I wrote this out one night a couple years ago, and it’s funny how much this encourages me now!
So as I was sitting here one night talking with God about the next adventure I was about to embark on, He hit me with some “words of wisdom” and I really felt lead to share.
There are so many moments where I was to just scream, laugh, and cry for excitement! It just seems so unreal! I honestly can’t believe it. I know have spoken it with confidence before but it’s never really been so real, until now. And at the same breath it seems like a dream that I will just wake up and it will be “normal” again. Then I began to question…why can’t this be the normal?! Why does the bogged down 9-5 job have to be the normal? Why can’t living on the edge following His footsteps be the norm? Aren’t we as believers called to be disciples? Do you think as disciples God wants us chained down, tired up and completely exhausted doing something we can’t stand? Or something we once had a passion for but then became a slave to? NO!! I believe God calls us to be His disciple, which simply means “to follow after”. “To follow after” the life He has planned out for us. To follow after Him to experience Love like never before to experience joy, peace, hope as well as teach us through sorrow and heartache. To let go of all the things that chain us down and follow Him into freedom! But in following Him does that mean we will have every answer to every question available at the drop of a hat? NO WAY!! In fact we may never find the right or perfect answer too many questions we have. But that’s when trust comes into play. Trust is a two way street between us and God.
In Matthew 25:23 “….you have been faithful with a few things,
I will put you in charge of many things”
So I thought of this as not only Jesus speaking these words to us (which is the content it comes from Jesus speaking to his servants who were give two and five “bags of gold” and they both had invested and come back with more gold instead of investing it on themselves only). But I think this could be seen as us saying that to God. Now I don’t think at all its okay to “test” God cause really either you learn and believe or you learn and don’t believe, but we are all humans who need proof, unfortunately. We began to say okay God here is this area of my life you can take over this, however I’ll hold on to handling my job, school, and relationships still. I know that it’s not at all where God wants us to start but I believe it’s a way to start to build trust with God. So then we see that specific area we trusted God with He took care of it and instead of dying out, it actually blossomed far beyond what we could have imagined. So then we say okay I see you have been able to take care of that area, okay here is school, and again it grows to be something we can’t begin to imagine. Then it continues with work, relationships, ext. ext. until we come to a point where God has just about EVERYTHING and our trust with God is built up. And God’s trust is built up us as well, when He says “GO!” we go! And then we get so eager and excited on what is coming that we continue forward progressing faster and faster and God says “whoa whoa pump your breaks slow down. Don’t go that far yet” and then we jump off the edge. And what happens? We fall flat on our face into the muddy pit! Then what’s the first thing we do? Look at God and say “WHAT IN THE WORLD!?! I TRUSTED YOU GOD!! WHY AM I SITTING HERE EATING MUD FOR LUNCH?!! I THOUGHT YOU HAD ME PROTECTED AND COVERED!! I THOUGHT YOU CARED ABOUT ME??! WHAT HAPPENED!!!?” So once we get ourselves up what do we do? We quickly begin to take back all the things that we trusted Him with because I mean I just failed completely who’s to say he won’t keep me from failing again?! And so we start to get back to the buried down burned out heavy weighted exhausted daily life. All because God didn’t do what He was supposed to do RIGHT?? It’s His entire fault correct?! WRONG!!!!!!
Guess whose fault it really is?! OURS!!!! But He didn’t keep His promise. He allowed me to fall face first into the mud. He didn’t protect me, He did watch over me. So how is it our fault?! But in fact He did all those things and much more. It was us to get too excited and jumped too early. The whole time God was saying…”WAIT WAIT!! I KNOW YOU ARE EXCITED AND I AM TOO!! BUT JUST WAIT!!!” and instead of waiting and listening we jumped! And WE failed. God never failed, WE FAILED! So once we realize all these things, you are left questioning yourself so where does that put us now? How can we avoid these failed jump attempts? It’s simple, but listening nothing more, nothing less just simply listen. No matter how excited we may become, or even how scared, we still have to stop and listen.
Psalm 46:10 “Be still and know that I am God….”
There are so many amazing goals, plans and adventures God has to share with you but we won’t be able to experience those things unless we are willing to stop moving, stop talking, stop trying to figure everything out every moment. And just simply listen.
So in all this talk, where does that really leave us?!
It puts us in a place to examine ourselves. To see if we are walking out our lives by:
1) Following Jesus.-Becoming a disciple and learning who God is, His great love for us and how we can become more like Him.
2) Trusting God (WITH ALL AREAS)-by learning that God has AMAZING things planned out for our lives but only if we allow Him to take over in ALL areas. (Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future)
3) Just simply Listen.
-that’s all He wants is to spend time with you His child. He wants to sing over you, He wants to love on you. He wants to build you up with praise. He wants to give you step by step directions in life but we have to first we willing to stop and listen to what He is really saying. And respond as He asks us to do.
