Pivoting When God Asks

How often do you check in with God to see how you are living your purpose and your vocation? During these past 18 months, I have talked to God a lot about my vocation as a wife and my ministry. I have prayed often and the path I hear Him asking me to take now is different than just a few months ago. And when I say different, I mean different.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, on your own intelligence do not rely (Proverbs 3:5).

Prayer Is Crucial to Knowing God’s Voice

Therefore, it is so important to have a living, breathing, daily conversation with God about your near-term plans. If we make hasty decisions and avoid asking God what His Will is, we may find ourselves going the wrong way.

Discerning God’s Will is something we do hundreds of times a day. When we discern big decisions in our life, we must take the time to pray, involve others in our evaluation and ask God to show us confirmation. He will open doors, make introductions, speak through people/media/nature or make affirmations through spiritual or physical means.

Jesus answered and said to him, “What I am doing, you do not understand now, but you will understand later.” (John 13:7).

Humility Is The Key to Discernment

It is time to let go of the control freak in you. We need to pray for humility and for the ability to surrender our Will to His every single day. It is a daily spiritual battle and we must remember that there is not a soul in heaven with an ounce of pride and not a soul in hell with an ounce of humility. The basis of all virtues is humility, so we must pray for it each and every day like our soul depends on it because it does.

Be open to God drawing with crooked lines in your life. He has every right to pivot our paths and in some cases, those pivots are very welcome. We must pray for the eyes to see and ears to hear during prayer. Before you pray, ask the Holy Spirit to remove the scales from your eyes and to pray as you ought. If you believe God is saying something to you or putting something on your heart, ask Him, “Is this You, Lord? If it is, I want more of it. If it is not, please take all of it away.” This was great advice from my spiritual director.

I like to pray in Adoration. We should be praying with our mind, body, soul, and spirit. Pay attention to how your body feels as you discern thoughts and write down what happens during this time of prayer with God because sometimes we will forget. We need to discern between ourselves, Satan, and God. We must learn these three voices so we can live in the Spirit of God, doing His Will, always.

Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God because many false prophets have gone out into the world (1 John:4:1).

Praising God In All Circumstances

We hear in the Mass, ‘it is truly right and just – our duty and salvation – always and everywhere to give you thanks’.  We probably have this memorized and recite it in our heads as the priest says it out loud during the Eucharistic Prayer where we are all renewed in Christ. How many of us truly give thanks to Jesus always and everywhere? It is a question each of us should ponder deep in our hearts.

When changes come into our lives, especially when they are unwanted or different from our plans, we must thank God and ask for His vision to guide us. Our hearts need to be converted into His desires, so we need to ask for that purification of our hearts.

We do not know what He knows, we do not see what He sees. Instead, we can thank Him for the gift of faith and ask Him for more trust in His plans. We can pray incessantly every day asking Him into our tasks, our emotions, our prayer, our relationships. The more we ask Him in, the more we live in His Spirit. It is beautiful to witness the growing conversation and reliance on God in your daily life.

Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

Maybe you can think of your life as a child going on vacation. Let’s give God the wheel and observe the trip experiencing everything new with eyes wide open. Let’s fight the urge to ask, “Are we there yet?” and ask for more trust in God’s plan and for our enJOYment of the wild ride, we call life.