Are you ever just curious about what God is doing?  Do you ever just wonder about His next step in  your life?  I do.  Not in the anxious, worried kind of curious.  But more in the trusting, I know He’s up to something and I can’t wait for it to be revealed kind of curious.

Maybe a bit like a little kid at Christmas waiting to unwrap a package.  The kid knows it will be the perfect present, but having to wait for mom and dad to get coffee, the camera, and the perfect set-up before you can open the present really intensifies the desire to open that present.

Its almost exciting to wait sometimes isn’t it?  To wait for an answer.  To wait for God to be God.  To wait to watch Him work.  To wait for Him to reveal himself.  Just to wait knowing that He is good and can be trusted.

Then  you read this

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day  2 Peter 3:8

Waiting for a thousand years doesn’t seem as exciting does it?  I’ve waited for an answer for over a year now and to think of waiting until death before I get an answer just isn’t all that exciting.

But yet I am in the waiting mode.  And I still find that waiting is exciting.  Because it seems that even in the waiting, the Lord moves.  Even while I’m waiting for the big answer, the Lord speaks about all the little things.  Even when I wonder when my “thousand years” will be up, I look around me and see the Lord using me in different areas.  Yes, waiting is exciting because I see God preparing me for whatever His eventual answer may be to me.

I really do find joy in the waiting.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,

and in his word I hope;

my soul waits for the Lord

more than watchmen for the morning,

more than watchmen for the morning.

Psalm 130:5-6

But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.
“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live,  loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

Deuteronomy 30: 14-20

This passage of scripture became real to me around my 18th birthday.

It was around this time that the Lord gave me a visual picture of two roads in my life.  One road required unquestionable obedience to God and the other way required I do whatever I wanted when I wanted.  One road led to LIFE and the other road lead to death and destruction. Although I hadn’t lived a long life yet, I had enough experience at life to understand these roads weren’t necessarily talking about salvation, and I could look back over the previous years and understand what walking in death and destruction meant.  Although I had accepted Christ as my Savior at age 6, it was after receiving this image from God that I truly made the choice to walk the path of obedience…REGARDLESS of what it meant I must do.

Because let’s face it.  Sometimes obedience doesn’t make sense to my understanding of the world.  Sometimes obedience is completely opposite of my feelings or desires.

But that image of the road of life and blessing contrasted with the road of death and destruction always pops into my head when I’m faced with a decision.

Which is why one of the mantra’s spoken often in our house is “obedience is always better in the end”.

I could give a million examples of when hard obedience has resulted in blessings for us, but today I’m going to just give one.  The one I spoke briefly about two days ago.  The one involving Pine Cove.

Pine Cove has been our family vacation for the past 2 summers.  We rarely get time away just by ourselves, and Pine Cove had been such a refreshing time for our family which is why it was hard to listen to God last fall when I knew He told me we weren’t to register for the summer of 2011.  It took me about four days before I said anything to Brent.  When I finally told Brent I didn’t have a peace about registering for Pine Cove again, Brent stated that he didn’t really either.  It was confirmed then.  God was saying no, and even though everything in me wanted to convince myself that it wasn’t really a big deal to register for camp again, I knew in my spirit that for some unknown reason, God didn’t not want me to register.

Obedience doesn’t always make sense.

But we obeyed.  We canceled our spot for the summer of 2011, we payed off our student loan, saved some money, gave generously, and listened to our children constantly ask how long it would be before it was okay to go back to Pine Cove.

About March, Brent and I started getting sad that we weren’t going to go this year.  Making the kids birthday books and looking at all our pictures from Pine Cove and remembering all the fun memories made it hard to think that NOT going was the best thing for our family.

Then we get a phone call.  I like to say it was from God.  A random phone call telling us that a spot was open for week 1 of camp, and we could have it if we wanted to.  All we needed to pay was the deposit and the spot was ours.  An almost free vacation from God.

I started crying.  Not so much as out of excitement but out of amazement that God would bless us with this type of gift. My oldest was standing next to me when I got off the phone and told her what Pine Cove said.  Her blue eyes got all teary, she covered her mouth with her hand, jumped up and down, and started yelling,  “God gave us Pine Cove?!!!  God really gave us Pine Cove?!!!!!!!”

The moment with her was priceless, and I’m pretty sure neither one of us will ever forget what God blessed us with that day.

This story isn’t about the fact that we got to go to Pine Cove…although we had an incredible time while we were there.  This story is more about walking the path of LIFE.

Obedience is hard and it doesn’t always result in a free vacation, but regardless, God always blesses obedience.

The past weeks have been such an incredible reminder to our whole family that obedience is ALWAYS better.  We can’t see the future, but God can.

I write this today so that I will always remember to obey, regardless of what I am walking through. I know I can trust that God is good and He does good and I am so thankful for how He chose to bless us this summer.

I pray today we all choose to obey the ONE who knows the path to LIFE,regardless of our emotions, desires, or feelings.

Don’t love the world’s ways.  Don’t love the world’s goods.  Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father.  Practically everything that goes on in the world- wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important- has nothing to do with the Father.  It just isolates you from him.  The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out — but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity

I John 2:15-17

Weeks and months have been spent studying the book of I John.  I’ve memorized it, read commentaries, read different translations, and prayed through the book.  But Friday, Brent came home with The Message and I began reading through I John in The Message.

This rephrasing of chapter 2:15-17 has been kicking my little behind this week.  “Wanting my own way” can sum up any discontent or criticism in my heart.

“Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father”.  This “love” for my own way is just waiting to steal the joy that God has already given me. And so this week the fight is on.

I refuse to let the love for wanting my own way steal the blessing of Life that God has given me.  I refuse to live in discontent when contentment is at my fingertips. I refuse to not fight the natural tendencies in my heart.

But more than that, I refuse to let the simple wants crowd out the true desire of my heart….to know God and make Him known.

If I focus on the not so important desires or wants, my true want will never happen. So this week I fight.

I John is quickly becoming my new favorite book…for now at least =)

And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” 29 And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.

Mark 9:28-29

I was reading some commentary over this scripture I was studying and it stated,

To trust in God’s power in the sense that we imagine we have it in our control and at our disposal is to trust in ourselves instead of in God.

This explanation was a response to Mark 9:28-29 where the disciples are unable to cast out the demon.  When they ask Jesus why, His response is because of their little faith or their failure to pray.   This commentary goes on to say

that they fully expected to succeed is evident, so their faith was not that of failing to expect success, but of taking it for granted that they could succeed without praying to God for the expected blessing. The apostles had often succeeded before (Mark 6:13,30) and they perhaps believed that they had the power IN THEMSELVES to continue doing such things.

Does that hit you the way it hit me?  Planning life and believing in myself is so easy to do. Its this trap that’s always ready to pounce.  Taking for granted that I can succeed in my plans/ desires/ aspirations/ dreams/knowledge/ wisdom without complete and total continual prayer is foolish.

The disciples always teach me so much about my own human nature.  It is easy to be good at something or know that God has called you to do something in the past  so you continue to do that activity over and over again. Only now you do it in your own strength and not in a reliance on God.   Lately God has been placing me in situations, and showing me scriptures that are a good reminder that I know nothing, have nothing, and can plan nothing without the grace of our Father working through me.

Even simple things in my day I don’t need to take for granted.  The only way to pursue life COMPLETELY relying on God is to rearrange my day around prayer. Continually prayer is a difficult discipline, but one I have and will continue to chase after with all that I am.