Acts 8:29-31 -- On Spiritual Vocabulary

"Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot.
And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest?
And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him."
Acts 8:29-31


This whole situation seems super cool, but also a little strange to me.  Kind of like a pedestrian trying to catch up to a car pulling away from a stoplight and ask about something they are listening to on the radio... which, at least from my experience, is rare. :)  Lower speeds = more possible, but still seems a little strange.  And yet, when God told Philip to go get on the chariot, Philip ran right over and struck up a conversation. :)

I think in some ways, this experience shows us what we should be working towards with regard to the Spirit.  The more we practice listening to and acting on the promptings of the Spirit, the clearer they will be to us.  At first maybe we get promptings that are more of the yes/no variety... this is good, this is bad.  As we listen and act on those promptings/messages, we start to understand when the Spirit is reminding us to pray, or to read our scriptures, or to stifle that thing we were about to say.  Then, even later, we might start understanding more and more complex messages, because we're learning to listen better and increasing our spiritual vocabulary. :)

I think, unfortunately, this happens in reverse if we block out spiritual messages... we start being able to understand them less and less.  That whole hardening of the heart thing that it talks about in the scriptures is also kind of a forgetting/losing vocabulary sort of a thing, perhaps like spiritual dementia, where we eventually can't even remember spiritual experiences from the past, because we can no longer feel them (have become "past feeling").

Today, let's listen and learn, starting from wherever we are, and learning as we go, building our spiritual vocabulary and keeping that connection active so that we can progress and understand more and more.