When a look back, births a forward move

Posted: March 5, 2017 in other

It’s been quite a week…nowhere near normal (whatever normal is). When you get right down to it…the entire last year has been nowhere near “Normal”. I think of the things that have occurred. We here in Minot have been dealing with evacuation, flooding, disaster, homelessness, financial loss, and a total inability to make most decisions because we are reliant on someone else to make a decision so that we have a chance to make the right decision….Decisions, decisions, decisions…it is enough to make you doubt your ability to figure anything out.

The decisions of others really should have no effect upon our own lives, but inevitably others decisions certainly affect ours.

I remember calling a help line once….it was an emotionally trying time in my life and I remember saying something about the demands being placed on me, and the struggle to go along with those demands or to somehow step out of the situation. The gal on the other end of the phone said….”no adult has the right to tell any other adult what to do.” It may seem to be a small statement, and it may not be, but that day it stuck in my brain like glitter sticks to everything it touches. I found myself reminding myself that I should not be the person telling another adult what to do….but then there are those people in your life that can’t seem to figure out what to do, and when you know the answer it seems important to tell them. The years have passed and I have certainly found many examples that make that statement inaccurate. A person employed is required to do what they are told to do unless it violates the law or causes them to have to compromise their principles.

We all know those people who think they know how to run our lives better than we can run our lives. We should all have a good friend that will tell us when we are messing up whether or not we want to hear it. Friends are way different from acquaintances. Proverbs 27: 9 says the heartfelt counsel of a friend is as sweet as perfume and incense. What a friend tells us we can hear but when an acquaintance tells us, we pretty much disregard it. We all “sometimes” listen to advice given whether asked for or not. I always think we should keep our advice for someone else to ourselves unless they ask. But for our friends we have to speak up when we see them heading a wrong direction.

I have been asking lately, of friends and family what they think about future plans. It’s interesting the suggestions they make. Proverbs 15:22 tells us that plans go wrong for lack of advice, Many advisors bring success. A friend of mine tweeted that word a few weeks ago…and it was at that point that I began to invite people into my life by asking for their suggestions. This same friend also tweeted Prov 19:20 which says to get all the advice and instruction you can so you can be wise the rest of your life.

So maybe we should get on the phone and talk to everyone we can talk to about what to do next. Perhaps we should go ask the waitress at the local diner what stock she would advise us to invest in. Or perhaps we should make a Doctor’s appt and ask what kind of flowers we should plant in our flower bed. Or we should perhaps call a plumber and ask about what our house is worth.

I am quite certain that any of these examples would turn into disaster if we listened to them. NOPE…wrong choice. So who do we ask? I think there may be a couple questions we should answer before we ask anyone, anything.

Is this person responsible?…..like…. do they have a real job, and actually go there and work? Does this person live in the real world or are they only interested in video games, or do they think of everything as if it were them against the world? We need to ask ourselves…How does this person make decisions? Does this person have the ability to see 6 steps ahead, or are they the kind of people who go from one step to the next and never see that there is a cliff ahead?

I love those new commercials that are running….It starts out like if you have cable it won’t work and then you get mad and it weaves a trail that takes you from step to step until you end up with an eye patch and people who see you with an eye patch think you are tough and want to know how tough and then you end up in a ditch, in the mud and grunge….so then it says…so get rid of cable and do this….I call it following the trail…or learning how to think…in business they want you to explore the possibilities, and think “outside the box.” Most of us forget to “follow the trail”. We don’t see where a journey will go to. I have a sign on my office wall that says “Go as far as you can see….from there you can see farther.”

Ultimately, listening to others can be your downfall. How many kids, maybe you were one of them, heard their Dad say….You will never be any good. Or when you had an idea that you thought was good, had someone say…”That’s such a stupid idea!” or perhaps they said…”you aren’t smart enough to become ____________.(fill in the blank)

Listening to these things is like installing a game disk in your computer and then trying to pay the monthly bills with it. It will never work…If you want to pay your monthly bills you need the proper program. Install the right one and it can be accomplished.

When someone has the plan for you, it may or may not be the right program so you must determine if it is a program that will do the job or one that will fail or crash the system. Every computer has a delete button. When those wrong programs get installed in your brain and you think you can’t do it, then click delete and install the program from God that says….”I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!” If we would delete all the programs that have been installed in our brain that are total lies, and reinstall the non-contaminated program, we can reprogram our lives to be effective and successful.

We can practice until we get it right. When I first became a Real Estate Agent, I thought….I don’t know anything about this business…I don’t understand it and why in the world would anyone hire me to do this job? My Brokers, at that time, said…“You have all the training you need.” “You know so much more about this than you think you do“…so out I would go to try and list a house or try and help a buyer find a home…. I thought to myself…I need to do this, because I have to help these people I am called to help and I also need to make a living and there was no paycheck if you didn’t help someone fulfill their plan whether it was buying or selling. I would sit in my car and I would pray….Lord, I don’t know how to do this, but help me pretend to be a Great Real Estate Agent…As a kid I had played pretend, so I was good at it. One day I realized that I was no longer pretending to be a Real Estate Agent….I was the real thing, and I did know the answers, and I did know how this worked, and these people who God had placed in my path were helped by my training and my skill.

So what does all this mean? I think it means that we need to seek advice from wise counselors/friends/professionals, but not from fools. I think it means that even with all that good advice we can still screw up if we haven’t sought and received the advice offered by God which brings true Wisdom and understanding and that same wisdom that removes confusion. I think it means that we have to analyze the words people say to us, so that we don’t believe everything people tell us. We must instead click the “delete” button when the words that people have told us about our inadequacies or inability to do something, or about how lazy or worthless we are, or that WE will never be able to do that, or that what we think is a stupid idea…IS WRONG We have to delete it, and reprogram our minds with truth. When we know Christ as our Savior and Lord, then He will give us the mind of Christ. He says that HE loves us and he would not have died for us if we weren’t loved and OK. We have to KNOW that it was God that designed us the way we are, and it is God who can take all the garbage in our lives now and in days gone by and turn them into something good…. it doesn’t matter how bad it is, or how hopeless it looks. We have to change how we think. We have to recognize the Value we have. We are who we are, have gone through what we needed to go through to become who we are today…..and that is Good!

We have a purpose, and there is a plan, if you are still alive when you read this, God has a plan in store for your life…..Age doesn’t matter….When your work is done, you get to go home….until then, there are lessons to learn, plans to be made, hope to be given, Love to share, Children to speak truth to, Laughter to be experienced and Questions that have definite answers. Yes, we do need to ask for instructions and what we are to do….but the only one who knows the answer is Jesus, and He will reveal it and answer our request when we need the answer. In the meantime….we just follow directions, delete the lies that are told to us, and Know…that God’s Got it!

I can’t end without the scripture from II Chronicles which says, They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with Wings of Eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint.

Install that new program…. With God NOTHING is impossible!

Many Blessings to you all

  1. Thank you for this- I too struggle with decision making. Especially when it feels like opposition. Your questions are good- are they responsible? Can they see the bigger picture? Those have not entered my brain. The questions I ask- How does this person feel about me? (if its a personal decision, friend counsel) What can they gain from my choice? (business)
    I’m definitely adding your questions to the list. Thanks LA


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