Listening Prayer

AHH PLEASE JUST STOP AND LISTEN!

everything is just happening so fast, i'm having such a hard time keeping up. it's funny because the moment that I said that I surrender my life into His hands, all of a sudden one thing leads to another and now i'm in a place where things are changing so rapidly and suddenly that I'm at a loss, I feel like I'm losing control which is what God wants me to let go of, myself. I'm not even sure how to process this whole thing. It basically all started with me going to my academic counselor for school to seek some advice and counsel in regards to my educational plans and goals. Explaining how I seem to have everything else balanced, family is good as well as church but when it comes to my education I just can't seem to balance it. He responds by saying 2 things that I took away: 1) take it one semester at a time because things always change, 2) As I looked at the educational plan that he handed back to me he had wrote the key focus is: LISTENING PRAYER. I then looked at him in the eyes as he smiled then nodded, it was this moment that I knew that God was evidently speaking to me audibly. It wasn't like a the heavens parted and I saw God beaming down but it was more like His presence surrounded me at this moment and I just felt it being so strong. I honestly thought he was going to say to focus, keep doing a good job or something along those lines when he responded to me that he was going to give me a key pointer but to find out that he knew the discipline of listening to God in the silence just paused all the noise surrounding me as I gleaned in to this moment in time. Awesome, right?

This all happened this morning, btw..

It's been 3 years to this day that my grandpa has left and gone to heaven. So in commemoration of that I took a visit to my grandma's for dinner. I am not sure how a casual dinner with laughs and smiles turned into me grasping my tears into my hands as they shed down my face as my tears dropped one by one. Somehow, conversing with my grandma led to us discussing how I'm going to make my move out of this place and into my grandma's. You know what the scariest thing in life is?..hearing someone speak out the raw truth right in front of your face and not be scared to hurt your feelings about it. She laid it on me thick, the truth as. it. is. but the weird thing is, I wasn't offended what so ever, I took it with grace because she was right, I am too self-less. So self-less that I can't see when someone is purely taking advantage of me in their selfishness. She became my eyes for what I could not see. For what I thought I was doing a good job at, I was actually putting myself in the grasp of another person, obeying not God but man. As I've always grown up doing. Taking responsibility for things that are not mine to begin with. Doing more than I can handle, just obeying the commands of others so I won't be kicked out on to the streets, in fear of being abandoned. And everything I did gladly with a smile on my face because I trusted that the Lord brought each and every responsibility as mine to own for as much as He knew I could handle. But the funny thing is, today I really had to think about why I was crying. Even my biological mom (whom I have not spoken with in a couple months, btw) called me up talking some sense into me, like actually being a mom and explaining how I need to start thinking about myself now. My present for my future. She actually kept asking me why I was crying and to not hold things in to myself but to share the burden. She was basically explaining to me out of experience from how she is. It was great that I was able to see how much I am like my mom. Although I couldn't fully explain to her what was going on inside me because I am still in the process of unfolding deeper wounds I've never seen before, I was still able to receive my mom's words with love, something I was never able to do before. It's at times like these that I just know that everything has a place in time (Ecclesiastes 3). Now, more than before, I'm at a place in my life where I'm confidently content with where I am, in the embrace of my Lord and Savior. Doesn't matter what unfolds before me, I just know that it's all in His hands. Whether I stay at my moms or move into my grandma's to focus on my studying, I fully trust that, "all things to work together for good BECAUSE HE LOVES ME!" (Romans 8:28) With the word spoken to me this morning and this whole ordeal panning out so well. I'm left with just following and obeying, nothing more and nothing less. Listening Prayer is the key...

Jesus said in John 10:27,

“My sheep listen to my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.”

-Live Productively