“We live in an age where attention has become our most endangered resource. Every sound, every scroll, every urgency competes for it. But what if the real threat to our spiritual lives isn’t disbelief, but distraction? What if the Spirit has not grown silent, but we have grown unable to hear?”

Jeremy Sims asks these questions in The Way of the Spirit. He goes on to say: “I’ve come to see that much of the Christian life is not about gaining more faith but giving better attention. Attention is the soil where faith grows. It’s how love learns to see. When we attend to what is small, we begin to glimpse what is holy.”

In this episode of the Influence Podcast, I talk to Sims about pay attention to what the Holy Spirit is doing in all the waypoints of a Christian’s life. I’m George P. Wood, executive editor of Influence magazine and your host.

Jeremy Sims, D.Min., is professor of spiritual formation at Southeastern University, an ordained Assemblies of God minister, and author of The Way of the Spirit: Recognizing and Responding to God’s Subtle Movements, published by InterVarity Press.

Show Notes

• 00:00 — Introduction and Sponsor Ad
• 02:44 —  You write, “I often tell my students that the Spirit they’re searching for isn’t waiting on the other side of their success. He’s already within their confusion.” What does it mean, and how is The Way of the Spirit a demonstration of your advice?
• 04:59 —  Are Pentecostal Christians especially prone to spiritual anxiety?
• 07:30 — The difference between “crisis” and “process” spiritualities
• 12:27 — What are “attention” and “granularity,” and why are they important?
• 21:24 — What is the second waypoint, “desert formation,” about?
• 27:35 — What is the fourth waypoint, “interior journey,” about, and why is it important?
• 36:57 — Tell us a little more about the seventh waypoint, “sacred ordinary.”
• 39:31 — Why do you illustrate your waypoints with examples from before or outside the Protestant Reformation?
• 46:09 — What are you reading right now that’s interesting, helpful, and/or personally challenging?
• 47:54— Conclusion