When God Speaks

I sat in church tonight prepared to hear just another good message.  With no expectations whatsoever I opened the bulletin, pulled out the famous Saddleback Notes and to my surprise they were not the usual ten fill-ins with bullets and short Bible verses, but rather a story from the Acts with only three points to fill in.  Upon seeing this discovery I thought that message tonight might not be all that interesting because there was not a whole lot of writing for me to do.  They say you are not supposed to judge a book by its cover and this is something I too will agree with.  However I still did not think much of it, maybe it is just my current mood that prevented me from getting overly excited or having high expectations, but the message tonight hit me like a car into a brick wall at over 200mph.

God speaks to us in many different ways; one is directly to your heart and soul, or through the Bible, and even through other people.  I felt tonight like God gave this message to Pastor Buddy Owens to speak directly to me.  It was as if I was sitting alone in the worship center and God was having a face-to-face conversation with me and it was awesome.

He spoke on Acts 16: 23-34, when Paul and Silas were beaten and imprisoned and the point of his message was “What to do when there’s nothing you can do”.  When life’s circumstances are completely out of your control and there is nothing you can really do to fix it.  The story was pulled apart and the people involved were examined.  The reason why Paul was in prison was because of his obedience to God.  He had a dream, God spoke to him and he did what he was told to do, even though it landed him in prison.  Silas was there because he was loyal to Paul.  We are not told what happened, just that of all the people that were with Paul, Silas was the only other person arrested with Paul.  The jailer was in prison because that was his duty, his job.  The prisoners were there because they put themselves there on their own bad decisions. 

 

²³After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. ²⁴Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

 ²⁵About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. ²⁶Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody's chains came loose. ²⁷The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. ²⁸But Paul shouted, "Don't harm yourself! We are all here!"

 ²⁹The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. ³⁰He then brought them out and asked, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"

 ³¹They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household." ³²Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. ³³At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his family were baptized. ³⁴The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole family.

His three points were this:

1.     Make a decision.  What are you going to do when you are in a circumstance that you cannot control?  Are you going to pout or are you going to pray?  Are you going to worry or are you going to worship?

2.     Hold on to your faith.  Hold on to what you know is true about God.  Trust in Him no matter what the outcome may be.

3.     Stay Focused.  Don’t be distracted by your trouble.  Talk to God, sing praises to Him.  Keep the word of God in your heart and let the praises of God become the soundtrack of your life. 

What got me was the complete and total affirmation I received from God.  It was as though He came to me and said Brittany you are doing everything I expect you to do, be still and know that I am God.  I am in control and I have you exactly where I want you to be.

I have been spending massive amounts of time with the Lord the past four days, in the Word, prayer, meditation and fasting.  The Bible tells us that when we truly want to seek God and praise Him this is what we are to do.   Daniel fasted, Paul fasted, Jesus fasted, and others in the Bible fasted in an effort to hear the voice of God and learn what it is that He wants from them or to teach them something.  It is an act of obedience and total surrender to God and to the Holy Spirit.  In this time one big thing that the Lord spoke to me was to Be Still.  I had been very anxious and upset and He just told me to be still, to give up all that I was feeling and to release it to Him.  To remember that He is in control of everything and I needed to not be so worrisome.  I have been meditating on those words since He spoke them.  There have been other things that have been spoken to me as well, but this was a big one that has really stuck and I am reminded of it daily.  Tonight though everything came together. 

I made a decision right away that I was going to give my situation to the Lord.  I said from day one that this was in His control and that whatever was His will I would accept it, even if it were not what I wanted.  Well, it is not what I wanted, but it is what the Lord wants.  I have not lost my faith, but rather my faith has been strengthened and renewed.  I know that the Lord has a plan and a purpose and therefore I have been holding on to that promise tighter than you could imagine.  And finally I have been extremely focused on the Lord.  I have my moments of melt down and tears, but that is when I have to give it back up to Him.  I have to release my anxiety, worry, fear, hurt, heartache, and pain and know that He is God and He is in control.  Sometimes it is easy to forget because you just want to forgo any wisdom and just wallow, but that gets you nowhere.  I have kept the word of God in my heart and I get into it completely, day-by-day for that very reason.  When I am focused on Him, I am on the road to healing. 

As I sat and listened to Buddy speak tonight the words “be still” came crashing into me again.  I realized that when He originally told me to be still the meaning was two-fold.  At first it was for me to calm down and give it to Him, to trust that He was doing something with this.  Tonight I received the other half of the message He was giving me.  To be still and to stay exactly where I am, to not run away and find the quick fix.  To stay focused on Him and to not get distracted by the things of this world that only mask our pain temporarily and do nothing to heal us.  He was telling me this, “I am protecting you, I am shielding you, stay in this place where I have you wrapped in my arms.  Let me protect you, comfort you, and heal you.  Don’t run away from me and try and fix this on your own.  Let me do what I have set out to do, what I have been trying to do for a while that you have not let me do.  I started this now let me finish this.  Be still Brittany, stop moving and let me work.”  When He spoke that message to me I wanted to fall off of my chair, start crying and praise Him.  I fought back the tears in my eyes and started praying a prayer of thanks for the wonder and awesomeness that the Lord is.  He is so good and I have not given Him enough credit the past few months and for that I am repentant. 

The Lord only wants what is best for us and He will heal and deliver us from our pain.  The rest of the message tonight was asking who are you in this story?  Are you Paul and in your prison for your obedience to God?  Are you Silas and there because of your loyalty to someone and you are therefore stuck in their situation?  Are you the jailer who either needs or has had a spiritual awakening?  Or are you the prisoners, who have been set free by God, but instead of walking out of the prison like Paul and Silas did you decided to stay in your current misery.  You decided that sitting in your own mess is better than being free and walking with God.  I came to see that in the past I was the prisoner, I was the one that was trapped by my own chains and when God tried to set me free I did not move out of my cell.  I just decided to stay there.  Now I have not decided to walk out of my cell, I have put on my LiveStrong Nike’s and run out of there as fast as my 100% of the sale, charitable, Nike’s will take me!  I’m not staying around to find out once again that I cannot fix my own mess God has to do that.  My chains are broken and He has set me free, why would I want to stick around and lock myself back up?  Yet, so many of us do this and we do not even realize it.  We have these chains that keep us bolted to the ground.  Some problem or fear that we refuse to deal with or give to the Lord, we either hold on to it really tight, learn how to cope with it, or we ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist, thus keeping us chained to the ground in our pain.  No matter which approach you take, we are choosing to stay locked in our cell, even when God is offering total freedom and redemption.  Not a single one of us, believer or not is free from this bondage.  We all have some issue(s) that is holding us back from pursuing the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and from living the life that God intended us to live.  The phrase “Let go and let God” is highly overused and is most times just a generic cliché for a superficial comfort from people who pretend to care.  However, it has truth behind it.  We do have to let go of our problem and we do have to rely on God to change us and heal us.  So how about “release and restore” or something of that nature.  God allows us to go through times of pain so that He can teach us, mold us, and shape us into the people that He wants us to become.  For me, this is one of those times.  It is a time of hurting, fear, release from strongholds, and restoration of my heart and soul, and the One who created and designed my heart and soul is doing it.  The One that made me and has a plan for my life is fixing the damage I have done so that I can get back to where I need to be and do the things He originally planned for me to do.  Great things that only God could have though of.  That is why we hurt and that is why He, God, is the ultimate healer and lover of our souls.