This weekend started with the best of intentions to get things done, however, it ended on trying to figure out where God has been directing me over the past 6 months. A lot of changes have been coming up recently and I suppose that it’s been about trying to figure out if I am listening to His directions or my own. In Colossians, Paul’s letter to the church talks about what it looks like to dwell in the Lord.

“so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” (Colossians 1:10 ESV)

The right decisions are “good works” coming from a tree ripe with fruit. We can only do good works when we are have accepted Christ into our hearts and acknowledged Him as our Lord and Savior. Before that every good work or decision we have made was offensive to God, because we attempted to good apart from the only One who can do good. You don’t walk up to a dead tree and expect that fruit to be delicious. The smell alone tells you that it’s rotten. Then why do we think that when we are not listening and not following after God that we can do good things for Him. We can’t. We simply cannot bear fruit when we’ve planted ourselves in bad soil.

When it comes to looking at my past decisions I know that God has been with each one of them. From the church my sister dragged me to one Sunday, ten years ago, that resulted in my recommitment to the Lord, or for the wonderful wife that God blessed me with 2 years ago this August that I met at that church. I can see what God has done, but I feel most uncertain when I try to discern the future directions that He’s still unfolding before my eyes. I know for certain that He has made plans not to harm me, but to cause me to prosper but there are those rare circumstances where the harder life decisions are what catch me off guard.

What Do You Have Prepared for Me?

At no point in our walk with God does He say that our life is going to be easy and without worry. We live in a broken world and while walking the path He is directing us on we might step on a thorn, or fall off the narrow road He has made known to us. Those portions of our lives feel as if we are lost and unwanted, but God is always there to point us back in the right direction. What catches most Christians off guard is when we don’t know His voice, His face or His will. We don’t know what our Lord is saying because we haven’t been diligent enough in listening to or knowing Him.

If I do not read my Bible and pray often then I feel weakened by the world. I get beat down and distraught much easier when I am not walking with Him than when I am in His Word and praying to Him daily. Those two pieces of a Christian life are crucial to knowing what He has for our lives and thus what He is telling us to do. When you pray to God for direction, then I pray for you that you will open His Word and start listening to His voice. Then when He does call you you’ll know if you’re picking up the right  see His face so that you will know Him when He calls.