Thursday, March 27, 2014

But Did You Take It To God First?



There’s a purpose in this long story so just bear with me. I get home from work yesterday and get on my laptop and I watch a video from Heather Lindsey on YouTube about this year’s pinky promise conference (last year’s was amazing, you don’t want to miss it this year if you can go). I close out of it and my computer screen starts showing yellow blotches…hmh that’s weird. So I figured I just needed to restart it and it would be fine. Yeah no…it now proceeds to turn green! So I say hmh well let me shut it down, take the battery out, and let it sit for a minute. Go back to it later, not only is it now pink and green the screen has doubled so now it is two of my desktop and everything that I open. I immediately think oh gosh this isn’t good! I have homework to do on Thursday and a paper that I have to work on that’s due Sunday but I have to work on it prior to Sunday because I have plans for the weekend, I have to get these videos together for the conferences, I have to do this, that, and the forth. Now read that as fast as you can without taking a breath and that is how it was running through my mind. So needless to say I’m stressing just a tad!

I go to Walmart’s website on my phone to see what they had that I could pick up right then because I couldn’t wait the 3-6 business days for it to ship, I needed it now. I find one that I’m going to order simply because it’s the cheapest and let’s be real I’m not balling out the park so it’s not like I have a couple hundred dollars laying around to buy a new laptop spur of the moment. I screenshot it and send it to my sister because she’s a computer person and she tells me not to get it because the operating system was something weird. As I’m scrolling through the laptops that are in stock and what she advised me to go with, all I see are the prices going up…and up…and up and my stress is going up…and up…and up. I finally order one and it’s in stock at my local Walmart but it’s late at this point so I said I’ll just pick it up today on my lunch break. Not even a ½ hour later, I get an email saying I’m sorry that laptop is actually out of stock and your order has been cancelled. Really though…

I say to myself okay God, I’m going to take my hands off of it and let you take care of it. Not even an hour later I’m back on my phone searching for another laptop aka not taking my hands off of it and not letting God handle it. I order a second laptop and once again it says it’s in stock and can be picked up the next day at my local Walmart. I wake up this morning to a second email that once again says j/k we lied to you, this one ain’t in stock either. So now I’m a little irritated, okay a lot irritated, one at the fact that my laptop has given up the ghost and is donezo and two that Walmart keeps telling me that they have these laptops in stock that they actually don’t! Nonetheless, I order a third laptop because I need it and I can’t wait for it to ship 3-6 business days. You got it, not in stock sorry your order has been cancelled. At this point I’m thinking Walmart are you trying to make me lose my Jesus today??? Are you really trying to make me lose all of my salvation because this has just crossed the point of ridiculousness!

I’m getting ready for work and I just have an attitude; I’m in my feelings. As I’m driving to work God puts in my heart Israel Houghton’s song Jesus at the center of it all. You cannot have an attitude with that song playing in your spirit. You cannot be stressed out with “from my heart to the heavens Jesus be the center, it’s all about You” playing in your heart on repeat. I texted my best friend and tell her about all the shenanigans and I thought okay God what do you want me to do? The real question that was proposed however is why didn’t you come to Me first? Insert big eyed emoji!!!! God showed me that I went all around Him trying to find the solution on my own but never turned to Him initially to give me the answer. So now I’m left frustrated and irritable when all along all I had to do was to turn to the One who always had the solution. God showed me that while Jesus at the center was playing in my heart I was at peace and I wasn’t stressed out about it. He reminded me that we don’t have to wait for the solution to be found in order for the stress to leave or for us to have peace. It’s when we go to Him first, He can provide us with the peace even when we don’t have the solution yet. But we spend all this time trying to figure it out ourselves and we get frustrated when we fail…miserably. 

I order a fourth laptop now…I place my order and I don’t get a confirmation receipt like I did for the others. I think okay that’s weird but we’re not going to stress about it. An hour goes by and I’m waiting to receive an email, still no email. So now I’m just expecting to receive another email saying gotcha again fool out of stock! A couple of hours go by, nothing. I thought you know what if it’s not in stock I’m not going to worry about it, I’ll just wait the 3-6 business days for it to ship and it will work itself out. I go on my lunch break and ten minutes later I get a confirmation email that my order is ready for pick up. I share this really long story to say that we can’t say that we’re giving our problems and situations to God but also keeping our hands all up and in it. This reminded me of when I first started driving and my mom would hold the steering wheel from the passenger seat! We say we’re letting Jesus take the wheel but it’s really like we just want Him to be in control of the gas and the breaks but we still want to take control of the direction that we’re going by holding on, tightly might I add, to the steering wheel. At some point we have to let go of trying to figure out on our own and learn how to take it to God first. No matter how big or small it may seem, take it to God first. When we try to figure it out ourselves it’s like saying to God that we have more faith in ourselves than we do Him. We trust ourselves more than we trust Him to take care of us and to fix it. That’s a tough pill to swallow. Proverbs 3:5-6 says trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths. Go to Him first and allow Him to be the director of your life as you take the backseat.

 

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2 comments:

  1. Sooo needed this. Thank you for sharing.

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  2. This was confirmation from the Holy Spirit to me. I was all in my feelings this morning too. I was thinking about my problems and getting angrier by the second. I started thinking about which of my spiritual mentors I wanted to talk with about it, I went on IG fooling around, went on Youtube and fooled around, started listening to music, and played around on the internet until the Holy Spirit spoke to me about going to His word and laying at His feet. Just like you I was running through my solutions, but then I came up with distractions because I didn't like my solutions,lol.

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