Listen to what God has to say about your life

Isaiah 55:1-3 NIV

"Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me;
listen, that you may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David.

Our rebellious side might say why listen to God? For me the reason is that he can speak objective truth into our situation. What God says is a truth for all time and not a temporary fix. His universe is up and running and the laws that apply will continue to apply. Our God is both amazing and perplexing in that way.

The objective truth is still there for us even when circumstances change. To witness from my own life for example. Three weeks ago when I started this mini series on God's Plan I kind of knew which way I was going. Yet the circumstances of my life have changed since then. We have an issue with Debs visa to overcome and have temporarily dropped to one income. Now that all stems from a miscommunication somewhere along the line and needs to be sorted out. We are praying and listening for an answer but holding on to the objective truth that as husband and wife we need to live together. It might knock our faith a little but increases it when we come out the other side with a God blessed solution.

God's plan is the plan for your life but uniquely configured for you in version 1 which involves you and him! You need to align yourself with his personal plan for you. It uses all your strengths and can cover your weaknesses.

Yet when we go wrong he can and does bring us back on track when we turn back to him.

God's only law is love. That law governs the whole of creation and God himself. To love is to be a part of that. The personal bit comes out of how we exercise our free will to discover how and where to love and, of course who to love.

Because we have this free will each one of us also has the exciting prospect of discovering what our God given talents are and then stepping out in faith and using them.

We need to concentrate always on finding the most loving solution to our opportunities and our problems. That way we cause the least collateral damage whilst achieving the most personal growth.

Listening to God is done through living in his words in the Bible, with the help of those who can interpret and pray them with us.

Dear Lord, reveal your path for my life. Help me to walk your path in a way that is loving and unique for me. Amen

The Plan for Your Life (2) - Listen

Amos 5.14 Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the LORD God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts.

Last week I talked about the plan for your life. I said that the first stage of finding the plan for your life is to Listen to it. By that I mean to pause and ask yourself "what are the events and circumstances of my life saying to me?"

By doing this we introduce to ourselves a habit of self knowledge. It could be that you keep a journal and are already doing this to a point. But you can take things one step further and ask "Did I seek good today?" - it can be a revealing question. If we didn't seek good just how harmful have our actions been?

The reason people change when they encounter God is because he has a disconcerting tendency to hold a mirror up to our lives - so that we can see ourselves as others do. Sometimes we need to do that in order to recognise what is wrong with us as well as what is right with us. The mirror is there so that we can have enough self knowledge to want to change.

If we are struggling with addiction we can find that we haven't "sought good" because we are so busy looking to feed the addiction. It pushes our time for others out of the way.

But remember that the love that comes from God is a free gift for your life. You can exercise your own will as to whether to accept it. Let God in and he will bring you to an exciting new phase of your life.

There is a prayer that has helped a lot of people over the years.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The plan for your life

The truth is that God has a plan and a purpose that is unique to each one of us. God our creator doesn't want us all to be the same. He calls each one of us daily "out of darkness into his wonderful light." He wants us to be the best version of ourself that we can possibly manage. It might be very hard to believe that today. But take it on your heart.

On my Facebook profile is one of my favourite quotes from St Catherine of Siena."Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire." 

No matter whether your situation is desperate or wonderful. God wants to be able to speak into your life and guide you. No matter what you have done God has a rescuing plan for you to pluck you out of disaster or even from mediocrity.

The first step is to have the strength, or perhaps help from someone, to believe that God is your redeemer.
The next three steps are crucial

• Listen to your life
• Listen to what God has to say about your life
• Take action to change

In the next three weeks I will write more on each of those above subjects.

Meanwhile for reflection I will briefly share what is going on with me. God can be quite insistent to speak sometimes. This week he gave me a very vivid dream about a fire,and in the dream the reading I was given was Jeremiah 4. It wasn't a passage that I was familiar with so I went and looked it up. Here is an excerpt from it.

Circumcise yourselves to the Lord , circumcise your hearts, you people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, or my wrath will flare up and burn like fire because of the evil you have done— burn with no one to quench it. Jerusalem, wash the evil from your heart and be saved. How long will you harbour wicked thoughts? Jeremiah 4:4

Just to share with you I feel God is saying to me "put sin under lock" and then you will be able to move into the next phase in your life. That quote is from Daniel 10:21.God says "I have come to teach it to you because God loves you. Pay attention to this word and understand the vision"

I know from past experience if I listen to him - he will change my life

Dear Lord, I sense you want to move us into a new awareness of your love for us all. Help me to hear you and respond and not block you.

Guide us Lord!

“Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit says the Lord of Hosts” Zechariah 4.6.

These words are from the prophet Zerubbabel and have always spoken to my heart. I find them useful as an "arrow" prayer to say at various times. Especially before meetings that look as if they have the potential to be stressful and conflicted. We need to keep on track and not be blown around chaotically by our human desires. The words remind me of what God wants.

It seems this week I have had various conversations about this very thing. How to keep on track! I have problem in that I know what God wants from me I just need to find my way though to the delivery of his vision. It is my human fallibility that can get in the way. The prayer reminds me to put God's way of thinking first. To seek not my own objectives but to look for what God wants. His agenda is so often different to ours. It reminds me that the Glory must go to God and that we don't need to strive in order to achieve that. In fact if we find ourselves striving then we can ask ourself are we seeking God correctly? God has been sustaining the universe for all these thousands of years without me being number one, or head honcho! But what we can bring to situations is our genuine desire to seek God's will and to support it. Are we seeking the right sort of power in our life? I don't need to be first to speak or last to speak. Although God does want me to speak if I can contribute something to the meeting.

Although it was "meetings" that started me thinking - "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit" applies to all parts of our life. Do we make bringing God's spirit a priority in our life, or do we wake in the morning to play with our gadgets, to plot our finances with the Financial Times? Or to feed our News habit? Or to plan our retirement? Maybe? But although those things might have a right place. God first, our loved ones next is how we should prioritise. Then things will fall into place and we will find a more grace filled living experience.

If we "seek first the kingdom of God" we are putting the Spirit first. In prayer this week also I heard God's voice in Galatians 5. At verse 16 he says "What I say is this: let the Spirit direct your lives, and you will not satisfy the desires of the human nature." - one commentary I read points out that if we focus on the Spirit, God's love and Holy Spirit, helps us to push out the sin in our life. The sin is displaced by the presence of the Spirit. So I feel God is saying have more of the Spirit and you will naturally become less sinful.  That means we need to worry less about our besetting sin and let go of it and run straight toward's our God  who is love. He will give us his love, joy and peace which can't fail to change us.

Dear Lord, help me to have more of you in my life. I seek you Lord, show me your face. Amen

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