Proverbs 3:5-6 "Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding. In all your ways know, recognize, and acknowledge Him, and He will direct and make straight and plain your paths." This episode talks about how we don't understand why God closes one door and opens another sometimes. It also talks about how we keep faith when it takes a long time to open that other door. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
God Is In Control
Proverbs 3:5-6 "Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding. In all your ways know, recognize, and acknowledge Him, and He will direct and make straight and plain your paths."
I thought this was really fitting for something that I wanted to share with you today. I was sent a prayer of sorts on Facebook last week and it has such a good message that I really wanted to share it with all of you. Its an example of how something in our everyday life can help us understand God or something he has done so much more than we normally. I feel as though God uses our every day life sometimes to show us what he is doing or what he is thinking. For instance, if we are struggling with understanding how He can forgive us for something and then our child does something and we understand a little better how, as our father, He could forgive us as we would forgive our children. This is one of those times when God used this woman’s everyday life to help her understand Him a little better. The person who wrote this is Mary Katherine Backstrom. (CLICK HERE for Facebook page) She is a virtual blogger, speaker, and best selling author. I will put a link in the show notes to her facebook page because she has a lot of things like this on her page.
Hey, God.
Sorry it’s been a minute. But something happened today, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I understood Your heart a little better. You probably already know why I’m talking, because well...You are God. But I guess the whole point of prayer is to talk, so I’m gonna tell You what happened. Today, I was at a traffic light staring at Holland, who was screaming in her car seat because a friend gave her a paper clip during preschool and she snuck it home in her clothes, and then accidentally dropped it into the abyss that is my car’s floorboard. Then, despite her desperate pleas, I wouldn’t pull over so she could unbuckle and climb around the car looking for said paper clip. That made her BIG mad.We are talking wailing and crying and gnashing of teeth mad. *sigh* Moving on.
Now, if she had known that I couldn’t pull over because I was hurrying to take her somewhere special before soccer practice, maybe she wouldn’t have minded. But she was screaming too loudly about her paper clip for me to explain. “You are an EVIL mommy! A wicked step mother! I wish I had a better mommy!” Un-freaking-believable, right? I gave birth to that little turdlet and she had the audacity to disown me over a paper clip. So, I let her mourn and scream. There was no reasoning with her, anyways. She wanted what she wanted.
To Holland, that paper clip was the most valuable thing she’d ever owned. But I couldn’t stop thinking: If only she knew what was coming. If only she knew why I wouldn’t pull over. If only she knew that I wanted to take her out for ice cream—just the two of us—maybe she would have gotten excited. Maybe she would have forgotten about that stupid paper clip. I had something in store for her that was so much better than a milligram of bent wire. But that bent wire was her heart’s desire. She could see nothing else.
I was contemplating this to myself and I realized, holy cow, God. I’m no better than my toddler.
I am essentially riding around in life’s car seat, clutching tight to my precious paper clips, and raging at you when one falls out of my hands. My writing job changes, but I liked my job. A speaking gig falls between my fingers, but it’s the one I was most excited about. My husband changes as a human, but I was comfortable with who he was. “My paper clips, God! Pull over and let me collect them! PULL OVER GOD WAAAAAAAH!”
All the while you are watching my tears from the front seat, waiting for the wailing to stop so you can tell me MY DAUGHTER. Let go of that trinket. Stop your crying. I have something better just up ahead. So, God. I just want you to know that, in this one small way, my Mama heart understood a little more about your Daddy heart today.
To be honest, I don’t want to lose any of the things I hold unto so tightly. My youth, my writing career, my children being little, my marriage being comfortable. But, if change must happen, I pray you comfort my heart and remind me that Your plans are for my good.
And remind me that for goodness sake, if I can just stop wailing over lost paper clips for one stinking minute, You’ve been trying to take me out for ice cream. I think this was a prayer. Perhaps a revelation. Maybe more of a brain dump. Either way, I feel a little closer to you tonight, God.And I think that deserves an “amen”.
This touched me so much because it is something we all do. We all want what we want and we don’t understand when we can’t have it. We can’t see that God has something better in store because we are too caught up in mourning the loss of the thing we didn’t get or the thing we lost. Jeremiah 29:11 says, “ 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.” Most of us know this, we believe this, and yet, when it comes time to trust in this, it is really hard. We like things comfortable, we like things to stay the same. When we are praying we may say that we want this job if it is according to God’s will and yet we really mean we really want the job because we want it. We want to want what God wants, and yet we don’t want to give up on what we want. We have all heard the phrase when one door closes another one opens. But, what do we do while we wait for that other door to open? What if it doesn’t open for a few months or a year. We have a sister Katie that was a member here and moved away. She has been looking for a job for a very long time and I don’t know if she has found one yet or not. How do we continue to trust that the Lord has amazing things planned for us when we have been waiting so long?
There is an article that I will put a link to in the show notes titled When God’s Timing is Taking Too Long by Joyce Meyers. (CLICK HERE for article) This articles talks about how God uses this waiting period to stretch our faith in Him and to bring about change and growth in our lives. Joyce outlines 4 ways to make this waiting time easier. First, she talks about Waiting with Patience. You will be waiting anyway, so do you want to be miserable while you wait, or do you want to try and enjoy the wait. Patience is a virtue and it is also a fruit of the Spirit. It is developed under trial, so we can’t avoid difficult circumstances if we want to grow in patience. This is why people say not to pray for more patience, because as soon as you do you will find yourself stuck in a situation that helps your develop more patience, like sitting in traffic.
The second thing is to Accept God’s Timing. This is not easy, but it is necessary. Joyce states that although it is frustrating, not knowing God’s time might be the thing that keeps us in the game. If we knew how long it would take, we might give up. Do you think the Israelites would have left Egypt if they knew they were going to wander in the desert for 40 years? Joyce said, “We know that God's plan for our lives is good, and when we entrust ourselves to Him, we can experience total peace and happiness.” The third things she talks about is Learning to Rely on God. Proverbs 16:9 says, “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” and Proverbs 20:24 says “Man's steps are ordered by the Lord. How then can a man understand his way?” We don’t always understand the way that God is leading us. It doesn’t always make sense to us and if we try to understand we can struggle and get confused and frustrated. A better way is described in Proverbs 3:5-6, “Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding. In all your ways know, recognize, and acknowledge Him, and He will direct and make straight and plain your paths.” We try to figure everything out ourselves. Sometime, often times, we need to just lean in and trust that God has got this. He has always taken care of us in the past and He will continue to do so.
The last thing that Joyce talks about is From Seedtime to Harvest Time. Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us: To everything there is a season, and a time for every matter or purpose under heaven. We will not all be in the same season at the same time. We don’t need to be jealous if we see someone else enjoying harvest while we are still planting. We all go through these different seasons. They went through a season of planting before their harvest and you will go through a season of harvest too. There was a lot more detail in this article so I hope you will take some time to read the whole article. God is in control, we don’t have to understand it all, we just need to learn to trust and to have patience while we wait. Our lives are like a mystery unfolding before our very eyes. Who doesn’t like a mystery?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we know that you want what is best for us. Help us to be patient and joyfully wait for your timing. Help us to loosen our grip on the things we want and accept when you have something better planned for us. Lord, help us to see that if you are closing one door, you are opening a better door. Help us seek out growth in our relationship with you Lord. Help us to not avoid difficult situations but instead enter into them knowing you are with us and you are leading us to growth. We are so grateful for all you do for us. We love you Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to let you know about a change I am making to this podcast starting next week. At the beginning of March I am going to start having “Witness Wednesdays.” We have all experienced God working in our lives. We need to talk about those experiences more. We need to share them with others. These miracles can be used for the Glory of God, but only if we share them. We all have a story. Actually, we all probably have a lot of stories. I am helping to lead a Life in the Spirit Seminar and each week someone gives a witness of how God has worked in their lives. Seeing these each week has helped me realize that we all need to be talking about when we have witnessed God in our lives. So, each Wednesday, instead of a regular episode, the episode will be about someone’s witness statement about how God is working in their lives. If you would like to give me your witness, I would love to record it. You can email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow! Have a blessed day!