When You Don't Understand

When You Don’t Understand: Seek Him

By Michelle Kidwell

This shouldn’t be happening! A loving God wouldn’t do this!

I am sure every Christian has a struggle with bending to the will of God, and many have questioned exactly what His will is, and when we do not feel that His will is right, sometimes we question Him. We try to manipulate the situation to our advantage, but that is not the answer,

He has a plan for us even through the valleys, and undoubtedly we will face valleys.

How do we seek the will of God? We pray of course! I talk with God daily, pray over things that others may think trivial, but I believe with God we need to seek his wisdom in even the smallest of decisions.

The will of God may not make sense to us at times. When Joni Eareckson Tada was first paralyzed in 1967 she questioned God’s will for her life. She was a happy seventeen year old one minute, and in the time it took to dive in to shallow water, she was paralyzed from the shoulders down.

When her friends were celebrating graduation she was strapped to a Stryker frame, and thought of how she wished she could die, but the Lord had a plan for her, and he used Steve Estes a friend, and a born again Christian, to get her out of that depressing thought process.

He showed her the importance of bending her will to the will of God. It was not easy, but Joni listened and the Lord used her, and because the Lord used her, she now runs the largest Christian Ministry for the disabled in the world, Joni and friends.

What if she had not allowed herself to bend to the will of God? How many lives would have not been touched by her ministry then? How often do we avoid bending to the will of God though? How many times do we forget to say not my will, Lord, but your will be done?

We get so wrapped up in our lives; in trying to do the “Church thing” that sometimes we are not following the will of God! Have you ever seen someone trying to do something for Christ; something, that they were not called to do?

Most of the time you can tell this is not their calling, they do it with little enthusiasm or with fake enthusiasm, you may think to yourself what are they doing, why are they doing this? However, we are all guilty from time to time aren’t we? None of us can claim to be the perfect Christian!

I am guilty of not always bending to the will of God, and I pay for that too, so I have learned to listen and to pray. We need to listen to God as much as we pray. Look at how much time Jesus spent listening and praying to the Father, He spent forty days on that mountain doing nothing but praying and listening to the Father!

His whole time on this earth was spent bending to the will of the Father, but you may say he is God, and you would be right, but Jesus was human as well, He was tempted and tested, but He did not fall into traps, He listened and He bent to the Father’s will, not my will Lord, but yours.

I often find myself thinking if only I had listened, if only I had sought His will, when I started this venture, when I made this decision, I wouldn’t be in the situation, but there are times too, when I find myself getting angry with the Lord for my own mistakes. I am sure I am not the only who has done this.

We make a mistake and suddenly it becomes God’s fault, when in all reality we probably wouldn’t have made the mistake if we sought Him. A few months ago my best friend was on my heart and the subject of many of my prayers, something was wrong, and the Lord was showing me that I needed to be praying for Melissa.

Melissa had her young son, her husband and her family, and after not hearing from her for over a month, I decided I better call her, and when her husband picked up the phone I sensed something was wrong, and I was right. My best friend had gone to be with the Lord on the 9th of February, I found out over a week later, but I think even before I called; the Lord was preparing me for the loss.

It hurt to loose her of course, for we were close, she was the sister of my heart, and we shared a deep bond that was like that of a sister and she was now gone. I cried out to the Lord and asked Him why, and then I remembered the pain she had been in before and I understood this was her release.

She was only in her thirties and her life was over, but I knew she was with the Lord; all who loved her knew she was with the Lord, and that helped.

I had bent to the will of God in being able to let my friend go, I did not allow myself to stay angry with the Lord, and because of that I was able to let her go in a mentally healthy way, that is not to say I sometimes do not wonder why someone so young, with a young son had to die, because I do.

However, I have learned to allow the grief to pass, because it is the Lord’s will that we move past grief. We must follow the Spirit of the Lord and grow towards Him.