When I Need Rest

In my time spent with God tonight, I read Acts 16:11-15-

Here, Paul and his companions stopped (on their journey of sharing the message of Jesus's life and His gift of eternal life) at Phillipi for a few days. While there, on the Sabbath day, they went outside the city gate "expecting to find a place of prayer". However, they spotted women there and intentionally sat with them and began to speak to the women. They initiated the conversation, they approached the unsaved and "the Lord opened their [the women's] heart."
These men did not stay on the course they had planned. For what they wanted and desired was to retreat and rest, to find solitude with God. Away from the crowds and speaking God's message, as they had been doing so much of, for a moment to just get away. But God had plans of His own for them. When they were tired and spent, looking for quiet and a means to perhaps draw strength through their rest, God called on them to continue and press on. And they were obedient to the call.
Am I, at my most selfish state, able to answer "yes" to His work which God has prepared in advanced for me to do? When I long for, desire nothing more, plan and set aside time to REST, does my heart still stay in tune to the possibility of God using me in the place where I most desire rest and retreat? Do I miss opportunities because I'm not seeing the world through His lenses but rather self-satisfying ones of my own? When I am at my most focused on me and my needs and what I want, am I, in that moment, willing to die to myself for the sake of Christ's work through me and God's deserved glory? Even in areas outside of sharing the gospel. When I want to win an argument with my spouse or am not feeling loved by my spouse in a way that I desire him to, am I willing to die to what I want and see that God calls me to treat my husband as I wish to be treated, not as it feels he's treating me? When a friend speaks biblical truth into my life and it cuts me so deep I want to run rather than listen, do I rememberer that God says "a wise man is he who listens to counsel" or do I put up walls and reject them?
A women and her entire household were saved and baptized in a moment when those men could have turned inward and focused only on their needs (and rightly so) but instead, saw their higher calling, died to their flesh, and seized the opportunity to be bold with the message of truth. And God changed lives through that!

Lord, let me not be blind to seeing the moments which you're calling me to do Your work. Especially when I'm at my most self-focused. Forgive me for the times when I've shut myself off from letting You use me b/c I'm so distracted by what I think I need or want. Thank You for your forgiveness and grace which still continues me for your glory! Father, let me see the world and the lost as You see them, and let me be bold and initiate those conversations with them about Your love for them! Give me opportunities and let me see them! Amen.

Am I Really Doing This?

Seriously? Not sure if this whole blogging thing is going to stick but I thought I'd give another go, this time, with a much broader focus- the cry of my heart. That can be anything and everything; right? As opposed to my first blogging attempt that was focused solely on the adoption of our beautiful daughter, Kayli Hope. So here I am with all my rawness and vulnerability laid bare in hopes that my hurts, habits, hang ups, rejoicing, praising, and learning, desires, and hopes might somehow be used by God in somebody else's life somewhere.

My husband and I are wrestling with some pretty life changing long term effecting decisions and we've been petitioning our Lord for years about all these topics. They seem to all be coming to a head at once and seeing the stress it's having on my husband, as he tries to determine just what exactly is God's will for our lives, weighs down on him.

Tonight during my time I spent with God, I read Acts 16:6-10. In this passage Paul had a vision in his sleep. He acted, obediently and immediately, to what the vision had communicated to him. In fact, the Bible tells us in verse 10, "After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them."

This became the cry of my heart:
     'God, call my husband to where you would have him either in the secular world or in full time ministry. May his eyes be open to see the path and direction you would have him on. May his spirit be in tune with knowing the call is of You. May he have a heart that belongs fully to Your desire and an understanding of Your will for his next steps. May he walk by faith and not by sight.
      I pray this also in regards to having another child. Please lead me through my husband and the choices he decides on based off of convictions given to him by You. Let me be a wife that follows his leadership, regardless if my desires are met or not, and let me do it in such a way that communicates to Shane that he has a wife who respects, admires, and trusts him with my life because of my faith in the knowledge that You promise to lead me and my family through my husband.
     Help us also to know the calling for which You have chosen as our children's educational direction looking beyond this year. Give us the tools, peace, and protection we need to carry out that conviction, whatever it may be, and let it be according to Your will and not our desires or decision. May we know without doubt, what You have called us to. Amen.'