What can you learn from what I learned?

My life is interesting.  Sometimes, I really long for not interesting, but:

A) What fun would that be?  and:

B) Sometimes it's interesting because I learn stuff.

Yesterday in my e-mail, not once, but twice, and from two different sources, I was invited to listen to the latest broadcast from a pastor I sometimes get stuff from.  He's not one of my favorites but yesterday's broadcast was spot-on to where I am in my life.

I kinda want to go my own way sometimes in life.  I don't see things happening like I think they should.  I often don't like waiting on God and I get impatient.  I also sometimes get tempted to think or do things I used to do.  I don't deal with stress very well sometimes.  I'm trying my best to stay on a path I can't even begin to understand some days, except for the lessons that I've learned along the way that I'm sure nothing else could have taught me.

The broadcast was about obedience.  The scripture was based in 1 Samuel; about King Saul.  It was an interesting thing to see twice, so I decided that I needed to listen to the broadcast because that very morning, the first thought through my head wasn't a good one.  It was about maybe trying to do something other than what I was.  And I was getting impatient.

I needed to hear that message yesterday.  But yesterday was only part one.  I really needed to hear part two today, because as I was talking with God about the things on my heart that I was struggling with this morning, I'd come to the conclusion that I was getting desperate.

After hearing the broadcast, I realized that I was desperate, but possibly not for the right things, and/or the right reasons.  And that I could see myself kinda following a thought pattern that wasn't headed in a particularly good direction. 

I learned that obedience comes first yesterday and then a very important Kingdom principle that I SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
wish I would have understood almost six years ago.  Obedience first.  Feelings will then follow.

I'm in this mess I'm involved in mostly because of an act of disobedience.  God told me to do something.  I did it until I felt like it was not a good thing to do and I asked God to change it.  When the chance came to change it, I put a bunch of my past on someone else, decided I (not one of my favorite words these days, by the way) wanted to make a change because of that, and made what I still regard as one of the BIGGEST mistakes I ever made in my life.  Which was followed by the foolish idea that I (there's that word again!) expected God to bless it.

He didn't.

But what God did was teach me how to be obedient.  It's come at great pain and cost, but obedient I'm trying to be. 

I'm learning too that every story is in the Bible for a reason, and I'd like to share some of the basis for that statement with you.  The pastor recounted the story of Saul.  Saul started out right, but then started to do things his own way.  He disobeyed God by disobeying the instructions God gave him through Samuel.  He didn't wait for Samuel to offer a sacrifice.  Saul got impatient and did it himself before a battle.  And then tried to blame Samuel for being late and justifying his actions because he said the people were leaving him.

He did it again.  Saul was fighting the Amelekites and God told Samuel to tell Saul to kill everything and everyone.  Saul left the best cattle and sheep alive and didn't kill the king.  Samuel called him out on it, and again he tried to justify his actions.  We didn't kill the best of the animals because he wanted to offer them as a sacrifice. 

Obedience would have been the correct choice here.  And that's what the pastor pointed out:  Obeying may not always make the most sense.  It may not always feel good; our feelings, he said, would follow our obedience.

And I see that.  I get to do what God told me to do.  I do not get to do it the way I would have had I obeyed in the first place.  My feelings have changed to the point where they most likely would have if I'd not put me before the other person five years ago.  Had I had a servant's heart instead of my own interests at heart, I would be where I want to be tonight, which is about 900 miles away from where I am right now. 

I surrender a lot to God.  By that I mean frequently, not necessarily a description of the volume of things I surrender to Him.  Those things, by volume, are little these days.  I'm shooting for 100% surrendered but I still sometimes want to drive the car.  That's foolish, especially in my predicament.  I got here by doing that.  But sometimes, the stress gets to me.  Sometimes the lonely gets to me.  And sometimes I forget that and my thoughts start to wander back to old patterns of thinking.

That leads me back to today's broadcast.  The guy talked about where I was at this morning, too.  He talked about Saul's disobedience.  He told the last story; the one that led to Saul's ultimate demise.  Saul had banned witches and mediums, but he disguised himself and went to find a witch to conjure up Samuel.  God quit talking to Saul and in his desperation (remember I mentioned desperate to God this morning) for that word from God which he didn't get anymore, he broke his own law and found a medium, who conjured up Samuel, and Samuel pretty much told Saul he was gonna be dead the next day.  And that's what happened.

Desperate.  I used that word.  And then the pastor went on to talk about his dog, who he described as a very friendly dog.  Who got sick one night and vomited on the pastor's bedroom rug.  When the pastor went to clean it up, he found the dog eating his vomit.

Ouch.

Scripture talks about this in a couple of places.  Sometimes people go back to their sins like a dog goes back to eat it's own vomit.  I've been guilty of that once.  God used that scripture to remind me that Tami Jo is best left out of my life one afternoon while I was driving to work.  I wonder too sometimes if things would have worked out different for us after God sent someone to tell us to stop sinning against Him and we didn't right away.  But that lesson plays into this one.

Disobeying God is no joke and there are consequences.  BOY are there consequences.  Sometimes God protects us from consequences of unintentional mistakes, and that's a topic for another time, but sometimes our disobedience has REAL and LASTING consequences.

I don't think that's a news flash for any believer.  I also know God uses moments for teaching His children as we teach our own children things.  Sometimes things have to be delayed or withheld because of our behavior and choices.  But what I found the last couple of days is that God met me where I was at, in just thinking things.  He met me in a pre-emptive place to remind me about disobedience and teach me about the feelings thing.

I could repeat that again, but He knows my heart and He knows how I'd give lots and lots to have that decision back, knowing what I do about the situation.  But He showed up and warned me again using some examples that were personal to me (for other reasons, stories about Saul hit closer to home to me than they might you). 

And then, God took things one step further because I've been wondering what would happen if, and then I got reminded that Abraham and Sarah took things into their own hands when they tried to make God's promise of a son happen on their timetable instead of Gods timetable.  I don't need to even think about what would happen if because whatever it is, it's not gonna be good.

In the end, though, what changed about my circumstances in the last two days was me.  I'm still in agreement about what God says about the things I used to do.  I don't need to be desperate to change things.  Things will change when God wants them to.  The what if's I was wondering about were things that were not gonna happen by me in the first place, so I was just wasting effort on even thinking about them in the first place.  I'm mindful the way is forward, and forward involved me taking some steps.  There's no going backward.  I had to quit entertaining those thoughts.  I had to let go of wanting something.  I had to surrender again and again a bit of a haughty spirit that I felt brewing.  I had to remember I'm to serve God and serve others.  A servant's heart would have helped me five years ago instead of wanting what I wanted and expecting God to bless it.

We talked about expecting God's blessings.  I used the analogy I heard a long time ago about people showing to church and praying for rain, and not bringing umbrellas to church in the expectation they'd be needed.  I think we can expect God's blessings but those blessings come from our obedience to Him and not our expectation to do things we feel "good" about and expecting God to bless them.

I'm missing out because I made a bad choice with that expectation of God's blessing.  A year later I was in a position where I asked God to pick someone for me and He started me on the path I've been on ever since.  Any time I've tried to get off the path, it's been bad, with the one exception of the time period He asked me to let this go, and I dated someone for a hot minute who found her way back to Jesus (she said I had a big part in that), and led her sister to Christ as well.  Shortly thereafter, it was game back on, and here we are today.

I also learned something else that I kind of already knew.  If you're on God's plan for your life; if you're doing something Kingdom related, you're going to encounter opposition.  It's been my experience recently that whenever I'm giving a message, the days just prior to that are filled with a little bit more stress and stuff than just regular days.  It's happened enough to notice that it's a real thing.

So, what can you learn from what I learned?  I hope that some of this is helpful, which is why I blogged about it instead of just writing it in my prayer journal.  The struggle is real and sometimes to coin a much used military term:  "you gotta embrace the suck"  Be obedient.  Follow orders.  Your feelings will follow.

God knows best because God knows everything.