Do you think that God thinks about us the way I was thinking of my children this morning…”Just obey, and everything will be okay.”?
I woke up this morning at six o’clock. I could feel God pressing on my heart to look up scriptures in the areas of “Choosing Friends”, “Choosing a career”, and “Dating”. So, after I tried to go back to sleep, unsuccessfully, I got up and did what God was wanting me to do.
Before I looked up bible verses, I turned to today’s devotion in the book Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young. Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if today’s devotion didn’t speak right to me. It read:
“I speak to you from the deepest heaven. You hear Me in the depths of your being. Deep calls unto deep. You are blessed to hear Me so directly. Never take this privilege for granted. The best response is a heart overflowing with gratitude. I am training you to cultivate a thankful mind-set. This is like building your house on a firm rock, where life’s storms cannot shake you. As you learn these lessons, you are to teach them to others. I will open up the way before you, one step at a time.”
Okay, God, I’m listening, obeying, and grateful that You speak to me and I hear You.
After praying for God to speak to me and through me, I began seeking those bible verses and writing them down (Yes, I wrote them. Old school. It seemed more personal.) I knew I wanted to share them with my children, so I didn’t want to overwhelm them with every verse I came across. I jotted down two to four for each subject area.
Regarding “Choosing Friends” I penned down: 1 Corinthians 15:33, Proverbs 13:20 , Proverbs 12:26, and Proverbs 22:24-25 .
“Choosing a Career”: Proverbs 3:5-6, Proverbs 16:3, Jeremiah 29:11-13, and Psalm 37:4.
“Dating”: 2 Corinthians 6:14 and 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.
Then, when I finished writing my final verse, that’s when my “happy world hanging with God” became reality. I heard my phone informing me of a text message. I saw that I had missed several messages. I opened one up from one of my children. This child sent me a screenshot of a message on Twitter regarding one of my other children. Ugh! I was appalled! I immediately ran upstairs to confront the guilty party. Even though my child did not post the tweet in the first place, they knew about it. (Did I say I was appalled?!!!)
The post was deleted, but we all know that once something is out there, it is out there.
My heart was still racing, so I sent a text to my child. It wasn’t long before they were downstairs with the look of remorse and sadness all over their body.
I thank God that He had given me scripture to share with my children. You better believe that I shared the “Choosing Friends” verses with my child this morning. The timing was perfect, just like His always is.
In Colossians 3:20 (MSG) we read, “Children, do what your parents tell you. This delights the Master no end.” My children have heard Tim and I preach the same sermon regarding choices and social media plenty of times. If they would just “obey, everything would be okay”. Hmmm, God has given us His instructions on living life and we’ve heard numerous sermons preached on how to live, but we still occasionally tend to do things our own way. Yep, I bet God is staring at us and thinking, “If you would just obey me (your Parent) everything will be okay.”
I pray God’s abundant love and blessings for y’all.
