In my time with the Lord this morning, I fell apart. I cried for a good portion of the time, lamenting and asking the Lord, once again, for help with a challenging situation.
This situation started with difficulty and has grown to be more trying over time.
I have been long-suffering and patient, truly relying on the Lord to be my strength and help. But I had no idea how to improve this situation or make it better.
Then, while crying out to God with great frustration coupled with sorrow with not knowing what to do, He spoke clear and gentle to my heart. He told me to research my situation on the internet and to gain the insight of others who were educated on this very issue.
While I was doing my research the Lord used it to speak to my heart with what He wanted me to do.
He answered me. He provided me a solution that I had never thought of before and mostly because I was lacking in knowledge in this area.
And as God gave me the solution, as my mind grew clear and my tears dried up, I was baffled to why I had never thought of this before. It seemed such a simple idea; a solution that was not so out of reach as I had thought.
I felt comforted by the Lord. I began to smile and I truly felt delivered out of a hopeless situation.
How many times do we feel overwhelmed by our circumstances, when just allowing ourselves to be educated more about the situation would actually be a helpful solution than to remain in our frustration and misery.
This has not been the first time that the Lord directed me to do my own research about an issue. He has led me multiple times to do so, and each time I am amazed that all I was lacking was a little more understanding than I had.
I have yet to implement the new things I learned, but I plan to do so. And having a plan to pull myself out of a stuck and miserable situation has lightened my heart. I am fully confident that the Lord provided this solution for me, and even more confident that He will help me follow through with what He has told me to do.
If this solution had come to me only a month prior, I would not have agreed with it to be honest with you. My heart was working out of a place of fear within this situation, and moving forward with the answer God had for me would have been met with a negative response because of that fear.
But God was patient with me. He first had me deal with the fear. Once that was dealt with in my heart, then providing me steps of obedience would be received much more warmly and gratefully.
How many of us are crying out for help in our different situations, not receiving a solution or a deliverance out of it, because the Lord wants us to respond His way rather than our way?
In my multiple laments before the Lord about this situation, I was asking Him to intervene and just change it. But He would not intervene in the way that I was thinking or hoping. In fact, I wanted Him to intervene because it was the easiest way out and most comfortable for me.
Yet, because He knows what is best, He answered me with His plan to help deliver me.
His plan requires more faith and trust out of me, and it requires courage. I have to have a hard conversation with someone I love dearly, a conversation that I have been avoiding because I just wanted God to fix it. But He gently showed me that the conversation needs to be had and my research on the situation gave me confidence and understanding of not only what to do, but how to communicate in a loving way to this individual.
While crying out to God for our situations to be resolved or changed, let us be open minded and open hearted towards Him for His response.
We might want something our way so much, that when He does tell us what He wants us to do, or tells us how He wants us to respond, we could miss out on what He told us because it was not what we were wanting to hear.
Let us choose to not have selective hearing with God, only listening for what we want to hear and what we feel is the solution to our problems. Let us sit still before the Lord and hear Him for what He is truly saying to our hearts.
