Sometimes I feel and think I’m going nowhere; that I’m not
growing, learning, changing. Sometimes I feel like I’ll never get “it,”
whatever “it” might be. I’m not talking about how to work the various remote
controls for the television. I’m talking about knowing how to live a healthy,
happy, joyous, content life. I feel like God is trying to teach me how to do
this and I just don’t get it. I’m afraid He will give up on me. Have you ever
felt that way? Take courage. We are not that much different than the apostle
Peter.
In Acts 10, we see people getting instructions from God
through the Holy Spirit (or angels or some other messenger from God). One of
those people is Peter who is staying in Joppa (a seaport). God had instructed a
Roman Centurion (a Gentile) to send messengers to Joppa to ask Peter to return
with them to Caesarea to give a message to the Centurion (again let me
emphasize, a Gentile). While the messengers are on their way to Joppa, Peter
has a vision. This vision showed Peter a bunch of “clean” and “unclean”
creatures and a voice said to Peter, “Arise, Peter, kill and eat!” Peter’s
response was, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and
unclean.” (vs. 13, 14) Then the voice said to Peter, “What God has cleansed, no
longer consider unholy.” (vs. 15)
But what encouraged me the most was verse 16: “And this
happened three times; and immediately the object was taken up into the sky.”
Peter had to be told three or four times the same thing, and then he still
didn’t get it. He was still “greatly perplexed in his mind as to what the
vision . . . might be.” (vs. 17) So, even Peter had to be shown/told multiple
times in multiple ways what God wanted for his life.
I might not get what God is trying to do in my life right
now. He may have to show me and tell me from His Word, multiple times before I
get what He wants me to do. When I feel like it’s all hopeless, I can remember
that God may just be in the process of teaching me a hard to get lesson. However,
there’s progress if I look for it. In earlier times, it seemed like nothing
could lift my spirits and bring me out of a depression. It would run its
course, including my being hospitalized to keep me safe from myself. Then a new
med might start working or I’d start to feel better and less depressed
(possibly on the way up to a manic state). Now I feel like I have tools to
combat the downswings. Certain people are in my life that can encourage me. I
have David and his Psalms. And I have a greater understanding of and commitment
to obey God’s Word. As I’ve learned that God is greater than all my troubles, I
am more likely (and possibly more quickly) to turn to praising God and
acknowledging that He is in control and I have value in His eyes.
So even though I’m not great at “it” and will probably have
to be taught again (and again), God has worked. Looking back at the ways He’s
worked in the past in one of the tools He has given me as I am perplexed, right
along with Peter, as to what God has in mind for me.
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