It sounded like God’s will. I made sure all of my Gideonesque fleeces were met with the dew of heaven (when required) or dry as a new cotton ball when the reverse was needed. My request passed the “if my husband approves then I’ll know it’s God’s will” test. I did everything I was supposed to do, except really listen to the Holy Spirit.
Deep down I knew. I just didn’t want to slow down enough to actually verbalize the truth: I wasn’t supposed to go this direction. I knew that if I bypassed my own feelings from the Holy Spirit, and just made the decision fast, based on my fleeces, I could get what I wanted.
I got what I wanted, but it cost me. The price tag initially seemed like a great bargain to me. Almost like the slightly used TV you found at a garage sale. The kind where you thought to yourself, “Wow! I can’t believe I found this TV for $5! And just when my old TV bit the dust last week. God knew I needed this!” But then you get home and plug it in only to discover it doesn’t work at all. So you have to go buy a new one anyway. My husband and I once bought a brand new refrigerator from a store that only sold floor model appliances at a super discounted rate. We thought we got a great deal because we paid about half price for the refrigerator. BUT……about a year after we got it, I noticed it wasn’t cooling. We had to hire a repairman and it cost us about $400 to fix it.
Sometimes our decisions are like that. Especially the ones we make that we mistakenly think won’t cost us a lot. The bargain decisions. These are the ones we make using analytical approach instead of just listening to God. You know what those kind of wrong turns amount to…….DISTRACTIONS. Yes that’s right friends…..those decisions that we make that seem harmless or fun are really just distractions.
After I made my distracting detour decision a few months ago, I started to realize very quickly that it was sucking the life out of me. I felt like it I had been sucked into a vortex of deadlines. I stopped posting blogs. I stopped tending to the ministry God had placed in my hands. I wasn’t writing anything honestly. I barely had time to toss up a 5 minute prayer and read a few verses in my Bible. I was slowly dying, but I didn’t want to admit it. Doing so would reveal my disobedience, which is quite embarrassing for a minister :-(.
Thankfully, God sent a kind person to speak truth into my life and snap me back into reality. Just because something seems like a good idea, doesn’t mean it’s a God idea. It could just be a cleverly disguised distraction.
So here’s my super simple advice to you…….Pray about it. REALLY pray about it before you jump off of the cliff into a new adventure. Don’t just use fleeces or the spouse approach. If God is telling you no (and you know when He is), then don’t ignore it. Because the truth is that if you ignore God and do what you want, it will produce death in your life.
