There are so many landmines our children must navigate through today. At one time, if you walked your children to school and held their hands, you could protect them. Today, the enemies have invaded our homes through television and computers and cell phones connected to the world-wide-web. We can no longer protect our children's souls by controlling their environments.
When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt into the desert, the Spirit of the Lord went with them, protecting them from the heat of the sun by day and from the cold by night, with a cloud and a pillar of fire. God does not lead us out of bondage only to abandon us to our own resources. He "hovers" over us like a helicoptor mom, watching, protecting, guiding, intending good and not harm.
The flip side of God's loving providence is trust and obedience. We need to learn to "hear" and obey the prompting of the Spirit. If we are all alone on the journey, it is most difficult to trust that what we are hearing is the prompting of the Spirit and not our own imaginations or voices. Within a faith community, however, we learn that the Spirit of God is indeed guiding us. If we cannot trust ourselves, He will prompt another person to tell us.
When I first began teaching part-time at Delgado, something kept telling me to go to Grad school. I kept squashing that idea: I had started teaching because we were desperate for a second income, and I had all I could do to keep my head above water with grading papers and feeding the children. There was no way I could go to grad school on top of everything else. At 45, I kept telling myself that I was too old to start grad school. After almost a year of rationalizing why I could not go to grad school and resisting the impulse to do so, a friend of mine called me. I had not spoken to Evelyn in 6-7 years, since leaving the prayer group we had both belonged to. But she had had a dream about me. In the dream, I kept walking around a pond that had a number of paths leading away from it. Each time I reached one path, I would stop and look down it, and then continue to walk around the pond one more time.
Immediately, I knew exactly what the dream meant. It was a perfect description of the previous months' indecision and hesitation. Convinced that God was speaking to me through Evelyn's dream, I took steps to enter grad school, convinced that I would not be able to handle it and that it would kill me. I still needed to work, I thought, so how.....???? What I did not know at the time was that there were Graduate Assistant programs that would pay my tuition and books and give me a living allowance---not much, but not too far below what I was earning as a part-time teacher. What I also did not know at the time was that I could never work full-time at Delgado without a Master's Degree. But God knew! And He was guiding me along the path even when I could not see what lay ahead.
Grad school prepared me in ways I could not dream for the work I needed to do at Delgado. My research undergirded everything I wanted to do for the students who so desperately needed my guidance. I could lead them with surety instead of guessing. I could never have done the work demanded of me without the foundation of grad school.
God is a wonderful Shepherd, if we can just learn to hear and obey with trust. Phil. 2:13 says this:
[Not in your own strength] for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you---energizing and creating in you the power and desire---both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight.
We have no confidence in ourselves, in our ability to hear and obey---but if we want to hear and obey, God will make it possible in ways we could not dream of.
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