gently He comes

It’s been a crazy, wonderful week since I have blogged last Tuesday. Randy Thomas finished up the lecture last week on the nature and character of God with the four things that are required to have a personal relationship with God, hindrances to hearing the voice of the Lord, and then hearing the voice of the Lord. I have never had someone pull something so obvious together for me. The four things that are required for a personal relationship with God are 1) God, 2) you (me), 3) me talking to God, and the thing that everyone (including me) seems to forget to do 4) God communicating to me. It was truly that simple, but not simple enough to get what I was doing wrong on my own. There have been times where I have had God direct my paths, but many times he had to knock me on my butt for me to realize what he was doing. It always seemed that the people who were surrounding me had it much easier. For some reason they could hear God speak clearly, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t until this lecture that I realized that I had been shutting God up. I wasn’t giving him time to speak to me in my quiet times. I would communicate what was bothering me, what was on my heart, what I desired, and why I was sorry. Somehow it never fully occurred to me that God wanted to speak to me about what was bothering him, what was on his heart, and what he desired. It couldn’t be more evident that I am human, and with being human comes selfish motives and self-absorbed thoughts. As soon as I was done talking to God I would shut down my time with him thinking my time was finished. These quiet times were only half way, if that, finished. I should probably be letting him to most of the talking anyway. After Randy went through hindrances to hearing the voice of the Lord (unbelief, underdeveloped spirit, unforgiveness, calloused conscience, pride, idols, immorality from the past, occult, disobedience, fear of man, busyness, though lives and attitudes, drugs/alcohol, pornography) and hearing the voice of the Lord he sent us out to have some one on one time with Him.

During the one on one time with God it felt like I was literally in a battle with myself. I was hearing what he was saying, but I wasn’t really listening. It took me about 20 minutes until I finally and stubbornly surrendered to what he had for me. It’s so hard for me to explain how this went about, but it was like we were having a conversation in my thought process. I was holding on to my hardened heart toward a particular area in my life. He was fighting for it, and I wasn’t giving it to him. Finally I heard and listened to him when he said, “Sarah!!! You have been given a compassionate and soft heart. I have made you this way. Why do you put on such a hard exterior? I did not create you to be hardened. I made you with no flaw, for you are wonderfully made.” Right after this I sensed God asking me to ask him how to be gentle, what this looked like, and to transform me to be gentle. For the last few days I have been spending time in the word and with God basically meditating on what it means to be gentle. And again, this morning in my quiet time with Jesus I thanked him for being the perfect example of what gentleness looks like and asked him to guide my steps and to show me what gentleness looks like in my everyday life.

Anyone close to me can tell you that I try to act so hardcore, but the reality is that I am extremely passionate and sensitive and desire to be a gentle spirit. I know that God made me the way I am. I know that God gave me the desire for justice and good. I am not saying that I want this gentle spirit that sits back and does nothing. I desire the gentle spirit that knows exactly how to speak truth just like Jesus did. So, today in my quiet time (which was from 730 am -830) I was praying and asking God to give me the strength to be gentle because I am incapable of being gentle without His Spirit. I asked him to overwhelm me with his gentleness.

After my quiet time we had base worship at 830 and less than an hour later God was faithful in answering my prayer. For some reason Psalm 22:9 popped in my head during worship. I had no clue what Psalm 22:9 even said so of course I instantly pulled my Bible out to see what God wanted me to hear. Psalm 22:9 says, “Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts” (ESV). As soon as I read this I could just see this gigantic, gentle heavenly Father holding me. I then began to think about how great of a testimony I have. God has kept his hand of protection around me my entire life. He has been so diligent in walking with me every step of the way making sure that I didn’t get hurt. He has cried tears of pain when I have been in pain.  He has gently been guiding me, even mistake after mistake. Every single time I run from him he gently calls me back to him. He has never forced me to be in a relationship with him; he has gently loved me and in return how can I not love him? He has been calling me his princess right after I was formed in my mother’s belly, after the first breath I took, and yet still to this day, at the age of 23, he calls me his princess. How can God be gentler than that? The same God who created the rock hard mountains created the beautiful gentle clouds. That same God gently loves me and is more than capable of teaching me how to be gentle. During worship we sang How He Loves Us and the entire time I just had this picture of me standing on my heavenly Father’s feet as we slow danced. I was taken away by his gentle guidance of every step and sway we took. 

Thank you God for this time. Continue showing me.