Coach's CornerDecember 2013
“How pathetic when you don’t know what to do.” How hard when your questions are met with judgment and disapproval rather than encouragement and useful advice. Our reaction can be to feel down, like I did, or we can seek from the source of all wisdom (and different advisors) who give without making you feel bad. If that friend had remembered her first child, she might have been able to say more humbly, “There are many days when we feel like we don’t know what to do. And it s really hard… but there is One who helps and when we take one step after another, somehow we get where we are going.” I also hope that we will learn from those stinging kind of words how to “call back” in a more helpful way ourselves.
“But I can’t hear His Voice.” His Word says that His sheep hear His voice and obey. “You mean God is even big enough and powerful enough to even be able to make ME hear His Voice?” What a revelation — that when we begin expressing how big our mountains are, we are actually saying how small our God is! Sometimes we feel totally deaf, but God says, Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” Whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left. (Isaiah 30:21). Remember, when you face one of your mountains, like how to discipline; how to raise our finest treasure, my “call back” is to believe God’s Word not your feelings. Let the words of your mouth and the meditation of your heart line up with His Word. Declare His Truth not our false feelings and unbelief. Sometimes it is hard to hear our very mouths call back the wrong things. (Better to hear it and see it so it can be changed rather than remain in the dark to our own wrong concepts.) It is so good to have friends and advisors who will be brave enough to “call back” to us to make words line up with God’s Word and declare His Truth even when we don’t see it. Remember: we walk by faith not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7).
How do I teach my children to know God and not just His rules? Unless the Father draws us, we cannot come. (John 6:44). How do I believe God can do this for my child when I don’t really know that I know God more than a list of rules? One Call Back I heard was that each of us can choose to cooperate with God (as God draws us) in getting to know God by one of three paths: through Honesty with Him about our needs and sin and His Truth, or by Faith (which comes from hearing the Word of God and obeying), and by Love (the more we are forgiven the more we love as we saw in Mary’s life and in obeying His commands.)
My path seems to be a combination of the three in seeking to find God’s direction. Often praying to hear the still small Voice behind me. When my spiritual deafness seemed to threaten even my believing enough to ask, He proved He would speak and He proved I would hear (for He even makes the deaf to hear) and my choice was to obey. But how very precious to find out that while I went through life seeking, God led me. My closest moments to God have been when I had surrendered my dearest desires to what I felt God wanted me to do. Then, many times, I stepped forward still uncertain of His path but trusting somehow He would guide. He led me step by step to trust Him as I prayed to do His Will and not mine. It must be something that puts a smile on His face when a child of His seeks and fights to obey. It must please Him enough for Him to move Heaven and Earth to get that child on the right path where she cannot possibly miss God’s will. He closes the wrong doors and opens the correct doors and no one can stop His beloved and willing child from finding His path. From all my days of walking with the Father, I can call back to you: He is Faithful and True. Faithful is the ONE who walked the path before us. True is every Word He has spoken. The walk is certainly a challenge, and it leads to a cross where our willful, sinful self must surrender and find forgiveness, and where our will and lack of righteousness is sacrificed and traded for His perfect will and life. AND oh the beauty and truth of His Call Back:
He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it (1 Thessalonians 5:24).