Walk Boldly With Jesus

What Is My Next Step?

Episode Summary

Psalm 43:3-4 “Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling! Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.” This episode talks about how God reveals your steps one at a time and what to do when you aren't sure what to do. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Episode Notes

What Is My Next Step?

Psalm 43:3-4 “Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling!  Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.”

I love the idea of the Lord leading us with His light and His truth.  What I like most about it is that His light can cut through any darkness and His truth can cut through any lies, even the ones that we tell ourselves.  These two things are so important for us to remember.  We can start to feel as if our hole is so dark no light will ever get in.  God’s light can always get it.  We have to let it in though.  We can get in our own way sometimes.  Picture yourself sitting in a room with the shades drawn and the lights off.  You are complaining that it is so dark you can’t see anything and yet, you don’t turn the light on or even open the shades.  We do this to God too.  We sit in our misery and we don’t invite Him in.  He is knocking at the door, but we are too sad, too upset, too angry, too whatever to open the door.  We don’t let Him in and then we ask Him where His is.  

One way we might not be letting in His light is that we may not be seeking Him.  God can be found anywhere and everywhere if we are searching.  If we are looking we can learn to see His light all around us.  However, if we aren’t looking we won’t see it.  No matter how bright His light is, if you don’t want to see it, you won’t.  You will make every excuse in the book but you won’t recognize God’s light.  The first thing we can do to let the Lord’s light into our lives is we can seek it.  

The next thing we can do is to be around others that can help us see it.  When we are upset, we tend to want to either be alone, or surrounded with others that are feeling similar to us.  We don’t want to watch happy movies, or listen to uplifting music.  We want to wallow in our feelings.  This can be ok for a brief amount of time.  Sometimes we really need to let ourselves feel our feelings.  However, we can't stay there.  It should be more of a brief pit stop than an extended stay.  After our brief pit stop, we need to be around others that can help us see the light.  If we don’t have people like that in our immediate circle we can use uplifting movies, TV shows, or music.   Even just being around people that are filled with the light of the Lord can help lift our mood.  Sometimes they don’t even have to say anything.  You know the person I am talking about.  That friend of yours who brightens your whole day just by being with you.  Maybe it’s your spouse, your parents, your sibling, your best friend, whoever it is, we should all have someone like that in our lives and when we are in the dark, looking for the light, they are the ones to go to.  Also, if you are not in the darkness right now, maybe you could be the light for someone right now.  God wants us to share His light with one and all.  Sometimes we need help seeing the light and sometimes we are the ones to bring that light to others.

When we are asking the Lord to send His light to lead us, sometimes we are disappointed with the way He does this.  When we ask Him to send His light what we really mean is for Him to send a floodlight that will light our way for the next 5-10 years.  We want to be able to see from where we are to where we are going. We want to see all the twists and turns. We want to see the finish line now so we know it is safe to follow that light.  This is not how the Lord usually works.  He sends His light more in the form of a candle or a flashlight.  He lights up your next step or two and then you are in the dark until you take that next step.  He doesn’t want us to rely on what we can see.  If we could see every step, every twist, every turn, then we wouldn’t be stepping out in faith.  If we faithfully take that next right step that the Lord lit up for us then He will light up the next step for us.  Your steps might not be too close together either.  You may spend sometime waiting in-between steps.  This waiting can be hard because we don’t always know how long we will have to wait for and while we are awaiting we are not necessarily hearing from God everyday.  

I saw a video on Youtube once with Father Mike Schmitz and he said he is constantly asked, “what does God want me to do?” (CLICK HERE for video) I will put a link to this video in the show notes because it was a quick 6 minute video and yet he explains it so well.  Basically what Father Mike explained is that God shows us what He wants us to do one step at a time.  Father Mike said we think we are seeking certainty or clarity, but what we are really wanting is God’s constant reassurance that we are going in the right direction.  He said that God’s never going to ask you to make a decisions with your vocation or what he’s call you to based of of what he hasn’t revealed to you.  God has revealed to us the way God wants us to live, the commandments, the sacraments, the beatitudes.

In the verse above it asks God to send out His light and His truth and to let them lead me.  Father Mike is saying, God gave us His truth.  We can let that lead us to where we are going and let that truth help us to take the next right step.  If God is not lighting up your next step for you, that doesn’t mean He has abandoned you, it means he wants you to stay where you are until He gives you the next right step.  Father Mikes gives us an invitation in the video and I want to pass that invitation on to you.  His invitation for you today is “to be content and confident to live in uncertainty.”  Or a better way to say it is “To live with a certainty that God has already given to you, to live with the clarity that he’s already spoken in.”  You know what He wants you do.  Micah 6:8 says, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”  God has already told you what He wants you to do and when He calls you to move forward, He will speak with clarity and that question will always have confirmation.  This doesn’t mean He is going to tell you the next five steps, just that next step.

Father Mike talks about how when the Angel came to Mary to ask if she would be the mother of the Jesus, and she said, “Behold, I’m the handmaiden of the Lord.  May it be done unto me according to your word.”  The very next line says, “Then the angel departed from her.”  Mary was asked to answer this one question, will you be the Mother of God?  Then the angel disappeared.  God’s certainty isn’t telling us all the future steps, God’s certainty is “I will be with you.”  Just stay on the path He has revealed to you until He asks you to turn.  I know waiting can be uncomfortable and the unknown is really hard sometimes.  However, Father Mike is telling us that if you aren’t hearing anything from God on your next step then He isn’t asking you to take one.  If God is wanting you to pivot in direction or take a different turn in your life, He will reveal that to you.  If not, keep heading in the same direction with the certainty that God is with you and if He wanted you to do something different He would let you know.  I will leave you with Father Mike’s call to us.  Can you be content and confident to live in the uncertainty?  Can you live with the certainty that God has already given to you, to live with the clarity that he’s already spoken in?

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today.  Lord, send us your light and your truth.  Help us to follow them to wherever you want us to go.  Lord, help us to  be ok with not knowing all the steps.  Help us to just take that next right step. Help us to be ok with following your light, even if it is one step at a time.  Help us to live in your truth for the times when you just want us to keep going forward.  We love you Lord, we are so grateful for your light, especially in the dark times.  We are grateful that you light and your truth break through any darkness and any lies that we find ourselves in.  You are amazing 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 look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow.  Have a blessed day!