“A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.” Proverbs 16:9
“Sit down and write,” the Lord spoke firmly into my heart.
It was still dark, and I had been up for several hours. I could have easily gone back to bed, but I had the sense there was something I needed to do. I had a plan of course, like I usually do. I was walking around my room. I had already bathed and dressed. I was headed to my prayer room to spend more time with the Lord as I had done at 3:30 am. It was now almost 5:30 am. But God had another plan – and reminder.
When God’s Spirit told me to sit down and write, I didn’t sit down right away. I told Him I was going back to my prayer room to spend time with Him. Surely He would accept this. After all, wouldn’t it honor Him for me to go spend more time with Him praying, praising Him, studying His Word, and listening? Before another moment passed, I turned around and plunked down in my chair in front of my computer to write. I knew what God had told me, and I had been working on obeying Him without resisting Him. The debating needed to stop. I needed to learn to submit – immediately. See, honoring God is not about living out our life’s plans for ourselves, or even about living our life’s plans for Him. It’s about living His plans for the lives He has given us for His glory, obeying Him without resistance, honoring Him by yielding our hearts and lives to Him, not questioning Him, simply humbling ourselves and surrendering every aspect of our lives right down to our very thoughts and time to Him.
When I plunked down, He reminded me of something He had told me weeks ago that I had written down and stumbled upon that very morning.
“I have asked you to do [such and such]but you resist me. You have said you want to please me. You are continuing to resist me when I ask you to do certain things for me. This is not what a servant does.”
A servant doesn’t resist his or her master. A servant serves. Those who are born again and promised eternal life, meaning those who have repented and placed their trust in Christ as Lord who died on the cross for us and was raised from the dead, turning from the world’s ways to God and His ways, committed to following Christ forever, are Christ’s servants.
We can try all we want to justify our own plans and agendas, even trying to convince ourselves our plans are good and are for God, but as God continues to teach me, a servant of Christ doesn’t resist God. A servant serves. Proverbs 16:9 makes clear a servant’s feet – and life – are to be led by God.
Are you resisting God? Do you need to turn away from your own agenda and plunk down in your chair, so to speak, as I did that day, and submit to God in love and obedience to Him? As a servant of Christ?