Pray, Wait, Move Only as God Leads

 

God’s Word in Proverbs 16:18 tells us that arrogance goes before the fall of a person. This means that pride and arrogance are the precursor to something really bad happening. Pride is a feeling that comes from thoughts contrary to the reality and mind of Christ. It’s a state of being that is void of the humility required to move in the love of God. The origin of pride and arrogance is in satan and his kingdom, and it tricks us into believing that we own ourselves. It also tricks us into believing that an individual’s freedom is carried out through the practice of doing whatever they want to do. All of this promotes an ego that centers around what is best for the one instead of what is best for all. This mindset is the enemy of unity in Christ, and therefore, it is destruction in and of itself, even if that destruction is somewhat delayed.  

To receive the desires of our hearts, our hearts must desire to please God above all else. When our heart space swells with Godly motivation and desire, it signals the heavens above and everything beneath them that we are prepared to receive. When our hearts are swollen with the commitment to seek and put God first, it indicates we understand that more of us is required in our faith walk, and we are pliable to go where He leads and do what He says.

Most will not come to see this in full view. Instead, they either make excuses for being stuck, or they abdicate the responsibility and accountability for not walking in Christ the way God requires. Either way, we would do well not to underestimate God’s allegiance to His plan. He is relentless when it comes to seeing us measure up to the full stature of our Big Brother, Jesus Christ. This is extremely important to our Heavenly Father. He wants us to walk in His love as fully as possible. Therefore, as we give Him His rightful place of honor in our lives, the desire to become more like Christ must be incorporated into our prayer lives and must also become our prime motivation.

Pray

The way that most of us operate is to make our own choices and decisions about what we want to do and how we want to do it, irrespective of God’s directives. As it appears to us that we need more things, relationships, and situations to feel better about ourselves and our lives, we pursue those things, and then we ask God to bless them later. Our Master Jesus teaches in Matthew 6:7-8(NLT), “When you pray, don’t babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!” Jesus Christ is telling us that prayer is not merely the repetition of words, and repetitive words alone will not cause us to enter the Divine. Prayer is an instrument of the Father’s love. It brings us closer to Him and builds the intimacy we share. It’s one of the important ways He’s given us to demonstrate honor towards Him. So, we are not to engage in practices that underserve the Father’s majesty, glory, and honor. His intelligence is supreme and immeasurably above our thoughts. He knows our needs before the needs arrive.

Prayer does not transfer Him into our situations, it transfers us into His. Prayer calls us home to the place where there are no limitations on His goodness, mercy, and grace. Our minds must remain in that higher place, no matter what our conditions and situations appear to be. If our minds remain there, so too will our hearts, and our reality will soon change to line up with the gratitude, faith, and manifestation of what we’ve prayed to receive.

Wait
We are spiritual beings having an earth experience, not the other way around. If we refer to ourselves as in the flesh or we think our body is all there is to us, we are wanderers in the dark. In other words, if we identify as mere mortals that may or may not be spiritual, we have misunderstood the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ. And if we misunderstand the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ, we are lost indeed. Jesus Christ said in John 8:12(ESV), “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” He is the light within us, and because his light is in us, he declared in Matthew 5:14 that we are the lights of the world. In 1Thessalonians 5:5, God calls us His children of light and children of the day. He commands us in Ephesians 5:8(ESV), “for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.”

As God’s children of light, we are called to illuminate others, therefore, we must be illuminated ourselves. One extremely important aspect of being illuminated is to live in the present and not in the past. 2Corinthians 5:17 declares that the old is passed away. It died when Christ died on the cross. The new has come, and the new requires us to think, live, and have our being in the dimension of our origin, which is Christ. Living in the past is clinging to what is no longer alive; none of us should want that.

We can have whatever the Father says we can have. That’s truth! But it takes time for us to believe it, and most of us are too impatient with ourselves to wait as the Father helps our unbelief. We want what we want when we want it. Many of us are praying with an attitude and mindset of doubt and not faith and gratitude, because we think we are waiting on God to give us the goodies when He already has! Ephesians 1:3 tells us that He’s blessed us with all spiritual blessings because of our unity in Christ. All spiritual blessings are the equivalent of any and all blessings, because all blessings are spiritual; for all blessings come from God, and God is a Spirit.

Many of our goodies are still in His dimension waiting on our faith to transfer them dimensionally. So, in truth, God is waiting on us. Isaiah 30:18 (ESV) declares, “Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.” Heavenly Father wants us to recognize that all things have been given into the Son’s hands (John 3:35), and the Son is in us and we are in the Son. God has glorious things in store for us. We are to turn only to Him and bask in His presence as our believing aligns and our faith matures. 

Move only as He leads

Do not let arrogance and pride coax you to move without God’s greenlight. Sometimes our unbelief is stubborn. We think we’re believing rightly, but we must be humble and wait on God to approve us. We’ve done things the same way for such a long time, and we’re so entrenched in our routines that we’ve lost objectivity. We can’t see the things we’re missing and can discern how we’re veering away from the path of God’s blessings. Routines serve us well in many instances, but make no mistake, the monotony of them can blind us to what’s outside the box. We’ve grown accustomed to thinking the same way and doing the same things. We worship, praise, and pray the way we always have, and we either refuse or we can’t see anything outside the lines.

Our God is too big to fit inside our little boxes. This may be discomforting for some, but it is dynamically exciting for others. He is the same and doesn’t change, but His majesty, glory, love, and power have no limitations. We could live ten million lifetimes and still not reach the end of them. God is in the blessing business. He leads us through His Holy Spirit that indwells us, and He knows exactly what He’s doing. God hasn’t created life to be complicated. Through Christ, He’s made it very simple. Ecclesiastes 12:13(KJV) affirms, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” This sums up our entire existence. God’s Word is life to us! His blessings are released into our conditions and circumstances as we are obedient to follow Christ and let God’s Word reign supreme in our hearts and minds. ■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. 

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001, 2007, 2011 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. 

 “Pray, Wait, Move Only as God Leads”, by written for Christian Encouragement and Inspiration© 2022. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.