What Are The Benefits Of Spiritual Direction?

A spiritual director is someone who comes alongside you as a spiritual companion and trained listener, offering you time for reflection, discovery and paying attention to God’s spirit. Spiritual directors actually don’t tell you where to go; they help you discover the Spirit’s direction and leading within you.

The benefits of meeting with a Spiritual Director:

• Help to integrate our splintered lives

• Entering spiritual direction, especially over a length of time, helps us SLOW DOWN and pay attention to the recurring themes, threads and patterns that help integrate the disparate parts of our lives. Most importantly, we begin to see God in the fractals.

• Pulls us toward the center of our being as life draws us away

• Spiritual direction offers the counter-balancing centripetal force, grounding us in our true identity as people completely known and completely loved by God.

• Awakens us to God’s presence and activity in the midst of suffering

While spiritual direction doesn’t promise a cure or assure the return of distinguishing God’s presence, it does provide loving and supportive companionship. Meeting with a spiritual director, someone who is trained to be a compassionate listener and keep confidence, is a balm to those who need a safe place to suffer honestly and not alone.

It acquaints us with the mysterious and often surprising means of God’s formation in our lives. We are often too close to what’s happening in us and to us that we need someone with objectivity to help us sort it all through. Through meeting for spiritual direction, many are able to recover their faith as they discover God in the midst of the rubble of their deconstruction and begin to see the mysterious and surprising means by which God forms them into their true-selves-in Christ.

Why should I make time for these meetings?

• To gain clarity about your life experiences in light of God’s truth

• To improve your ability to see how God is at work in the moments of your day

• To develop a deeper prayer life

• To gain clarity about your identity as a child of God

Few things are as helpful in someone's spiritual development as having a place to safely consider experiences, thoughts, beliefs, doubts and feelings without fear of judgment, advice or misunderstanding. Spiritual Direction is a conversation intended to create just such a safe place.

The primary relationship in Spiritual Direction is between the one seeking direction and the Spirit of God. In Spiritual Direction, it is assumed God is at work in the life of each person in significant ways and that reflecting on what is going on in each one of us can be helpful in the process of spiritual growth. It is called "direction" not because the director will discern what is going on and tell the one seeking direction what they should do. Instead, direction refers to the Spiritual Director drawing attention to where it seems God is moving. This is done primarily through providing a safe space for the Spirit of God to work and the Director reflecting what she notices in the conversation.  

Why do people talk with a Director?

Some seek spiritual direction because they have a decision to make and they want to be aided in discerning where the Lord is leading. Others come because their spiritual lives seem stuck; what used to help them grow is not having the same impact any longer. Others come because they have heard Spiritual Direction can open up new areas of spiritual development and they want all God might have for them. Many meet with a Director every month just to help them stay attuned to the movement of God in their lives.

The best way to decide if you are at a place in your walk with God where direction could benefit you is to meet with a Spiritual Director and see if it is helpful.

How could reflecting on what God is doing in your life not be worth exploring?