Years ago I sat in a circle of people whom I had just met a few days before. We were classmates, a cohort to journey together through the next few semesters of grad school. At the close of our weeklong residency, someone had suggested we take time to tell each other the truth, to tell what we were seeing in one another another, what God was doing, what giftedness to call to the surface. When it was my turn to receive the words of truth, one of them called me “sober-minded.” At the time I thought, “That’s odd. Hmm. Sober-minded? What does that even mean? Is that just some sort of spiritual cop-out because she didn’t know what else to say about me?”

Much to my surprise the phrase “sober-minded” stuck with me. It has become a theme in my life, resurfacing again and again, calling out some truth about myself I did not even know I needed to hear.

I want to be a Holy Listener. In everything I do and in everyone I am with, I want to listen to the voice of the Spirit. I believe God is found in every part of life, the mundane and the mysterious, in the voices children and pastors, in strangers and in friends.

But here’s the thing: in order to listen to the voice of the Spirit in all things, I have to be sober-minded. My head has to be clear of noise and debris in order to discern and call attention to God. To be sober-minded is to be mentally sound. Did you catch that? My mental health must be my number one priority in everything, in marriage and in motherhood, in mundane or in ministry. In order to be a Holy Listening I must have clarity of thought and articule. I must be to open to receive and courageous enough to proclaim. I must be comfortable in my own skin and receptive to others in theirs. I must be compassionate and kind, decisive and direct.

This Sunday is the Day of Pentecost, the day which marks the unexpected windstorm of the Holy Spirit into the midst of a people who call themselves “Christ followers.” The coming of this Advocate, this Truth-teller, this fire-breathing member of the Trinity was not planned or even prayed for. The Spirit came when the Spirit willed. The Spirit came when the people gathered together in to break the Bread as their friend Jesus had taught them, to sing together and proclaim the Scriptures together, to laugh and cry and tell stories about how their lives would never be the same because of the love Jesus had demonstrated to every one of them (whether directly or through a friend of a friend). The people were together and suddenly there was the Spirit in their midst. The onlookers were either in awe or in skeptical disbelief. Some scoffed and tried to convince everyone that this crowd of foreign-language-speakers were just drunk on cheap wine.

And yet the opposite was true. These Christ-followers had never been more sober-minded. They were gathered together with people who had a common belief and a common purpose. They were open to the Spirit and courageous enough to speak the words that came from the Spirit. They were compassionate and kind, decisive and direct, not unlike their Messiah. They believed Him when he said he was going to leave them but that the Spirit would come and guide them into all Truth and empower them to do even greater things than He had done in his short time among them.

So what does their story have to do with me, with us? Well, we had better not give up meeting together (as some are in the habit of doing). The Spirit comes with God’s people gather. We need to be open, not clenching tight to our hopes and dreams for what God might do or what Holy-Spirit-revival needs to look like. When the Spirit comes we might be slowed by the gentle bobbing along or swept forward at a faster clip than we were anticipating. The Spirit comes as the Spirit comes and accomplishes what the Spirit desires. All we can know for sure is that the coming of the Spirit will always result in greater love and fuller life.

I don’t know what that looks like for you, but for me it means being mentally healthy, doing whatever brings me the most peace and the most joy and the most life in order to have a clear mind to hear God in all things.