No one said it was easy……….but man will it be worth it.

As a man that tries his best to live within Gods will, it’s easy to get confused even sometimes a little frustrated. You want his direction so badly, but when you don’t get it right away you start to doubt, you start to get discouraged. However, when I really think about it from his perspective as a father, I realize what he is doing. As I was reminded this weekend, in another awesome sermon from our pastor, we are the sheep and Jesus is the Good Shepherd. As sheep we are lost, defenseless, stubborn, and filthy……..key word to my point here, STUBBORN. He gave us free will, which has its good and bad. If he gave us direction for everything in life we would not have free will, we would be like robots. That is not what he wants from us. If we just follow we have no heart, no desire for him or anything that he wants to bless us with. He wants us to have a heart like His, and in a world of lies and filled with sin a heart like his has to be learned. How do we learn, you ask? Sometimes it’s by being led, but OH SO often it is by falling on our face. When my children learned to walk, I didn’t hold their hand every time. When they learned to ride their bikes without training wheels, it wasn’t by me running around holding them up the entire time. No, I had to let go. I had to let them learn how to walk and ride on their own, and often times that meant falling, skinning their knee or elbow, or sometimes worse. Our pastor told a story about a time when he was babysitting with his (now) wife. The child they were watching was heading towards the box fan with full intentions of putting his hand in it. Our pastor explained how he “dove” on the child to save him from impending doom. J And as a parent, that is what you do……..the first or second time. But as stubborn as we are, we want to learn on our own, and sometimes have to. You see we might push their hand away from the fan a couple of times, but as long as its plastic at some point we say……”alright kiddo, I guess you have to figure this one out on your own.” And guess what, they do! The thing is that not only does this teach them things that they may not otherwise want to hear but need to know, but it also teaches them trust. “Wow, daddy said that would happen if I did that……and it did!” The same is true for Jesus, our Lord and Savior. There are things that he wants to teach us himself, and some things he knows we need to learn on our own. Not just because it is a better lesson when we learn it hands on, but because when we have to learn it on our own we realize how much better it is when we lean on him.

To be truly open and transparent, I am living this right now. As a single adult I find myself wanting nothing more, nothing less than to find my future spouse……….according to His will. And I have to believe that as long as I stay close to Him I will. Often I get scared, because when I pray to him about these things I don’t feel like I get the answers that I am seeking. However, what I am slowly starting to hear and see, is Him standing next to me telling me, “Brian, it’s ok. I’ve shown you what to do, I’ve shown you how to love, just do it. If you start to stray, I will correct you. If you fall, I will pick you up. I’ve got you son. Do as I have taught you and you will be fine.”

I have no idea where this area of my life is headed, but I have true faith and a HUGE excitement for the fact that with Him by my side, I will find nothing less than WONDERFUL.