I have to work every other Sunday and today it started out overcast but burned off by 11:00. Today was a refreshing change from yesterday where it largely rained buckets until about noon. We don't have a rainy climate here, so rain is either welcomed when it comes after a month long absence, or it is lamented when it stays more than two or three days. That isn't an unusual reaction.
It isn't unusual for believers to react the same way to the leading of the Holy Spirit. We can be so accepting of His help when we have had a 'dry spell' as some call it, and we can allow ourselves to feel so overwhelmed when He is actively convicting us that we sometimes turn from His direction as if we could make it cease to exist.
This has everything to do with whether one is yielded to His guidance and leadership or not. If a believer hasn't received anything from Him in a while, it's likely that she is getting in the way. By that I mean that instead of turning from what we want, and trusting God with the decisions in our lives, we sometimes hold onto what we regard as the 'wise thing to do' with a vise like grip. Eventually our spiritual hands are peeled away from it step by step, trial by trial, until our self-imposed blindness is made invalid. Because of our reluctance to submit to Him we are dragged to a place where we have to recognize, as Jonah did, that we have been swallowed up by the will of God and that we need to stop resisting its complete righteousness. It doesn't matter as believers how we've resisted. Whether by indifference or by outright defiance the result will be the same. God will direct us. We are blessed, because when His will is resisted, He won't convict and direct us hatefully, but lovingly. I'm not saying that the way He ultimately makes us acknowledge Him in the things of our lives will be painless, but that is the way of chastisement, isn't it? The Bible says He chastens those whom He loves. We need to submit to His chastening too, and we should receive it gladly as a demonstration of His love. Is it that hard to do? Sometimes, but what is our state, after receiving His loving discipline with an open heart? It is one of repentance and it really is one of joy in our inner most selves. Being chastised may not be appealing to our souls, but it should be, because if we accept it, we are left broken and we have been shown the mistakenness of our own wisdom and our own will, and ultimately, it serves to edify us, showing us what a heart yielded to God ought to be like.