When God teaches us lessons, somethings they are learned quickly and other times not. God presents us with various lessons for various purposes in life. From personal experience, when I DON'T listen he has a way of MAKING ME listen! Some times, with gentle friendly reminders, a gentle push here and there and then if it's not happening in his time frame push comes to shoving so to speak. ESPECIALLY, when I ignore him out of fear or denial.
FEAR: It is a very real emotion and disabling condition. One can really lose out on some valuable lessons when thinking about the things that make us fear the unknown. Even with our trust in the Lord, fear can powerfully, lead us astray.
DENIAL: Personally, this is probably the worst for me, because I hear the Lord tell me what I need to do, but I don't want to do it possibly because of fear or being content in my current situation and don't want to change. More likely, fear of the unknown. In my personal experience this is where push comes to shoving.
Some examples - I was living in Chicago suburbs and working in Chicago. I enjoyed my job working with the members of my agency. God knew the commute was not good, the stress of my parent's house being unattended since my mother's passing. All of this took it's toll on my emotional and physical health. Ironically, 7 months after my mother's passing and 3 years since my father's, I was forced on to take a medical leave of absence from work by my doctor.
GRIEF: Since the passing of my father, I've basically been in denial and taking care of my mother the best I could. With my mother's passing, I fought as much as I could to avoid dealing with things that were before me to the point that grief and depression consumed my health.
Interesting enough, every plan I made kept falling apart. As part of my denial, I would plan things to keep me busy so I would not have to deal with it the emotions or the situation I had before me.
Was planning and OVER planning something God used to get my attention? Hmm...
Looking back over my life, there have been countless times I have had my whole life planned out the typical American dream or rights to passage. School, own apartment, marriage, house, family etc... The wonderful dreams and goals for life and happiness. All that changed in a split second, everything came crashing down. You could say I overlooked certain dependent variables... You could say that I tried to do too much in such a little time. (Multi tasking can't hurt, can it?) You could say it's just bad karma catching up with you... what ever the expression, excuse or reasoning you could come up with, is not as true as this one. God stood by me and was there for me, loved me, supported me, carried me through these rough times. GOD PREVAILED!!! Imagine that!
GOD PREVAILED!!!
Each time, each break down, each time I tried to plan my life... it became more and more apparent that even MY family and friends whom love me and care about me dearly... are of the flesh and failed me miserable because of their own lives and/or limitations. Just as I am sure I have failed them too with my life battles and limitations. I especially feel as if I failed my mother after my father's death because the commute from Chicago to Brookfield monthly was a bit much. Then adding working full-time. Whew!
You can plan your whole life. You can map out all the glory details down to the last penny you own. You can begin to work the plan, but I gotta tell ya, if it's not for God's purpose it's not going to work out! God has been trying to teach me this lesson for over 30-40 years now, I still seem to fail getting the whole concept down.
You know what, I find myself not wanting to plan too much. Or when I do start planning, I cram too much into one slot of time. I love the slang, kill two birds with one stone. That's something that I try to do a lot. I challenge myself to kill two or three even four birds with one stone. There we go again, the planning. Multi-taking is nice accomplishing things quickly is good... Today, I began to wonder... what am I running from? What am I afraid of? Is this over planning keeping me from facing something else? Some other unknown? My answer: YES.
ACCEPTANCE: Once I realized that and accepted it. Revamping my plans to simple accomplishments by doing less has really brought on a sense of peace. Do you suppose that God's been trying to tell me to keep it simple? Keep the planning simple. The details will fail into place themselves, and we will have time to observe and marvel at God working out the glory details for us. Hmm...
Let me tell you this, God is my beacon. And allowing him to guide me gives me so much peace. I just pray that I will continue to remember and apply what I've learned thus far. He never ceases to amaze me by what he does.
