Nope, sorry, this is not me offering to take care of any of your Spring cleaning or yard chores. I’ve got enough of my own, thank you very much!
This was the basis of a conversation I had with a good friend a week or so ago. But first a little background.
You may recall that I’ve been working on putting together a digital course entitled, “The Master’s Plan for Your Widowhood.” The scope has grown exponentially since I signed up for the course. Not sure I would have signed up had I known how much work it would be!
I’ve been at it since last September and I’m not sure I’m even to the halfway mark yet. It’s been a GREAT exercise in taking things one small step at a time. And a powerful lesson in how to listen to God’s voice as I weed my way through unknown technologies and SO. MUCH. CONTENT!
One of the elements leading up to the course itself is a 90-minute live webinar/masterclass that I will do three times in the 10 days prior to the launch of the course. It feels like I’ve been working on this FOREVER! And part of the reason I feel that way is because I keep getting some “course corrections” from God as I’m working on this webinar.
The goal is for the webinar and the course topics to be complementary of each other, with the course ultimately offering more than the webinar. So I’ve gone down the road of creating the content for the webinar several times, only to see God put up a spiritual detour or stop sign.
The most recent time was after I had completed all the content and had 2/3 of the 90 PowerPoint slides completed when I sensed in my spirit that this was, once again, not quite the right direction.
Big sigh. Time to step back for a bit and wait for a clearer direction. Again. Was I frustrated at this point? For sure! I truly thought I was going down the path God wanted me to, so feeling like I needed to pull back once again was hard to handle. And yet…I have learned to listen to those “nudgings” from God because He always has something in mind.
Fast forward a few days to the conversation with my friend, who also happens to be on the board of directors for the ministry. After sharing my latest “detour,” she asked me this question, “Have you asked God SPECIFICALLY for what you want from Him?”
Well, I hemmed and hawed a bit and told her that I had asked Him generally for some new ideas any day now.
She directed me to the scripture in Luke 18: 41-43 she had been studying recently, where Jesus has an encounter with a blind man. Let’s listen in.
“What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” And Jesus said to him, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.
This is not to say that God is our own personal “genie in a bottle” who will be at our beck and call whenever we want something. But it’s pretty clear from Jesus’ question that He wants the blind man to tell Him what he wants. How simple is that? God, too, wants us to ask Him specifically for what we want.
We won’t get into a long discussion about how God doesn’t answer EVERY prayer we pray, or what it means to pray in God’s will. But there is a lesson here about being connected in this petition to God.
A few days later as I was sitting at my desk preparing to take another stab at this whole webinar thing, I took my friend’s advice and prayed this prayer:
“Please God, make it crystal clear to me what this new topic should be, give me these new ideas right now, and please let this be the final iteration of this webinar.”
How’s that for specific – and maybe a bit demanding?
What do you suppose happened? I got a new title in my head, and a nice little breakdown of 3-5 major points to make in the training. And I got them right after I said, “Amen.” How cool is that?? How amazing is God?
Will this be the last iteration? Too soon to know, but I’m counting on it!
Does this mean I wasn’t listening well to God before? Not necessarily. I genuinely believe God will use everything I’ve already put together…somewhere and sometime. So I’m not discouraged in this nor feel like it was wasted time or effort. It also doesn’t mean that I will get an immediate response every time I pray.
I believe this was just one more lesson in deepening my walk with God. And using the scriptures as the guideline. It also taught me not to be so wishy-washy in my prayer requests!
How about you? Is there a lesson for you here as well? Count on it! God can handle our specific requests and if He chooses to answer you as He did me, don’t forget to be grateful for His answer, and maybe even sit in awe for a bit. Then give God the glory for it, just as the blind man did.
Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.
Colossians 4:2
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