remember, but I prayed with my soul, interceding for my patient and her mother.

As I said, “Amen,” I looked up, expecting to see hatred and rejection, sure that I would lose my job. Instead, I saw tears of joy and thankfulness in both of their eyes. My patient’s mother thanked me. She told me that no one had ever prayed for them like that before. She thanked me for being brave, that she knew I could lose my job for that, but that they needed it. 

To this day, I have no idea what happened to that patient after she left my hospital. I hope and pray that she and her mother have chosen to respond to Jesus’ call. I hope that today they are following him. The outcome is not my job. The message is. 

Friends, that story is incredible, not because I prayed an amazing prayer. Anyone can be verbose as they pray, if they try. No, this story is incredible because a soft heart was revealed, and who can know and reveal a heart but the Lord? You see, by obeying the prompting of the Holy Spirit, a seed of salvation was planted. Not by my power or will, but Gods. Because, let me assure you, if it was up to me, fear would have crippled me and I would have abandoned that patient in her darkness. 

In light of this true story, the next and necessary question is how do we hear and recognize the prompting of the Holy Spirit? 

“Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the day of rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years.’” Hebrews 3:7-9 (author’s emphasis)

Do you hear a quiet whisper in your heart and mind? A whisper that you know is not your own? A thought that is counterintuitive to your own thoughts? A whisper that requires faith in Jesus to obey? That is the holy Spirit. God rarely shouts from the mountain with a speakerphone at us. He whispers into our hearts. We know and can identify his whispers because His whispers align with his word and are rooted in God’s glory, not your own. 

So, friend, have you heard those whispers? Do not harden your heart. Do not ignore them. Doing so is likened to rebellion. A little way down that passage, the author of Hebrews again warns, “Take care brothers lest there be in any of you and evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.”

Thus, this is the progression, if you didn’t catch it: Hear and respond to the voice of the Holy Spirit. If you do not, if you ignore it, push it away, you heart will be hardened and your inner rebellion will be laid bare. Then you will fall away from the Lord.

This is HUGE. We wrongly believe (and are maybe duped to believe) that ignoring the leading of the Holy Spirit is benign, without consequence. The author of Hebrews says that is not the case. Just as there are eternal consequences for accepting Jesus’s offer of salvation, there are eternal consequences for following him or not. 

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:4-5, author’s emphasis)

Friends, we cannot do anything apart from Christ. Do you want to bring lasting healing and comfort to your patients? Abide in Christ. Spend time with him. Read his word. Think on his word. Use your critical thinking and imagination as you read his word. Then pray. Ask for understanding. Ask for more passion. Ask for a deeper love to be awakened in your heart. Ask for your priorities to change. Ask for the Holy Spirit to lead you and help you. Tell him your fears. Share with him your joys. Commune and enter into true relationship with him. Then go to work and follow when the Holy Spirit whispers into your heart

Written by: Sara Danielle Hill, copyright 2021