Intuition and analysis

I had a good conversation with a friend today about intuition . . . and about how we have been trained to discount or distrust it unless we can "validate it" with external proof. She described how she has always tried to "line up her ducks" to prove that she should trust what she knows intuitively about something, but that -- if she couldn't do that -- she felt obliged to discount it and move forward based on things she could prove and trust.

I can identify with that! But I am "cataloguing data" that supports a new approach: trust your intuition unless and until it becomes clear that it was wrong. I believe now that that approach leads to fewer decisions to regret than the other approach of discarding my intuition unless I can validate it.

The caveat is that I need to recognize what I am doing, and make sure that I am up for the negative consequences of "getting it wrong" -- and that can be an incentive to "play it safe" and ignore my intuition sometimes -- or at least wait to act until I feel assured that the Holy Spirit is directing me or that my fear of the consequences is less pressing than my sense of where I should go or what I should do or how I should pray.

And then there are many times where my intuition is strong, but there is nothing to do and nowhere to go and nothing to pray about, except to ask for patience or endurance or courage or love.

But if your intuition is strongly leading you toward action, you should act --- as long as you are willing to deal with the consequences of your action, whether your intuition was "right on" or not. I believe God uses our sense of intuition much more frequently than He uses our logic when He wants us to move forcefully . . . because we are motivated by emotion, not by thought.

So . . . Act.