Action Items

I used to think faith was incredibly boring. I grew up Catholic going to church every Sunday. I never wanted to go, and my sister and I preferred the 7:30am service because it didn’t have singing which meant service was 45 minutes instead of an hour. Faith to me = church on Sunday. It meant believing in God and Jesus. That was it. Little did I know, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

As I mentioned in part 1 of this post, when the “beautiful life” I designed fell apart, I let Jesus take over, and I quickly learned two things. What I thought was beautiful, what I thought was a full life, was actually pretty empty. At least in comparison to what Jesus has to offer. And when I let him take the lead, I found myself living a life that was more full, more alive, more unexpected, more humbling in the best possible way.

For 40 years, I put myself in charge. (My parents will attest to this.) My goals and dreams, my plans directing every step. I don’t remember the day I started taking direction from God, but I remember how. I would get these little nudges to send a text or a song to a friend. A person’s name would just pop into my head, someone I knew but wasn’t necessarily in my inner circle, and I would text with something like “I was listening to this song and your name popped. Thought I would share. Hope you’re having a wonderful day!”. Then I would receive a response, “Oh my gosh. You have no idea. You sent that at the exact moment I needed it. Thank you.” This would happen again and again. 

I began to recognize a pattern. A name would come to mind out of nowhere. Along with a name was either a song I was listening to, a book I was reading, or an encouraging thought. I would send it to the person and consistently the person would be experiencing something at the same time I sent the message. I knew it wasn’t me. I had no knowledge of what was going on in my friend’s lives. I was just living my life, I’d get a nudge, I’d follow through, and that was that. Then a friend said, “You are really in touch with the Holy Spirit”. Friends, I didn’t even know what that meant. I was texting people that came to my mind because I didn’t have a reason not to. My friend spotted what I hadn’t recognized - God was putting action items into my day. He was the one prompting me with the who, the what, and the when.

As I continued to step into this with God, he began to change it up, giving me a who and a when but not what. The name of a friend would come to mind suddenly with no other context. When that happened, I would reach out and say “Hi! Your name came to mind and I just wanted to check-in and see how you’re doing?” I would receive texts back almost immediately with “How did you know?!”. The person would be going through something, needing a friend and more importantly, prayer. God was using me as his partner, to give encouragement and support to others. What’s amazing is that the more I stepped into it, the more opportunities God gave me. The promptings/action items came daily.

Friends, I’m not special. My relationship with God, hearing his voice, receiving action items from Him, it’s not a gift He’s given me. This is all available to you. He has created you, LOVES you, and designed you to hear His voice. What may be unique to you is how you hear from him. It may be through songs, through nature, in dreams, through prayer. A surefire way to hear Him is through His word. The Bible is living and active and reading the Bible regularly is the best way to get to know God and to be able to test that what you hear is God. God will never contradict His word. We have another post on hearing his voice along with an experiment you can try here. I encourage you, press in. If he prompts you to reach out to a friend, I encourage you to do it and see what happens. God will guide. God will speak. And it is awesome!!

Blessing you with hearing his voice and God’s action items in your day.