What a powerful verse to kick off this morning with!
So many times in life we are in a point of...wandering... I know I've mentioned many times here that Andy and I have been feeling that sense of needing to be open to God's desires for us. I know we all ask at more than one junction in life "what is God's Will for me?" And then we pray, and we read the Bible maybe a little, and we just wait. We continue on with life from day to day, certain that any day now, a voice is going to appear in our head and tell us what the next step should be. Or perhaps we're waiting for writing to appear in the sky, or even for someone to come up to us and say "Hey, I have a message for you from God." And while God can certainly use any of those means should he wish, the truth is, most often, when we're waiting for God to tell us something, He already has been, and we just haven't been hearing it.
God is our teacher. He will teach us how he chooses to talk with us, but first we have to go to him. Just like Peter in the boat a few days back, we have to make the choice that we want to hear God's voice in our lives. Once we are open to His voice and His will for us, it becomes much easier to hear what God is telling us. I decided that this year I was going to get closer to God, and along the way, I decided I wanted to hear His voice clear in my life. I thought I was waiting for that voice in my head. I wasn't hearing that voice, yet right here in the verse above it says God will direct us in the way we are to go. And you know what? He does.
For us, anyways, He's been using the people and situations around us to show us that it was time for a change. But we just weren't seeing it. We thought that the discomfort we were feeling and seeing was more like our "cross to bear" than a sign from God that it was time to change. Of course, in retrospect it's really a duh moment, because we can clearly see right where it all started, and we've been ignoring God for some time. Then this past weekend we were at a conference where we basically heard eight sermons in a row all telling us the same thing (even though, in reality, they were eight different sermons). That we hadn't been listening very well and that it was time for us to make that big change. Yikes! Talk about getting hit in the head! In this case, we heard God's Voice loud and clear through the men of God and the words that God gave them to speak to us.
God also gave us His Word to speak to us through. The precious Bible, I'll tell you, I can't count the number of times I've stumbled upon a verse that went straight through into my heart. That's God talking to me, sure enough.
" 15 Elisha said, "Get a bow and some arrows," and he did so. 16 "Take the bow in your hands," he said to the king of Israel. When he had taken it, Elisha put his hands on the king's hands.
17 "Open the east window," he said, and he opened it. "Shoot!" Elisha said, and he shot. "The LORD's arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Aram!" Elisha declared. "You will completely destroy the Arameans at Aphek."
18 Then he said, "Take the arrows," and the king took them. Elisha told him, "Strike the ground." He struck it three times and stopped. 19 The man of God was angry with him and said, "You should have struck the ground five or six times; then you would have defeated Aram and completely destroyed it. But now you will defeat it only three times." 1 Kings 13:15-19
This is one of the passages that spoke to me, because we see a man, a king here, not following God's directions fully. In verse eighteen, Elisha tells the king to shoot all his arrows into the ground. Silly as it was, the king decided to take his own way and only shoot three of his arrows into the ground. Had the king followed through on God's plans for him, he would have completely defeated the army before him. Instead, he followed his own ideas of what should be done, and instead, he faces an uncertain future, as he'll defeat the army three times, but not have the ultimate victory.
It hasn't been enough for us to do some of what God wants from us. It's interesting that as God has placed desires and ideas in our hearts, the desires and ideas have literally been impossible for the place that we are in. Yet, they are ideas and desires for the future that God has placed in our hearts. And until we find the place where we can fulfill what God has planned for us, we are no better than the king who couldn't follow directions.
Anytime God speaks to us, we have a choice to make. Do we follow his directions and what he is telling us? Or do we try to make our own path? Do we follow part of the way and then make up our own rules as we go? The Lord, our God will teach us what is best for us. I need to put my faith and trust in that and follow God's plan straight through. It may make me a little nervous, (okay, maybe a lot nervous), but I trust in God, that he is directing us in the right direction and he will not let us down. He has plans for us, and I can't wait to be doing what he wants us to do.
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