A small item caught my eye this week: a Jesuit university getting ready to open its academic year, and before the first lecture, before the first roster is taken, before anybody opens a textbook, they gather everyone in one room for what they call a Mass of the Holy Spirit. It is an old custom on those campuses. The point is simple. You do not begin the work until you have asked the Spirit of God to come and be part of it.
I love the ordering of that. Notice what it is not. It is not a ceremony at the end of the year to bless what everybody already accomplished. It is not a thank-you note. It comes first, before there is anything to be proud of, while the whole thing is still unwritten. That is a posture, and it is one most of us have to learn on purpose, because it does not come naturally.
Moses drew a line in the sand
There is a moment in Exodus where Moses has been handed an enormous assignment and a nation that is difficult to lead, and God tells him to move out. Moses does something remarkable. He refuses to budge without one thing.
“The LORD replied, ‘My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’ Then Moses said to him, ‘If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us?’” (Exodus 33:14-16).
Read that again slowly. Moses had the call, the credentials, the miracles already on his résumé, and the map. He had every reason to feel qualified. And he still said: if you are not coming, I am not going. That is not weakness. That is the clearest thinking in the whole chapter.
Competence is the quiet trap
Here is where I have to be honest about how leadership works, in a church and in a business alike. When you have led people, you learn to build a plan. You know how to set a budget, assemble a team, pick a date, and make the thing happen. The plan comes easily. The asking is harder, because asking assumes you need something you cannot generate yourself.
And so the prayer slides to the end. We build, and then we ask God to bless it. We launch, and then we pray it works. Those prayers are not wrong, but they arrive late. The church at Antioch did it the other way around: “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them’” (Acts 13:2). The greatest missionary movement in history did not start in a strategy meeting. It started in a prayer meeting, and the Spirit did the talking.
What that looks like on a Friday in Ravenna
You may not be starting a semester. But somebody reading this is starting a job on Monday. Somebody is a week into a marriage, or a week into being a parent, or about to take a shift in our nursery for the first time. Somebody is watching the fields around this town turn and wondering how the fall will go. Beginnings are everywhere, and most of them get launched with a to-do list and a knot in the stomach.
Try Moses' order instead. In the truck before you go in. At the kitchen table with the backpacks by the door. Out loud, with your family, awkward as it feels: Holy Spirit, come with us. Go ahead of us. Say something we would not have thought of. Show us who to notice.
And then expect an answer. I am not talking about a feeling you manufacture. I mean the Spirit who still speaks, still heals, still nudges you toward the coworker sitting alone, still lays a name on your heart at 6 a.m. so you text that person and find out they were up all night. Those things happen among us. They are not stories from a book about somebody else's century. Jesus said, “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13). He gives gladly. He is not stingy with his own Presence.
When the beginning did not go well
Some of you prayed exactly like that before something, and it still came apart. The job ended. The treatment did not work. The move was hard and lonely. I will not tidy that up for you, and I will not tell you that you prayed it wrong. What I will tell you is what God actually promised Moses: not a smooth road, but “My Presence will go with you.” He kept that promise through the wilderness, which was the least convenient forty years imaginable. Presence is not a consolation prize for people whose miracle was delayed. It is the thing Moses wanted most, and it is still on offer.
So invite him in early. Before the first bell, before the first shift, before the plan is polished enough to be impressive. Christ has already gone ahead of you into every room you are afraid of, and he does not send you anywhere he is not already standing.
Join us this Sunday at 10:30am — Outpouring Worship Center, Ravenna.