Ghosting the Holy Spirit
In today’s world, you have probably heard the term “Ghosting.” It’s becoming more and more of a thing that I really didn’t understand until it happened to me. Here I was talking to this guy one day, and then the next day, poof, he dipped. No warning, no goodbyes, no “hey you're crazy and I am out”. Literally nothing. I got ghosted. It truly didn’t feel good. Honestly, I probably took it a little more personally than I should have. It was more him than me, and if I hadn’t been “ghosted” by all these dudes, then who would have known when I would have met the love of my life? My spouse? My world? Now…I will admit. I did ghost a guy once, but it was mainly because he was trying to hide me, and I got the “I am going to end up buried in your backyard” vibes, so I feel like it was semi-justified. If you don’t agree, just let me live in this delulu for a minute-kay? This is a safe place! I mean, not really…it’s the internet and some of y’all are savages. Annnnnnywayysss. Ghosting. Ghosting can and most likely does hurt. It’s not fun, so why do we do it to God?
I didn’t stutter. You read that right. There was no sugar coating this- we ghost God on a daily basis and yet He still answers us. He still hangs out with us and lets us attempt to ghost Him. He knows what we are doing. He knows it’s going to happen before we even attempt it. We constantly leave God on read, and yet even when we ignore Him, He still shows up!
I feel like we typically ghost God when He is trying to make us do something uncomfortable. You’re walking around the mall, and you get this overwhelming feeling that you need to go pray for someone you just saw? Yeah, that was God. Did you do it? No, you left that message on read. You wake up in the morning and know you should be spending time in the Word instead of scrolling through social media. Talk about totally avoiding that call. You hit that ignore button faster than your snooze button in the morning. But don’t worry, you got your fix of scrolling through everything else on your phone or binge-watching your favorite shows.
We ghost Him. We literally silence his nudges. We pretend our speakers are broken so we can’t hear Him speak.
But why?
Could it be because we are scared? We know He wants us to change, and that scares every single part of you? Change is scary. But also, I battle with numbness. Some days, I am just too mentally exhausted, and I want to be numb. There are days that I want to run away from God. I want to put my connection to Him on “Do Not Disturb” so I don’t hear His calls.
But you know what? Ghosting God doesn’t stop Him from pursuing us. Never has. Never will. He will ALWAYS be there. He has patience, He will continue to be persistent (maybe stubborn is a better term? Can we say God is stubborn?), and He will always be present for you.
Even when I try to Ghost God, he doesn’t leave me. He is the best at the waiting game. He will continue to speak to me. It might be through song lyrics (Most likely because I am music-obsessed). It might be in the rain that falls from Heaven, the Rainbow afterwards (His promise to never separate himself from us), or it might even come from the old school playground game “Telephone”. Remember that game? Someone starts with a phrase, whispers it to someone else, and it continues through several different people until it gets to the end of the line, and typically, it is never correct. But God is the master at the game of Telephone and will whisper what He needs us to hear to someone else, and that message gets delivered to you.
Maybe it’s time to turn off your Do Not Disturb and turn your ringer back on. Maybe it’s time to fully open your messages and not just hold down on them so you can see a little bit of the message, but it never gets technically opened. OPEN the message.
Pot meet Kettle. This post is really for me. I am learning how not to ghost the Holy Spirit. I have started by sitting in silence before starting my day or night (night shift nurse). I am learning to pay attention to the nudges. There has been a nudge that I have been ignoring for a couple of months now in my prayer life at church, and the conviction of that nudge is truly growing bigger and louder. God is telling me to do something- to take my prayer life to the next level. To show my surrender publicly and it scares me to my core. But I need to listen to the nudge. Which brings me to the next thing- I need to respond even if I feel awkward or it brings attention to me. God isn’t awkward. The awkward feeling is what I have been told, “flesh vs spirit”. Our flesh feels the awkwardness, but the spirit is like Girl! Do this! This is what prayer is supposed to look like! My obedience to God needs to be stronger than what the public thinks. “She’s a runner, she’s a track star.” Literally, that is what came to my mind for this next things. I need to learn to repent and not run. If you are in my circle, you know I am a runner. Not in the physical sense. If you see homegirl running, you probably need to be running too because either something is chasing me or there are fresh donuts in the break room- most likely the 2nd one. Honestly, if someone is chasing instead of running away, I would probably strike up a conversation with the person…but donuts on the other hand? Oh yeah…I would full on sprint for those suckers. Back to what I was saying. I'm running gets me nowhere with God other than hurt and shame. Repenting is what I need. Repenting and knowing God still loves me is what I need to remind myself of.
The Holy Spirit is not the person to be ghosting. He is someone to get to know. To lean on. To run to-not away. Why would you run from peace? From wisdom? From Comfort?
God is calling- He is still calling you; waiting for you to pick up that phone and say “Hello Father”.
God still loves you. The same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He will never stop loving His child. His girl. His son.
God will never stop. Ghosting the Holy Spirit doesn’t have to happen anymore, but because we are human, it will. Just remember, God still loves you even when you leave Him on read.
