Friday, August 9, 2013

God's Direction




Proverbs 3:5-6
5.Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding 
6. In all they ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.


I had to share something with my daughter about someone and when I saw the look on her face I told her, "Don't be mad or upset. You just need to know." And when the opportunity presents itself I instructed her how to make a clear point and move on, without a major confrontation, or arguing.  I knew before talking to her that it might upset her a little bit.  I could have chosen to let her being a little upset stop me from giving her some information and teaching that will help her in her current situation and throughout life. My history with God lets me know that God is going to talk to her a lot more than I did.  He's going to continue the teaching and do a much better job because He's always with her, and I'm not. After talking with her I was able to understand so much more about God's direction in our lives.

When God shows you something concerning someone that you NEED TO SEE, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT get angry with that person over what God showed you.  This is one of the ways that God directs your path. He's showing you something that will help you to know how to navigate your next series of steps. He's giving you a heads up of how you need to deal with or respond to this person. He's showing you something that will prevent an emotional shipwreck in the future. His revealing this to you is really teaching you something that if applied, can help you not only with the current situation, but throughout life. 

A major problem we can create when God reveals something to us is to become angry with the person or fall into a pit of hurt feelings.  By doing this we take our focus and attention off of the Teacher. He may still want to open our understanding even more about something or someone but because we've turned our attention to our negative emotions, we miss the whole lesson.

What I've learned about God is that whenever He reveals something to ME it is ultimately not about the other person, but about ME. God is helping ME, teaching and training ME. By using what He shows me in the way He is trying to teach me, it increases wisdom within me.  It prevents me from hopping onto an emotional roller coaster with the devil over other people's issues.  He doesn't show us things so that we can make their issue our issue. He doesn't show us things so that we can take it and gossip, pick a fight, become angry and bitter, or even start to think less of someone else, although most of the time we experience some of these.  But it's for our education, for increase of our understanding in simply how to deal with people on a day to day basis. Sometimes what God shows us will reveal an enemy, but it's never to create enemies, and sometimes it is meant to help you maintain a relationship instead of losing one. The Holy Spirit is our Teacher, and our Guide and I'm finding that when it comes to relationships we need more teaching and guidance than in any other area of our lives. This is true even in our relationships with ourselves because when I'm alone, I get to know who I really am, what I really like or don't like, etc, so in essence I discover myself and learn how to treat myself according to that knowledge. Without a healthy relationship with myself based on knowledge of who I really am I can not communicate to someone else how to be in a healthy relationship with me, because neither of us will know who I really am!

I can think of several instances in my life when God was trying to get me to listen to Him about people, but I didn't.  I bulldozed right over what He was showing me clear as day.  He was pointing things out to me regularly but I refused to follow His lead and I can tell you now, that every single relationship I did that with, ended up severed. I can't speak for them. I have no clue if He was speaking to them about me, but I know for certain what He was saying to me about how to deal with each of them. Had I listened and obeyed I'm completely sure that things would have turned out differently. Even if we had still gone our separate ways, it wouldn't have involved so much drama and hurt. Yes my immediate obedience would have inconvenienced my feelings a little at first, but I'm a strong woman and I would have gotten over it. The Lord does with us what I had to do with my daughter.  He places the lesson higher than how we will feel when we have to learn it, because He knows that the outcome will be so much greater and better for us than what we are trying to pacify ourselves with right now.

Refer back to the scripture, Trust in the Lord with all thine heart. Trust Him to know what He's talking about when He's talking about that which HE created. Trust Him to know what He's doing when He directs your path differently than you were expecting.  Trust that the pinch you feel in your emotions right now is so much better than the major blow your heart will take if you keep doing things your way. (leaning to your own understanding) Trust Him to direct you in every relationship you are involved in. Trust that with God, direction often looks more like redirection, but as long as it's all God, it's all good! Trust that God's motive for anything He shows you is for your GAIN, even if for a moment you feel or experience loss.




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