Verse of the Week
The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.
John 10:3-4
John 10:3-4
Phrase of the Week
Listen Up
#ListenUp
To be perfectly honest, when beginning to read What Happens When Women Say Yes to God, I was at a bit of a standstill in my walk with the Lord. Being “churched” so-to-speak my whole life, I had grown up hearing of these wonderful, beautiful experiences people would have in their alone time with the Lord. How “visions of rapture would burst on their sight” or something like that. Man, I wanted that kind of prayer life so bad. When I prayed, I could hear things God might say, or could say, but I was never really sure if it was Him, or this personality I had given to Him because of what I’d heard about Him. This is usually how I’d do one-on-one time with the Lord.
- Sit down somewhere secluded
- Pull out my bible and prayer journal
- Ask God to help me understand what I was about to read
- Start reading in some random book
- Remember that I don’t want to just read about Him, I want to know about Him
- Guilt for not praying first and just trying to learn head knowledge about God instead of talking to Him
- Ask God to forgive me for being selfish
- Guilt for being selfish
- Ask God to speak to me as I pray, wisdom for my classes, help for my problems
- Guilt for asking for help for myself and not others
- Ask God to give me wisdom on how to love those around me
- Silence.
- Repeat: “Give me wisdom on how to love those around me” (or something along those lines)
- Silence.
- Frustration that God promised everyone could enter into the Holy of Holies, and yet He’s not communicating with me, so I’m clearly not there
- Remembered that talking with God is a two way street, so I need to stop talking, and just listen
- Tries to focus on what God would say
- Mind wanders to something completely off topic
- Guilt for not being able to hear Him
- Frustration that I fail to understand Him
- Frustration that He’s being illusive
- Close bible, chunk it on my dresser, and avoid it for a few days because I don’t want to go through the cycle of guilt and frustration all over again.
Man, what a rut to be in! It is truly miserable.
I had talked to my mom about this a few weeks before I started school, and we decided to stand on the promise in Matthew 7.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”That gave me a lot of hope and encouragement, because this was a promise, and God was always faithful to His promises…at least that’s what I’d always heard. So when my prayer time with God was being derailed and I walked away from seeking God feeling more drained and more shameful than I did before I started praying, I was baffled!
“God! You promised this! You promised, remember? You said everyone who asks receives. I’ve been asking, and have had very little receiving! What am I doing wrong??”
And that’s exactly what it became. What have I done wrong? What more can I do to make Jesus want to spend time with me? Obviously, I haven’t prayed long enough (because praying felt like pulling teeth), I haven’t read enough of my bible today, I probably responded a little too loudly when so-and-so said such-and-such, blah blah blah. That’s exactly how my perception of God went. It became so works driven. God is so pure and holy that He can’t use me until my life is holy like His. Then the days I did have an experience with Him, I accredited it to how good I had done that day. But by the next morning when I tried talking to Him again, the separation was back.
To me, hearing God’s voice and being in His presence was like this... Jesus is on top of a mountain. I am at the base of the mountain. I climb and climb and work to get to where He is. After I’ve finally worked hard enough, I get this beautiful time with Him where He speaks to me and it’s awesome. But then, I slide down the mountain because I’ve failed Him somehow. So, I have to start all over and it’s slippery and I’m tired and I want to do right, but it’s always an uphill battle and how is this enjoyable to anyone and God is supposed to be so good and faithful and help His children but right now I’m just exhausted. I long for Him so badly, but there’s always this separation when I can’t make it up the mountain.
In a story in Exodus 23, the children of Israel are crossing the Jordan for the first time. God is telling them how great the place He’s prepared for them is. It is this Promised Land. They will be His people, and He will be their God. Sounds awesome. Check out how he tells them to enter.
“See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him. If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out. Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred stones to pieces. Worship the LORD your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span.”So God will go before them, and take out the “ites” (work with me here, those are some weird names.) To do it, He will send some hornets out in front of them. But get this: He won’t let them inherit the entire land all at once, He’s gonna move them forward little by little. This is so the population could increase enough to fill that piece of land, for protection from wild animals and other dangers. Then, God would drive the hornets a little further into the land, and allow the Israelites to gain more of Canaan. Little by little, as their strength grew, they would inherit the full promise.
“I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run. I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way. But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.”
Whoa. Let’s think about it. Maybe I shouldn’t view my relationship with Jesus as me always fighting up the mountain to seek His presence, failing miserably in my humanity and sliding back down, always yearning for more.
Maybe it’s like this...
God walks us to the border of the Promise. He reminds us He’ll never leave us to fight on our own. He reminds us of our responsibility to follow and obey Him. Then, He tells us He’ll fight every battle for us, we just have to walk behind Him. So we head on in. It’s going good. The Promised Land is awesome. I’m settling in, enjoying the abundance when I notice God is standing off in the distance.
“Wait, Lord! Where’d you go?? I can’t see you anymore!”Maybe the separation we feel when we ask God to be near isn’t because we failed Him and fell down the mountain. Maybe it’s Him stepping further back into the Promise, saying, “Come on kiddo. You can do it. Come closer into what I have promised for you.”
“Just take another step in!”
“But I can’t feel you like I used to…”
“Just come get close to me. There’s so much here you haven’t discovered yet!”
I felt so much guilt in coming before the Lord that I never even had a chance to hear what He wanted to say. Guilt is such a lie from the enemy. It keeps us from restoring friendships, following dreams God planted in our hearts, and walking in the true freedom and promise He intends for us to walk in. Discovering this revolutionized the way I came before the Lord. He wasn’t mad at me, He wasn’t ignoring me, He wasn’t disappointed that I wasn’t perfect. The feeling of longing that I had for His presence was just proof that there was more Promise for me to walk into.
Week 3 Discussion
Go to the Facebook group to join the group discussion.
- There are five questions that the author uses to help her determine if what she is hearing is from God or not. One of those questions is, "Is it consistent with God's character". How do we know if something is consistent with God's character?
- Another question that the author asks is: "Is it beyond me." God frequently asks us to do things that are beyond us. How can we embrace those "God Sized Dreams" or those things that make us say, "You want me to do what" without fear or worry?
- Maybe you can relate to Lexa's story. Maybe you are in a similar place. Maybe this book is stressing you out because you want to say Yes to God, but you just don't feel like He is speaking to you. Or maybe your relationship with God is great and your quiet time is full of hearing from God! Whichever camp your in at the moment, share with the group something that you took from Lexa's story and how we can ALL apply it to our own walk with the Lord.
Lexa is a sophomore at the University of Central Arkansas, where she is studying Education and Kinesiology.
Her favorite things include sports, Jesus, and smoothies.
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