So this past weekend I turned 24, and can I just say that this is not where I thought I would be right now.
If you would have asked me at 18 I would have said that by 24 I would be married, maybe even have a kid. I would have a “real” job and probably a list a foot long of other things I wanted to accomplish.
That plan went out the window my senior year of college when I stopped ignoring God and started listening to the call that He had placed on my life.
Before that I had known that God had some sort of plan for my life but I was pretty dead set on my plan and His peacefully coexisting.
At the 2012 Passion Conference, through a series of sermons, conversations, scriptures, and a ton of things I can’t really explain, I stopped trying to follow my own plan and resolved to follow whatever it was God had in store for me.
Easy to say, yet so hard to do!
That semester I was working doing taxes and found myself enjoying it. Yes you read that right, I was enjoying TAXES!
I found myself questioning God asking things like, “God why in the world do I like this if you want me to go somewhere else?” I prayed again and again wondering why the Lord wasn’t answering me. Then I realized it was probably because I wasn’t listening.
When I stopped talking and started to listen things changed.
I felt the spirit within me respond with this answer, “All these things you think you want you can have. You can have a husband, a family, a steady job, and I will use you here; OR you can choose to follow me and I will give you everything you think you want and so much more.”
I thought, prayed, procrastinated actually making a choice, and finally chose to follow the Lord. (It may have taken an embarrassingly long time for me to make that choice.)
That simple choice is what catapulted me to search for where God is taking me.
It was during this time that I came to love this verse,
“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” – Psalms 37:4
Up until this point I had thought that if I delighted in the Lord then He was going to give me what it was I wanted most. Instead I came to understand that if I am delighting in the Lord, truly delighting, then the desire of my heart is going to be Him. The desire of my heart is going to be serving Him, knowing Him, and loving Him.
Even though I’m not so great at it, that’s where I try to keep my heart – delighting in Him, loving Him, and drawing closer to Him.
Love you all,
Audrey
