Truths
In my old Bible is a ton of handwriting. It is full of notes describing my fears, anxieties, praises, prophecies whispered to me, and the accounts of the risks of faith...stepping out on a faint impression...I have taken. All my little notes are dated.
I started doing this sometime around the summer of 1998, when God miraculously saved our marriage. Shortly after that, God impressed upon me to quit my job and start my own environmental consulting company. We had three kids under the age of four at the time! Because I have the world's most amazing wife, I did it. That initiated the most exciting and scary part of my life up until that time.
This morning, I opened up my old Bible, and remembered how many little dates and notes were chronicled in there. There are a ton of notes from 2002 through 2006... the height of my anxiety over money, as the business, one of my first big risks in listening to God, spit and sputtered. I recorded how, at God's clear direction, we put our old house up for sale in 2006, and waited...and waited... and waited...until 2008, when it finally sold. Several times I had recorded that I wanted to take it off the market, and God clearly told me "no" it will sell when the time is right (two years is a painfully long time to show a house with three little kids living in it!). It sold, in an ironic twist only God could fully appreciate, at the height of the housing crash in the fall of 2008.
I recorded my dad's death in early 2005, noting how I believed that the previous year had been so hard and a more peaceful year MUST lay ahead of me...only to see more notes about the oppressive financial situation we found ourselves in later that year, with literally no income for the last half of that year. I could go on and on...
It is no coincidence these notes were in my Bible. This was the time of life I really learned to get direction from God through longer and longer mornings talking to Him with a Bible open on my lap in a nearly silent house. It was His love and mercy that was driving the events that woke me up early, my Bible open on my lap, pen in hand. While several friends and family wondered (sometimes out loud) why I wasn't "fixing" these situations, God was quietly chronicling through my hand a history of hearing Him, trusting him (mostly), and then seeing Him...over what seemed like too long of a time at the time...resolving these very situations that caused me so much anxiety.
What God has revealed to me are some things I never grabbed onto as a kid. Maybe no one ever told me this, and maybe they did, but I never heard them:
1. God had a perfect plan for me in mind when He created me, but it doesn't look perfect in the incremental steps, and He doesn't force me to walk in it. I can pick any life I want.
The Bible says that God individually fashioned my heart:
Psalms 33:15 He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works.
2. That means that He hid things in my heart...longings, dreams, desires... that, if I will listen to and obey Him, He will satisfy fully. Most of the world is frustrated because God planted a desire for greatness in them that can only be unlocked in agreement with His plans for them.
3. Because the world is fallen, and walks contrary to agreeing with God, this perfect plan formed for me doesn't make a lot of sense from the world's perspective.
Isaiah 55:8-9 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord . “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.
4. Only Jesus sees my whole plan...so I really need to take my cues for right and left turns...stops and starts...from Him. He brings people in and out of my life that know Him and can encourage me...but He is really the only one who knows what things I should do, and when I should do them.
5. His perfect plan is up to me to choose. If I never stop and bring Jesus into my internal conversation, I am actually choosing to ignore His plan and walk in my own plan. I can do this, and the whole time keep asking Him to bless my own plan...there is a huge difference between asking Him to bless my plan and actually walking in His plan.
6. I choose His perfect plan by choosing Him...making Him the leader of my life. When a situation that needs some deciding presents itself, I ask Him what to do. Then I listen. He rarely makes the answer clear...usually a faint impression. Sometimes opening to some seemingly random page in the Bible that directly speaks into my situation...sometimes a principle He highlights in His word...like "wait," or "trust," or "move," or "forgive"...sometimes it is a promise given centuries ago to some man or woman in the Bible that I hear Him whisper into my heart, too. Then...and this is "stuff" of faith...
7.I actually make decisions based on these faint whispers. Faith should be spelled RISK. This takes a lot of talking and listening to Jesus...I have come to realize that He generally likes the vagueness because it makes me listen closer. I am interested in the destination, but Jesus is interested in the conversation...He is already quite sure of the destination :)
There are many more promises I have heard Him whisper coming up in my future...all of them are "yes" and "amen" in the areas I have chosen to walk in agreement with Jesus...I am not sure how many I have missed by not choosing to listen and obey...
My obedience doesn't really help Jesus' future at all...He is going to get everything whether I do or not. Obedience is what keeps my feet on His path. I am free to wander anywhere I like, but only one path is perfect, and it is called the "narrow road." All the other paths let my flesh feel free for a moment, but they frustrate my heart, because, despite all their promises, they never satisfy what is hidden there.
The narrow road calls my flesh to take a step down, but it let's my heart soar in amazing satisfaction. The awe and wonder...the sheer fascination available to me as I see God's whispers and impressions turn into real monuments in my life...this is what I was made for! I want more! I want more obedience, so I can walk more fully in the perfect path dreamed up for me in God's heart!
It is as easy as me talking to Him and Him talking to me!
John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
Matthew 7:14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.
John 14:15-18 “If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
I started doing this sometime around the summer of 1998, when God miraculously saved our marriage. Shortly after that, God impressed upon me to quit my job and start my own environmental consulting company. We had three kids under the age of four at the time! Because I have the world's most amazing wife, I did it. That initiated the most exciting and scary part of my life up until that time.
This morning, I opened up my old Bible, and remembered how many little dates and notes were chronicled in there. There are a ton of notes from 2002 through 2006... the height of my anxiety over money, as the business, one of my first big risks in listening to God, spit and sputtered. I recorded how, at God's clear direction, we put our old house up for sale in 2006, and waited...and waited... and waited...until 2008, when it finally sold. Several times I had recorded that I wanted to take it off the market, and God clearly told me "no" it will sell when the time is right (two years is a painfully long time to show a house with three little kids living in it!). It sold, in an ironic twist only God could fully appreciate, at the height of the housing crash in the fall of 2008.
I recorded my dad's death in early 2005, noting how I believed that the previous year had been so hard and a more peaceful year MUST lay ahead of me...only to see more notes about the oppressive financial situation we found ourselves in later that year, with literally no income for the last half of that year. I could go on and on...
It is no coincidence these notes were in my Bible. This was the time of life I really learned to get direction from God through longer and longer mornings talking to Him with a Bible open on my lap in a nearly silent house. It was His love and mercy that was driving the events that woke me up early, my Bible open on my lap, pen in hand. While several friends and family wondered (sometimes out loud) why I wasn't "fixing" these situations, God was quietly chronicling through my hand a history of hearing Him, trusting him (mostly), and then seeing Him...over what seemed like too long of a time at the time...resolving these very situations that caused me so much anxiety.
What God has revealed to me are some things I never grabbed onto as a kid. Maybe no one ever told me this, and maybe they did, but I never heard them:
1. God had a perfect plan for me in mind when He created me, but it doesn't look perfect in the incremental steps, and He doesn't force me to walk in it. I can pick any life I want.
The Bible says that God individually fashioned my heart:
Psalms 33:15 He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works.
2. That means that He hid things in my heart...longings, dreams, desires... that, if I will listen to and obey Him, He will satisfy fully. Most of the world is frustrated because God planted a desire for greatness in them that can only be unlocked in agreement with His plans for them.
3. Because the world is fallen, and walks contrary to agreeing with God, this perfect plan formed for me doesn't make a lot of sense from the world's perspective.
Isaiah 55:8-9 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord . “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.
4. Only Jesus sees my whole plan...so I really need to take my cues for right and left turns...stops and starts...from Him. He brings people in and out of my life that know Him and can encourage me...but He is really the only one who knows what things I should do, and when I should do them.
5. His perfect plan is up to me to choose. If I never stop and bring Jesus into my internal conversation, I am actually choosing to ignore His plan and walk in my own plan. I can do this, and the whole time keep asking Him to bless my own plan...there is a huge difference between asking Him to bless my plan and actually walking in His plan.
6. I choose His perfect plan by choosing Him...making Him the leader of my life. When a situation that needs some deciding presents itself, I ask Him what to do. Then I listen. He rarely makes the answer clear...usually a faint impression. Sometimes opening to some seemingly random page in the Bible that directly speaks into my situation...sometimes a principle He highlights in His word...like "wait," or "trust," or "move," or "forgive"...sometimes it is a promise given centuries ago to some man or woman in the Bible that I hear Him whisper into my heart, too. Then...and this is "stuff" of faith...
7.I actually make decisions based on these faint whispers. Faith should be spelled RISK. This takes a lot of talking and listening to Jesus...I have come to realize that He generally likes the vagueness because it makes me listen closer. I am interested in the destination, but Jesus is interested in the conversation...He is already quite sure of the destination :)
There are many more promises I have heard Him whisper coming up in my future...all of them are "yes" and "amen" in the areas I have chosen to walk in agreement with Jesus...I am not sure how many I have missed by not choosing to listen and obey...
My obedience doesn't really help Jesus' future at all...He is going to get everything whether I do or not. Obedience is what keeps my feet on His path. I am free to wander anywhere I like, but only one path is perfect, and it is called the "narrow road." All the other paths let my flesh feel free for a moment, but they frustrate my heart, because, despite all their promises, they never satisfy what is hidden there.
The narrow road calls my flesh to take a step down, but it let's my heart soar in amazing satisfaction. The awe and wonder...the sheer fascination available to me as I see God's whispers and impressions turn into real monuments in my life...this is what I was made for! I want more! I want more obedience, so I can walk more fully in the perfect path dreamed up for me in God's heart!
It is as easy as me talking to Him and Him talking to me!
John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
Matthew 7:14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.
John 14:15-18 “If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
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