FINDING YOUR PLACE ON THE PATH OF GRACE

There is a saying I once heard.  It says, “The will of God won’t lead you where the grace of God can’t keep you.”

Are you walking in the will of God and is there grace on the path you’re walking?  Are you full of peace and joy, overflowing with the love of God, even when things are challenging?  Or are you cranky, unsettled, lacking peace, unhappy, and so inward focused that you have little time to enjoy or serve others?  You’re either on the right path and you just need some healing or you’re possibly on the wrong path.  And if you’re on the wrong path, have you prayed to ask the Lord to help you get on the right one?

If you have asked the Lord to show you which way to go in life, are you hearing anything yet?  If not, perhaps this has become your experience.  Suddenly, many things you’re doing begin to feel like walking through wet concrete or it takes everything within you to muster the motivation to keep doing many of the things in which you’re currently involved.

Sometimes, when we've prayed, but we aren't listening or perhaps we don’t know how to listen, our cry for help results in making us suddenly aware of where God’s grace is and where it is not!  And where it is NOT becomes so uncomfortable that we eventually run in different directions, trying this one and that one, until we sense that “relief” where the grace of God is going before us.  Then we go “Ahhh!  Thank You God!”  This is a course in the school of hard knocks.  The good news is that there is a place of higher learning.I’ll be 50 years old this year (it’s currently 2013) and I've learned a lot of things.  Many things I learned the hard way, sorry to say.  I have multiple certifications from the school of hard knocks.  In fact, I think I learned WHAT to do by first learning what NOT to do.  Walking paths with NO grace is something I perfected.  Today, I am still learning some things, but I am finally redeeming the time and I've found a route to the path of grace.  Wanna go?

I could write volumes about this leg of my faith journey – cultivating an intimate relationship with the Godhead.  But in this post, I want to hone in on hearing God’s voice and finding that path before you spend years and lots of money on the wrong ones.  I have, on many occasions, needed direction for my life; but it took me a few years just to figure out how to get out of my head and into my heart.  The good news is that when you have a few people in your life that have “been there, done that” and especially the hard way, applied knowledge is the easier path to take than experiential knowledge.  All of the people who warn us about the harder path to take, and particularly those that can back it up with Biblical truth, it is to those people that we should listen.  And if you’re still young enough, I would encourage that.  If you’re not, I would encourage you to read on and even afterwards, pray for mentors who God has appointed to help guide you through the next season of your life; ones who have followed the path of wisdom and are fulfilling their destiny or ones who have at least struggled their way to victory – like me.

Someone recently gave me a great piece of advice and one that was confirmation and not information.  She said, “We don’t always clearly hear the ‘yes’ of God, but we usually hear and understand the ‘NO’ of God.”  I use the emphasis on each word because the word ‘yes’ seems to come much more quietly than “NO!”  One way I have learned this is through one of the expressions of grace.

After I finally answered the call to  God’s invitation to walk WITH Him, He continuously gave me the following verses over and over again and in various creative ways:

Proverbs 3:5-6 (ESV), “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

Hebrews 4:7b-10,“‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.’ For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from His.”

For the last 20 years, I have been awakened on more nights than I wanted to, but eventually many more that gave me great comfort and peace at 3:56 a.m.  Also, for years, it has not been uncommon for me to be driving and the Lord will say, “Look at the time” and it is 3:56 p.m.  In fact, it has been happening to my husband and I for so long now that he just called out from the next room saying, “3:56!” because it, in fact, is 3:56 (smile).  I can be driving and will pull up behind a police car and it will be car number 356 or 478.  This has also been happening for years.  Anywhere these combination of numbers appear, the Lord will direct my attention to them.  Why?  He has been teaching me something and for years now, He has had my attention.

The reason these things had to happen for years is that is it much easier to live out of your head.  It is easy to be blown around by the lust of your flesh.  And yet, the lust of your flesh is an element of your mind.  Your mind contains lots of necessary function and is exploding with potential, but it also contains all of the weaknesses of your personality and an enemy that will use them to defeat you if you let him.  The mind is the human battleground for who will be in control of you.  It is the battleground where the members of your body, as Paul spoke of in Romans 6-8 are at war with one another.  Like us, if we have accepted Christ, the Spirit of God dwelt within Paul and yet he still had to contend with his flesh desire and those to once yielded, the snares of the enemy.  He had to choose to live out of a daily understanding and belief in his personal and positional identity in Christ.  On any given day he was, and we have been made more than conquerors and overcomers in this life (Romans 8:37) and we are seating with Christ in heavenly places, far above all principalities, rulers, and thrones (speaking of the enemy).  This victory wasn't a natural thing that happened in Paul’s life, it was for him and is for us a supernatural thing to which we yield.  In so doing, the Spirit of God can then direct our minds with a divine flow of creativity, genius, or direction resulting in “anointed reasoning”.

GOD’S VOICE, whether in random times when we’re not asking, or most of the time once we learn to inquire and listen; comes in spontaneous thoughts from our heart [or spirit] that are not analytical; but Scripturally sound and line up with God’s character.

Proverbs 16:9 (AMP) says, “A man’s mind plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps and makes them sure.”

Psalm 37:23 (AMP) says, “The steps of a [good] man are directed and established by the Lord when He delights in his way [and He busies Himself with his every step].

Jeremiah 10:23 says, “O Lord [pleads Jeremiah in the name of the people], I know that [the determination of] the way of a man is not in himself; it is not in man [even in a strong man or in a man at his best] to direct his [own] steps.”

Okay, so the point is this:  get out of your head and listen to your heart where the Holy Spirit lives and is waiting to be acknowledged.  You can waste a lot of years of “critical” thinking, years of walking a fearful path to obtain financial security (and God knows you need that already), years of trying to figure out what you’re going to do; without ever once giving thought to the possibility that you could get killed in a car accident tomorrow and stand before the God that you serve and you will have to give an account – for what?  Sure, you’ll have your ticket in, but you will be rewarded or NOT based on the good works He prepared in advance for you to do.  That path, by the way, is paved with all the experiences you’ll need to develop your character.  It will teach you to trust and believe while God is securing you financially.  It will be full of  the relationships you need – including your spouse - who will spur you on, bring you joy, mentor you, and celebrate life.  AND you'll be walking in your calling, fulfilling your destiny, and bearing fruit that remains and that will not burn up when you stand before God.

So how do you get out of your head?  Well, you can’t just stop everything on a dime.  Besides, you might be mostly on track and just needing a witty idea, a divine connection, or another door of opportunity in order to keep moving.  Regardless of how on target you are or not, you can intentionally make more time to interact with the Holy Spirit through worship and listening prayer.  After all, He is your connection to the Father, through the victorious life of the Son.  When you’re hungry, you go get something to eat don’t you?  Well, if you’re hungry for direction in life, the Holy Spirit  knows the fastest, most joyful route to your destination.

NOTE and WARNING:  As you pursue this, you’ll usually get more than just  direction.  You may also end up clearing the musty atmosphere of the rooms of your soul rarely visited.  Why?  Because there is probably unresolved pain there.  So expect that.  It’s usually a package deal.  But almost immediately (depending on how intuitive you are and take heart, the Word says you are able to do this; some more than others but that’s okay), you’ll begin to “turn up the volume” of the creative flow of the voice of God through the resident Holy Spirit that dwells within you as promised by the Scriptures (John 14:17, John 14:26, John 16:13, John 16:15).

So, if this is you and you want to move from your head to your heart, get direction from the Lord (or better yet, learn to cultivate a life of getting continuous direction from the Lord!), or maybe even get out of that concrete your walking through; start with the simple principle found in Acts 13:2 which says, “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said…”

Lisa Bevere once asked the Lord to make her hungry, to which the Lord responded that it was not His job to make her hungry.  She then asked how she could become hungry, to which he said, “FAST.”  Make some room in your busy life for tuning to the One Whom God has sent on behalf of the victorious, resurrected Son.  He lives inside of you, many times waiting for someone to inquire of His guidance.  Skip a meal and pray instead.  That flow of wisdom will come.  If you really want to ramp it up, get a few trusted intercessors to pray in agreement that your spiritual senses will become sharp and that you will hear the Lord and receive the strategy for what to do and how to get there.  Don’t grow impatient. Be diligent to seek Him and wait for the cobwebs to clear.  Then you will hear, with increasing magnitude, the One who has the blueprint for your life and direction for the path you should take in your current season and in every season.