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Spiritual direction is a discipline in which, with the help of another, you try to listen to your own heart and to God's. "It is about intention and attention--I desire to hear God, so I am going to make space to give God my attention." (An interview with Jeannettte Blake, Christianity Today) Deep within we all have a longing to be like Christ. Karl Barth speaks of this active longing as our “universal homesickness.” (Dogmatics in Outline) John Ortberg has often taught that spiritual direction is setting aside time with another person to pay full attention to what God is doing.
The first real director is the Holy Spirit. We are being pursued by the divine Presence. According to Saint John of the Cross, a spiritual director is the Christian who watches in amazement the marvels of God as they unfold in another’s heart. So, in this relationship, we both are called to listen. "Good spiritual direction follows the directions suggested by spiritual wisdom with no agenda other than faithfulness to God and dependence on God. And, like a water skier follows a boat, it follows the discerned movement of the Holy Spirit in every relational monent. (Larry Crabb, Conversations Journal)
Eugene Peterson said that “spiritual direction takes place when two people agree to give their full attention to what God is doing in one or both of their lives and seek to respond in faith,” (Working with Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity). Soren Kierkegaard wrote in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript that spiritual direction "must explore every path, must know where the errors lurk, where the moods have their hiding place, how the passions understand themselves in sloitude, it must know where the illusions spread their temptations, where the bypath slink away." "It strikes me that it is not wise to treat lightly what most generations of Christians have agreed is essential." (Eugene Peterson, Christiaity Today International)
John Wesley experienced spiritual direction in his family. Susanna, the mother, was the acknowledged spiritual director, even to the point of having one-on-one spiritual direction weakly with each child. This practice so influenced Wesley that he considered it essential for sanctification.
The goal of spiritual direction is the same as the goal of the Christian life, fullness of union with God in Jesus. To become ever more completely transformed into the likeness of Christ (going on to perfection) by the action of the Holy Spirit upon our body, soul, and spirit.
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