Confirmation…

There’s a hymn that came to my mind while writing this post:

I can hear my Savior calling,
I can hear my Savior calling,
I can hear my Savior calling,
“Take thy cross and follow, follow Me.”

Where He leads me I will follow,
Where He leads me I will follow,
Where He leads me I will follow,
I’ll go with Him, with Him all the way.

God is so very real. He desires to lead His people to the best pasture land He has for us. In order for us to get to that place we have to walk the narrow path He has laid out for us. This can be a rocky, uphill battle for us to walk. One in which we can’t see the next step. We have to walk by faith as God wants to confirm things for us to do through His Word or by opening and closing doors for us instead of us moving and making decisions based on our feelings. Instead of leaning upon our understanding, we’re to trust the Lord with all our hearts as Solomon wrote in Proverbs 3:5-6. I’m reading a book on the mind right now and it speaks of pitfalls we can fall into and how we are to be aware of the enemy’s tactics. If we’re constantly leading ourselves by own understanding we’ve lost the battle. As Christians we’re to walk in the Spirit not in the flesh. If we’re making decisions based on what we think with our minds, our own reasoning, or our feelings instead of the Spirit more often than not this will make us miss the will of God. This is not the will of God for us. Sometimes we know too much. God wants us to trust His leading. Rely upon Him. Not be double-minded. Follow the doors instead of making plans and opening our own doors. God knows the end from the beginning. We as people are just passing through here. We aren’t always supposed to be living just comfortably by how we see things. Sometimes the will of God takes us out of our comfort zones. And we’re supposed to be OK with that because this place is not our home. Yes God wants us to prosper in our lives to show a lost and dying world we serve a real God. Sometimes that journey will lead us down paths that are not comfortable walking down.

I can give you an example in my own life. In 2013 I started subbing in the Juvenile Facility as a district employee for the school system. I can remember getting the first call for a job in that school. I was unsure I wanted to work in that place because I was frightened by thinking this was jail for teens and I wasn’t sure how it would be. I don’t remember if I took that first call or if I waited and received another call for a job in that facility. But when I started working there it felt right. I was placed in 2 classes for the day. One class was a Science class where the boys where in a building for lock-down mode and the other classes in the regular building for an English class to sub as an assistant. I liked that school so much in fact I got hired by the district to work there full time. I worked there for like 2 and half years before the district made changes and moved everyone around. I remember I had to learn how to communicate with the kids in that facility. I spent a lot of time praying about it and allowing God to teach me a way that would connect with them. Once I did I had so many opportunities to share the love of Christ with them. To even pray with them. I absolutely loved it.  I knew I was called there but I didn’t truly know until God started speaking my book A Life Redone to me while I was there. In that facility during work He spoke to me as I witnessed kids doing things I remembered I had done when I was their age and it was also then that He spoke to me in the middle of the night when I had a notebook next to my bed to write on when He’d wake me up. It was being faithful with the little I had been given at work so He gave me more at night.

Before I had started working in the juvenile facility that school year I had gone to a women’s conference the summer before with ladies from my church. I went with an expectation to hear from the Lord. He spoke directly from the speaker right into my life and told to write that book I had been thinking about writing for a few years. I remember thinking I had no idea how I would do that. I guess I may have prayed about it but I don’t remember giving too much thought because it seemed an impossible task for me to do. It was that next school year that He placed to me work in an English class with an English teacher to complete that task.

I had another opportunity recently to experience God confirming right from His Word what it was that I should do. He confirmed this 3 separate times in different ways and all I had to do was ask Him to do that. I think God takes us from ‘glory to glory’ teaching us things or reteaching us things as we allow Him to. If we we are confused that is not of God. We could say that confusion makes us a double-minded person. James 1:8 says that a double-minded person is unstable in all they do.

Ask God to lead you in your decsions and then be still and follow His leading. The Bible says we are ‘to be still and know that He is God’ not be still and know that I am God; to push through my own understanding and strength to complete what I think is right is not His will (Psalm 46:10). I am to follow His path that He leads me on and lean upon Him so that in my weakness He is strong (2 Cor 12:9). Then He gets the glory, not me.