I went to the park today for my usual run (as of 2 weeks now :-). Normally I meet a girlfriend, but today I was alone. As I ran I focused my heart on Jesus.
I ran past a woman walking a dog. For a quick second, I had a picture in my mind of myself talking to her.
Now here is my question. Is it possible that this spontaneous thought was the Holy Spirit?
I continued running feeling a little stressed that I may have missed an opportunity to share Jesus with someone....so...out came the fleece :-)
"God, if that was you putting that thought in my head, please keep her on my path and allow me to pass her again. I promise this time I will talk to her."
Sure enough, half a mile later, here comes the woman with the dog. I stopped and asked her if we could walk together. She said she couldn't stay long but we talked for a minute...another thought came to my head, "You will see her again." I quickly said, "I try to run here every day," hoping that I could help God along in creating another meeting.
So here is my God-sized question: When I think I hear God say, "You will see her again," can that be God if it doesn't happen? He didn't say you may see her or you should pray you run into her...He said "you WILL."
Another idea hit me. Discipline.
Maybe God orders divine opportunities based on disciplines in our lives. I am running every day, trying to create a discipline in my life. As I create discipline God is able to count on me, "Heather Marshall will be running in the park every morning from 8:40-9:10 and she will be meditating on who I am."
Have you ever tried to meet a friend and just found that they were always late or cancelling last minute, or just never had enough of a plan to be dependable. I wonder if that is how we are in our walks with God when we lack discipline. Maybe God is trying to order our steps, but we keep not showing up.
Back to my question. I would really love to have your opinion, so here it is again. When I think I hear God say, "You will see her again," can that be God if it doesn't happen?
I am leaning toward if it doesn't happen, it wasn't God.
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That's a tough one. I gotta say that your question wasn't even the part of the blog that stuck out to me. I've been following yours for a bit now. But with the twenty or so that I follow and life, I rarely get to read even a few. Normally, I'll peruse them briefly, then mark them as read. Today your was the first one that hit me for no particular reason. The discipline issue is what God wanted me to read. With life happening at the speed of ridiculous, it's been easy to make excuses to not get up and spend time with Him. I'm sure God is not cool with me missing appointments or showing up late. Point taken. Thanks for that.
ReplyDeleteThe, "is it God, if it doesn't happen?" Wow, at first I was leaning toward no, but I'm not sure. I find that if God says something to me or tells me to do something I don't want to do and it will result in me growing in or drawing closer to Him, then it's Him and I don't question it. I may struggle with being obedient, but in the end obedience is the only option.
But when it seems like God's desires line up with mine (not the other way around like it should be), I question the heck out of that. Kind of the same when the Holy Spirit convicts me, it can be easy to conjure up my own thoughts that I'll get another chance and assume it is God saying it. It helps make me feel better, until I realize, "That might have just been me."
If it was God, you WILL see her again. May not be how you figure or when you figure, may be for a brief second, but you will.
Maybe the more important thing is you recognized the missed opportunity, turned to Him to engineer another opportunity and followed His prompting to meet that person where they were. I've found for me obedience can be tough and uncomfortable, but it makes us better in Christ.
Thanks Bruce. To go along with this situation, I had a girlfriend who felt that she heard from God about her situation. While I was praying for her one night I felt the Lord prompting me to fast in order to fight with her to bring forth God's will. I fasted and prayed. What she felt the Lord had spoken did not happen. It was confusing to me. Why did God ask me to pray? Did God really ask me to fast with her?
ReplyDeleteAs far as the girl in my original post. I saw her again on Thursday and we went on a walk and talked about the Lord...it was awesome :-)