Last night before going to bed I was sitting on the floor in our bedroom, petting Kita, and began to cry. I’m in the midst of trying to make a decision about my job/career and realized my confusion runs deeper than choosing an industry… I don’t know what my purpose is nor what I am called to. In short, I don’t know why God put me here and He hasn’t been saying much in prayer lately.
As I cried I realized how hurt I am by God. I’m trying my hardest to live a life that is pleasing to Him, and I want to do whatever He says- so why would He be so silent? I’m thinking, throw me a bone here God!
This morning I woke up sad and unexcited to have my quiet time. I figured it would follow the regular old formula: journal, prayer, read, prayer, and perhaps some unpredictable feelings which alternate given the day or how much coffee I have consumed. This process only hurts more when my prayer is a fervent Lord, speak to me!!!
But this morning turned out to be a bit different. I didn’t hear anything audible and really, I didn’t even feel anything significant, but I read a passage in my devotional for today which answered my deep questions:
“Another picture that our Lord loves to use is that of the shepherd who goes out to look for the sheep that is lost. So long as we imagine that it is we who have to look for God, then we must often lose heart. But it is the other way around: he is looking for us. And so we can afford to recognise that very often we are not looking for God; far from it, we are in full flight from him, in high rebellion against him. And he knows that and has taken it into account. He has followed us into our own darkness; there where we thought finally to escape him, we run straight into his arms.
So we do not erect a false piety for ourselves, to give us hope of salvation. Our hope is in his determination to save us. And he will not give in!
This should free us from the crippling anxiety which prevents any real growth, giving us room to do whatever we can do, to accept the small but genuine responsibilities that we do have. Our part is not to shoulder the whole burden of our salvation, the initiative and the programme are not in our hands: our part is to consent, to learn how to love him in return whose love came to us so freely while we were quite uninterested in him.
Also we can let ourselves off that desperate question, Am I in the right place? Have I done the right thing? Of course, we must sometimes acknowledge sins and mistakes and we must try to learn from them; but we should not foster the kind of worry which leads to despair. God’s providence means that wherever we have got to, whatever we have done, that is precisely where the road to heaven begins. However many cues we have missed, however many wrong turnings we have taken, however unnecessarily we may have complicated our journey, the road still beckons, and the Lord still ‘waits to be gracious’ to us.
If we let these things really speak to us, then we can surely accept our Lord’s invitation, indeed his command, to cast all our cares upon him and let him care for them. We can give space in our hearts for Christ to dwell there, and it is faith that gives him space. We can let him dethrone us from being God in our own hearts, and establish there his own rule. We can let him give us to ourselves, just as at the beginning he gave Adam to Adam. Then we can receive from him all that is ours, all our faculties, all our freedom, our capacity to take initiatives, to make our own decisions, so that our true independence no longer challenges God’s sovereignty but is precisely a most wonderful expression of it, as we receive our freedom day by day, minute by minute, from the creative love of God.”
-From Prayer by Simon Tugwell
This passage encourages me this morning because in it I hear that God’s people are free to make their own decisions, and wherever life leads them God is still right there, ahead of them, with wide open arms. The challenge for me is that for most of my life I have based my decisions on what I thought other people wanted (including God). It is not easy for me to discern the true desires of my heart, outside of what others think.
This morning I pray that I could know myself well enough to decide, and know God well enough to trust He is sovereign in my choice.
