Someone Needs To Hear Today – You Are Heard –

Someone needs to hear today that they are heard.

 

Isaiah 65:24 (NKJV) – “It shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear.

 

Proverbs 16:1 (NIV) – To humans belong the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the proper answer of the tongue.

 

Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV) – “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.

 

Today you might find yourself in really challenging circumstances. It may seem like everything is going wrong and you may feel like you are drowning, not getting a break or breathing room from the constant challenges. You might feel alone, heartbroken, empty and feel like giving up.

 

Today I would like you to humour me for a bit. I would like you to take some time to reflect…

 

I want you to not focus on the challenges and the difficulty, pain and heartache that accompanies it. I want you to look at the small positive yet noteworthy people, resources, occurrences, and miracles that came in the shape of “coincidences” either before, during or after your challenges, that you might have “missed” or not “seen”.

 

Chances are that when you reflect and look at these things you will see that they were answers to prayers, even if it looked different to what you expected.

 

Even though we serve a big God and His Glory is so incredible that no one can deny it, there are times when God moves subtly, behind the scenes. His movements are often “marked” as “coincidence” or “luck”. When we think of God’s Glory, we often think “big”, “notable” and “visible”. If we keep thinking that God is only in the “big” moves and occurrences and not in the small and seemingly “overlooked”, we actually miss out in recognising His answers to our prayers.

 

Romans 8:34 (NKJV) – Who is He who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, Who also makes intercession for us.

 

Jesus prays for you; do you know that? This goes hand in hand with Isaiah 65:24. Every place you step in your future, He has already been. He knows the choices you will make and the challenges you will face. Jesus intercedes on your behalf. The answers to your prayers can come even before you pray and ask. God already knows your prayer before you speak and utter it.

 

The thing with answered prayer… it often perplexes us… often times when we pray we think that God does not hear or answer because we are looking for the answer a certain way.

 

Let’s say right now you are facing a great challenge. Recently new people came and walked into your life who seem to bring comfort, encouragement and a helping hand while you go through your challenge. Your prayer and desire are that you do not go through the challenge, but Jesus in His Sovereignty knows what you need during those times, and therefore sends you these people to help support you.

 

Having faith and following Jesus does not mean that God comes to take care of all our troubles to sort it all out on our behalf so that we can live trouble free. This is not Biblical. We know that we will have trouble, Jesus Himself said that. We have trouble in the world because man chose to disobey God and so sin and suffering entered into the world. Jesus came so that we can have life and life abundantly in Him. Life abundantly in Him does not mean your natural circumstances are in abundance, but rather your spiritual wellbeing and relationship with Him is in abundance. God never promises us no suffering while on this earth, but He does promise that He will be with us even in our sufferings.

 

God will often answer our prayers very differently than what we would like. I remember when I first started BOLD EXISTENCE, God would shut every door for me to get any full-time or part-time work as He wanted me to be “all in” and work on building the business and ministry up. I kept praying for Him to show me what He wanted me to do in the meantime to be able to receive finance to pay the bills while putting most of my time and effort into building the business up. God unexpectedly brought a “hotel cleaning” job my way. It was a casual position, giving me flexibility, which allowed me to earn what I needed, when I needed, while still being able to build the business.

 

It definitely was not what I expected. It was an answer to prayer but not necessarily the answer I would have liked or wanted. You see, being a qualified veterinarian and a qualified personal trainer, I had extensive work experience. If God was going to open up any job opportunity for me, I would have expected it to be in a field where I could utilise prior experience, skills and qualifications as I know God is not wasteful. A “cleaner” job did not require or use any of those skills and it was not something I ever thought of doing. Going from corporate world wearing suits to scrubbing hotel toilets, didn’t make any sense to me at first. It surely didn’t make sense to the people in my world either. God’s ways are definitely not our ways.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with cleaning jobs. Work is work. No matter what the occupation is. I certainly never looked down on cleaners or the work they do, in fact I respect them because it is hard physical work and you really don’t always have a “fun” day at work when you have to clean up “things” you really don’t want to. I am simply just comparing the parallels of how God can answer prayer in ways we would never think off or would necessarily like.

 

You see, if God opened a door for me back then to do part-time or full-time work in my fields of experience, I would probably have caused much delay in getting BOLD EXISTENCE up and running as I might have become “comfortable” in that “familiar” space and would have probably made those jobs a priority over starting up a business and ministry which was very “stretching”. God was protecting me. I have always prayed that He would help me get to where He wanted me to be without me causing delays. The cleaning job was definitely not comfortable. I have done many physically intensive jobs in my life, and many of them were not “clean” jobs, I would get dirty and sometimes even get poop all over me (I will spare you the details). Bottom line, I am not afraid of doing hard physical labour jobs or getting my hands dirty, even now, I don’t shy away from helping someone who needs a hand with physical work. If the need presents, I will do them without an issue.

 

God sent that cleaning job to me so that I could get the business up and running in the shortest time possible without losing days in a part-time or full-time job and not needing to carry the day-to-day responsibilities those jobs required. Even though temporarily, that cleaning job was how God chose to provide for me during that time and season, even if I would have preferred something else, He only opened that door for me at that time.

 

This is a long story short, but what I want to get at is at first, I did not recognise the cleaning job as a blessing because my focus was so much on the way I would have liked my prayer to be answered. God had to open my eyes and help me to change my perspective to see the blessing. Flexible, doable, not much responsibility, finance, enough time to invest in building a business up from scratch etc. It wasn’t what I would have chosen for me personally, but God chose it for me. It also taught me a lesson in understanding God’s Sovereignty over our qualifications, prior job experience and current hopes and dreams. It all belongs to Him. All were given by Him and through Him. And at any point in time, God can choose to do what He wants to with what He has given us. We just need to be willing, open and obey, as God can take any of it away in a blink of an eye. We should never hold onto anything in this world too tightly so that if God wants us to help, do, or go, in ways we do not expect or necessarily like, we will do it because those things don’t have a “hold” on us. Our focus and perspective need to shift from “worldly ways” to God’s ways. And God’s ways will most of the time not make sense because His ways are higher than our ways.

 

Perhaps today you have prayed for a breakthrough in your business and then God sent someone to give you a helping hand. Perhaps today you have prayed for a job and instead, God asks you to start a business. Perhaps today you have prayed to God for financial provision and He provides a job that you don’t want to do. Perhaps today you prayed and asked God for a place to live and He provides an opportunity that does not fit your “ideal”. Perhaps today you asked God for resources and instead He gives you a creative idea. Perhaps today you asked God for physical healing and instead He provides you with an outstanding physician. Perhaps today you asked God for mental clarity and instead He provides you with a physical exercise program. Perhaps today you asked God for deliverance from spiritual attacks and He tells you to get rid of your television….

 

Perhaps today your prayer should be “Daddy-God, I thank You that You always hear my prayers and that Jesus is interceding on my behalf. God I realise that You might have already or are busy answering my prayers in ways that I might not be recognising since I am expecting it to look a certain way. Please open my eyes God in Jesus name so that I can see my situation through Your eyes and recognise the ways in which You have provided answers to my prayers so that I don’t become disheartened in thinking that You have not responded. I thank You in Jesus name, amen.”

 

May I challenge you today to let go of your “ideals” and your “expectation” of how God should answer your prayers, and just trust His way, His plan, His open doors and pathway?

 

…Sometimes all we need is to have a deeper look at the small, yet simple ways in which God moves and answers prayers.

 

Be blessed 😊