Hearing God More Clearly

Lately I've been having moments where I can just tell, without a doubt, God is speaking to me....it's actually really cool.

For instance, I was very worried about being able to get my time off during the week of Christmas to visit all of our family since I had taken off during Thanksgiving and then I heard that our president was upset because so many people are taking time off this year. (Probably just Christmas Eve bc it's that Monday and everyone's making it a 4 day weekend...or for me-even longer.) At one point I was just like it's out of my control and I totally gave it over to God and prayed about it and prayed to accept His will-whatever it might be...and told God how I felt about it and that was that. Many times Satan tempted me to doubt and worry, but during those times I just kept stopping whatever I was doing and started praying. That was about a month ago. On Friday I was really tempted to worry when I heard how upset our president was and I was sure I wouldn't get my time approved. I still prayed. Every time I began getting the feeling that I was starting to worry....I'd immediately start to pray. Friday, at 4:56 PM (4 minutes before I usually leave) my time was approved in our electronic attendance system we use!! I was so excited! I also learned a big lesson of trusting God completely. I always think that I trust Him, but I've leared that I haven't been trusting Him completely. Even during the past month or so, I've been able to realize that He allowed it to go on for a while before my time was approved to show me that I need to trust completely. If my time would have been approved right away, I wouldn't have learned this lesson of full dependence. I would have really missed out. So as great as it is to get my time approved and to be able to visit family as planned, the lesson I've learned has been even greater.

2nd example: Feeling as though God were speaking directly to me through a sermon I heard this Sunday morning. For the first part of Pastor Tim's sermon, I felt as though God and I were sitting down together talking and there was no one else in the whole place. It was a very intimate feeling as listened to the words of Ephesians 4:1-10, specifically verse 2: "Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." I think that this felt like it really applied to me because of the day I was having on Saturday. It was just one of those days where the duties of life were seemingly overwhelming-even though they necessarily weren't. One of those days where I was not humble, gentle or patient. Basically the sermon was a good reminder of how we ought to live.

More often and also more consistently, I find myself praying that God's will be done and I accept that and know it to be the best possible answer for me in whatever situation I am faced with. Sometimes I do include in my prayer my thoughts/feelings/desires just to get it off my chest (as if He doesn't already know-ha!) and say "ok God, you know what I want, now show me what you want". It's so much better this way! I no longer pray for what I want...because let's face it...I'm a finite human being with a limited perspective and that won't get me too far when compared with God.