obedience

When God’s Not in Your Plan A…Or Your Plan B

January 12, 2015 By Michelle 14 Comments

Holmes Lake Ice

I’ve been thinking a lot about obedience lately. In the conclusion to 50 Women Every Christian Should Know I wrote that obedience is the thread that ties all fifty women together across diverse time periods, geography and personal circumstances. “Circumstances don’t matter nearly as much as obedience,” I wrote in the afterword of the book, “because God calls us to answer right where we are.”

Sounds like I have obedience all figured out, doesn’t it?

Oh yeah, I do. On paper.

As it turns out, obedience is a cinch to write about, but awfully hard to live out in real life.

I am walking through an uncertain period right now. Several publishers have turned down my current book proposal, my agent is asking me hard questions about what I want to do next, and I don’t have any clear answers. It feels a little wildernessy, and I’ll be honest: I don’t like the wilderness one bit.

And so I’ve been doing what I always do in the face of uncertainty and doubt. I’m racing ahead of God, bent on figuring everything out myself.

For the last two months or so I’ve concocted a number of plans and expectations of how I think all the pieces of my fragmented career will fall into place. When the tide seems to move in a certain direction, I run with it, confident that I know God’s plans for me.

“Aha!” I declare. “THIS is what God’s going to do. THIS is how it’s all going to work out!” Until, that is, it doesn’t work out that way at all. And then I find myself back at square one – still with no publisher, a lot of questions and no direction…in addition to being frustrated with and disappointed in God.

I cycled through this process of planning, expectations, hope and disappointment three times in the last two months before I realized something important:

God hasn’t failed me, and he hasn’t led me down these dead-end paths, because God isn’t the one who created any of these plans in the first place.

I did. I put my faith, hope and confidence in Plans A, B and C – plans of my own making – instead of in God himself.

Holmes Lake Bridge and verse

Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for he is our God. We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care. (Psalm 95:6-7)

When I recently read these two verses from Psalm 95 aloud to Brad, he said this in response: “Obedience has to begin with a position of humility.”

The more I thought about it, the more I realized Brad is right. Obedience starts with humility – with our honest acknowledgement that God is sovereign and that he alone is in control. God is the shepherd – the leader – and we are the people he watches over, the flock of sheep who follow under his care.

As my friend Shelly, who recently walked through her own wilderness, says: “Having a Plan A or a Plan B isn’t at all what God wants. He wants us to trust him with all the uncertainty and to put our hope in him, not in our best-case scenario.”

Obedience begins with humility, with kneeling before the God who “holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountain,” the seas and the dry lands. (Psalm 95: 4-5).

Let us kneel before the Lord our maker. Let us hand over our plans and all of our self-created best-case scenarios to him.

Go Forth Without Fear

September 24, 2014 By Michelle 4 Comments

Catherine of Siena

“Go forth without fear.”

Back in the fourteen century when Catherine of Siena heard these words directly from God, she answered. She stepped onto a path rarely traveled by women in her time, and she embraced her God-given role as a powerful and influential political envoy.

Take note: this command was not unique to Catherine. Every one of the women featured in 50 Women Every Christian Should Know heard God’s command, “Go forth without fear,” and every one listened, obeyed and answered yes.

The stories in this book illustrate that circumstances don’t matter as much as obedience itself, because God calls his daughters to answer right where they are.

For some, that entails stepping out of the uncomfortable, the familiar and the routine into the unexpected, the frightening, the foreign and the unknown.

Catherine Booth, for instance, feared preaching more than anything else, yet when she heard the call to rise and walk from the pew to the pulpit, she answered.

Ida Scudder never intended to follow in her parents’ footsteps as a missionary, yet when she heard God call her to serve as a doctor in India, she answered.

Mary McLeod Bethune felt unqualified to serve in President Roosevelt’s administration, yet when God called her as a voice for African American people, she answered.

For others, God’s call demands that they answer and act exactly where they are…

…Today I’m over at author Christin Ditchfield’s place, writing about what we can learn about obedience from the women who have walked before us. Join me over there?

When a Small Sacrifice Makes a Big Impact

July 16, 2014 By Michelle 24 Comments

006 “Ten Things God Wants You to Remember.” That’s what was written on the front side of the card, along with a list: “I am for you. I love you. I believe in you. I will not fail you. I will be with you. I will provide for you. I will bless you. I will give you rest. I will strengthen you. I will answer you.”

On the inside, my friend Mary had written a short note. “Not sure why I thought you needed this card,” she wrote in red ballpoint, “but I did. You are loved, friend!”

I was touched to receive a card for no reason from a friend halfway across the country. Real mail is nearly a thing of the past these days, so when the mailbox holds more than the scarlet Netflix envelope and the electric bill, it’s a banner day. After I read Mary’s note, I propped the card open on the kitchen counter, right next to the microwave.

“I really like that card,” Noah mentioned later as we sat side-by-side on the living room couch. “I like the words on the cover. They comfort me.”

I looked up from my book. “You mean the card on the kitchen counter? If you really like it, you can have it, you know,” I said. “If you want, you can keep it right on your nightstand, so you can read it whenever you want.”

Turns it, it wasn’t me who had needed the card.

My friend Mary couldn’t have known Noah needed to read the words inscribed on that DaySpring card. I hadn’t known. Noah himself probably hadn’t known. But those words were the exact message he needed to hear. And they were sent by someone he’d never even met, someone in Pennsylvania who’d simply obeyed a nudge, a sense that those words were needed out here on the Great Plains.

I think sometimes we assume that if our gestures aren’t grand, if our sacrifices aren’t radical, then we aren’t truly “all in,” we aren’t truly living for God.

We believe that if we aren’t founding orphanages in Uganda or digging wells in Kenya, we aren’t really living an obedient, sacrificial life, a Jesusy-enough life. When our service seems ordinary, we wonder if we are “doing enough.”

Now, I have nothing against founding orphanages and digging wells. If that’s your calling, if that’s where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet, as Frederick Buechner said, then I say go for it with gusto.

But if your acts of loving kindness and service are less dramatic — a little more Hallmark, a little less Habitat for Humanity — I say carry on with confidence.

Listen to the Holy Spirit and heed. Follow through on those subtle nudges, those gentle prods in your heart. Because you never know – as Mother Teresa once said, your one small thing may offer someone a glimpse of great love.

“Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin…” (Zechariah 4:10)

Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: When You Really Want God to Send Someone Else

September 29, 2013 By Michelle 25 Comments

One of my favorite lines in the whole Bible is Moses’ response to God when God asks him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt:

“Pardon your servant, Lord,” Moses responds to God. “Please send someone else.” (Exodus 4:13)

I love how polite and respectful Moses is. And I love how he refuses to budge, even when standing face-to-face with God himself. Moses has moxy. Can you imagine outright refusing God, straight to his face?

I can. I do it all the time.

Last spring my friend Lelia called one evening to ask a favor. Turned out, one of her conference speakers had a family emergency. Three days before the retreat, Lelia was calling to ask if I might be able to step in to speak.

I said yes to Lelia on the spot. Then I got off the phone and spent the next two days desperately trying to come up with a Plan B.

I wrangled with God. I bargained with him. I begged and pleaded. I was, quite literally, Moses – terrified to speak in front of a crowd. “Come on, Man,” I said to God. “You know me. You know I hate public speaking, and you know I don’t ever, ever roll with anything. I’m high-maintenance. This is not my gig. I do not do eleventh-hour speaking engagements.”

Of course, God would have none of it.

No Plan B presented itself. I went to that conference, and I stood in front of that crowd with my knees knocking. I sweated so much at the podium, I removed my bracelet, my watch and my jacket during the talk. I joked to the audience that it was a good thing we only had 45 minutes, or I might have been standing in my underwear by the end of the hour.

While the talk wasn’t perfect, it got done. And just as God promised Moses, he was right there with me, right there in the room.

Before I spoke at the first session, my roommate, a woman I’d met only hours before, sat down next to me at the back of the room as I was nervously cramming for my talk. She put her hand on my shoulder, and she prayed for me – for strength, for articulate words, for a message that would sink deep into the hearts of the women participating in my session. Jen was my Aaron. She gave me the assurance and confidence that I could, and would, walk to the front of the room, stand behind the podium, and speak.

“God’s not interested in competence as much as he is in willingness,” writes Evi Wusk. This, I know from first-hand experience, is true. God can create competence in us, but he won’t create willingness – not because he can’t, but because he wants us to say yes to him on our own accord. God gives us the choice – yes or no. And if we choose yes, he guarantees he will be with us every step of the way.

Questions for Reflection:
Has God ever asked you to do something you absolutely did not want to do? Did you ever answer the call like Moses (and me) and try to say no? Can you think of a time when God was present for you, buoying you in your weakness?

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Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Trusting that the Door Will Open

April 28, 2013 By Michelle 31 Comments

I remember a conversation I had with my officemate Pam right before I quit my job. I’d been mired in indecision, torn over whether or not I should take the leap from the security of a job I’d held for ten years to the risky unknown of freelance writing. “It’s like you’re at the end of a long, dark hallway,” Pam said to me one morning as we sat at our desks, the sun slanting through the blinds. “You just have to take the first step.”

“Yeah, but I’d like to see a couple of doors down that hallway first,” I replied, laughing. “They don’t even have to be wide open, a sliver of light would be fine. I just want to know the doors are actually there first.”

When I read today’s story about Peter’s release from prison (Acts 12:1-17), I wondered if perhaps he had felt a bit like me as he stood on the cusp of freedom. Despite any reservations he may have had, though, Peter reacted immediately to the angel’s call. He didn’t weigh his options. He didn’t hem and haw. He didn’t scratch out a list of pros and cons. When the angel called, Peter obeyed and followed.

Later in the story we learn that Peter hadn’t even realized the angel was real. He’d assumed it was a vision. Yet he had still followed, no questions asked. And when Peter took that first step in obedience, when he slipped on his sandals and followed that angelic vision out of the prison cell, a miraculous thing happened. Every door opened along the way:

They passed the first and second guard posts and came to the iron gate leading to the city, and this opened for them all by itself. So they passed through and started walking down the street, and then the angel suddenly left him. (Acts 12:10)

Only after Peter acted in obedience did he realize it had been an angel of the Lord who had been guiding him to freedom all along.

Walking in faith, trust and obedience is scary. It’s difficult to take that first step, not knowing for sure if the gates will swing open or if the doors will even appear. But sometimes I think God simply wants us to trust him enough to take that first, tentative step, without the signed-on-the-dotted-line guarantee that everything will work out. Sometimes I think God wants us to step out in faith, trusting that he will brighten the dark hallway and open doors along the way.

A year ago this week I took that first step. I quit my job and leaped (or perhaps tiptoed is a better word) into my new life as a writer. Although I hadn’t seen them when I stood at the end of that long, dark hallway, the doors were indeed there. Some of them appeared when I least expected it. Some of the doors had been there all along, and I simply hadn’t seen them until I stepped closer.

Can you think back to a time in your life when you stepped out in faith, not sure the doors would open, or even if the doors were there at all? What happened as a result?

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Welcome to the “Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday” community, a place where we share what we are hearing from God and his Word.

If you’re here for the first time, click here for more information. Please include the Hear It, Use It button (grab the code below) or a link in your post, so your readers know where to find the community if they want to join in — thank you!

Please also try to visit and leave some friendly encouragement in the comment box of at least one other Hear It, Use It participant. And if you want to tweet about the community, please use the #HearItUseIt hashtag.

Thank you — I am so grateful that you are here!

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obedience

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