There's that old adage that says, "Write what you know." Well, I'll confess it here and now, despite how I may act, I don't know much. I suppose being now securely in my mid-twenties, the "wisdom" of my "all-knowing" teen years has abated. I look around and I realize the more I learn the more I am aware of what I don't know. Believe me, sometimes the hardest words to say are, "I don't know." We're taught to believe that it's a cop-out answer, and sometimes it is a brush off, code for "Just leave me alone. I can't/won't give you the answer you're seeking." But in all honestly, a lot of times I genuinely don't know. I'm learning to humble myself and say, "I don't know; let me look into it and we can learn together."
Okay, since now you know that I don't always know, (Friends! anyone?), here's one of the lessons I'm learning: God loves a bold heart- so start diving in.
I really enjoy the messages of Joyce Meyer Ministries. I like her approach. Her messages aren't sugar-coated and she gives a lot of practical advice. Basically she tells it how it is- we live in a broken world that you can't control, but you can control yourself, your attitude and behaviors; complaining and inaction won't fix the world-it starts with you.
Sometimes I start my morning listening to Joyce Meyer via her iphone app. One morning she spoke about how God loves a bold heart. He loved the boldness of David who didn't sit back and quibble over how he was going to defeat Goliath; rather, he just trusted God and went out and did it with the skills he had. I've told you about how planning can get me into trouble. I start to think too much...yada yada. Well this message kind of struck home and it reminded me of another passage that's stuck in my heart.
Jeremiah 31:22 begins with "How long will you waver oh faithless daughter..." It is the verse that pierces my soul when I am discerning what to do and am inactive. Waver-yes that about sums up how I can refuse to set my mind to one path because I'm afraid of failing, sometimes hoping someone or some circumstance will push me in one direction or another. Faithless daughter- ouch. The sting of truth. The verse comes shortly after Jeremiah 29:11 which promises that God's ultimate plan for those whom he loves is to prosper them. So I imagine God in this verse saying "I [just] promised you that in the end you will prosper and not be harmed; trust me; step out in faith and do."
I am learning to apply this in everyday life. As Joyce Meyer has discussed, it starts with the mundane tasks. For her it was putting a cart back at the grocery store. For me it's been dishes. We don't have a dishwasher, or rather we have two dishwashers and our dishwashers are powered by elbow grease. In our (rather tiny) kitchen, those dishes pile up, especially if we have guests over or if we try and get fancy with our meals. This morning was one of those mornings where the magic cleaning fairy didn't visit us in the night, so I awoke to quite a mountain of particularly dirty dishes. It was almost overwhelming to think about cleaning them, but I'm learning. I didn't think about it. I just did it, as I've done before, and I'm always surprised at how quickly the task goes.
It makes me think, how often do I "deliberate" to the point of inaction? All the while giving more and more of an opening for the enemy. It's a special kind of procrastination to put off doing something simply to put it off, not because you wanted to do some other specific thing instead, but purely out of avoidance and sloth. It's the kind that always brings on the bad guilt that festers in me and makes me insecure about other things. So for me, I'm learning obedience, discipline, and trust, I suppose, through simple everyday tasks like doing the dishes. Complaining and magnifying that mountain won't make it go away, but it will make me inactive and unhappy. I'm learning it's better just to dive on into the task, trusting that it's for my benefit and if it isn't I'll be rescued from it.
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