“So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves.” Galatians 5:16
I recently did an activity where I had to cover my eyes and I had to find something that was in a room. My only guide was the voice of someone else. Although I was familiar with the room, I couldn’t go off of what I knew. I couldn’t assume my way around. I had to listen and go only where the voice told me to go. As I listened, I was able to find the object that was hidden. But I remember moments where I felt like I was going to fall or moments where I felt like I should do something else, even though I couldn’t physically see where I was going. In the end, I found the object without hurting myself or wasting too much time because I listened.
This year, the only thing that will make it better than last and cause you to fulfill real purpose is if you are led by the Spirit. Too often we come to God with the same issues and same prayer request for things that He’s already dealt with and answered. Our issue isn’t that God isn’t hearing us. Our issue is that we’re not letting Him lead us. Now this topic is one that many struggle with because to let someone lead you means that you admit that you don’t know everything for your life. To let someone lead you means that you’re admitting that they know a better way. Many of us don’t want to let go of our lives so God can truly lead.
The issue with this is that when we hold on to control of our lives, we are also setting ourselves up to do what the sinful nature desires. We’re literally setting ourselves up to ignore God. We’re setting ourselves up do what we want even when God is clearly saying something different. We all have desires that don’t make God proud and the only way we’ll ever gain control over them is if we submit to God. To submit to God means that we put away our vision, our will, our thinking and instead invest completely into His. To submit means that we are completely sold out to another vision and we are yielded to it.
In 2019, God wants us to be guided by His Spirit. I know this is something that we hear all the time and we would even say that we are led by the Spirit, but if you still do what you want to do because you feel like doing it, I want to let you know that something else is leading you. If you still blatantly do things that God doesn’t like and you practice doing it, something else is leading you. The only way we won’t give in to what has previously overtaken us is if we submit to God for real and let His spirit show us what to do and how to live.
For this year, God told me “In all your ambitions (your desires and determination to achieve success), don’t forget Me.” Everyone always gets excited for a new year. It’s a new opportunity to do new things. It’s a fresh start for many. It’s exciting. But if in all our excitement, goals and aims we forget God, it means nothing. In fact, I would even say that many of us have made plans that don’t include God. They make us feel better or they look good but because we’re not submitted enough we haven’t even stopped to ask God what He wants. We’re too busy trying to prove people wrong and succeed out of insecurities.
If God isn’t the one leading you this year, get ready to see the same issues and problems you’ve always seen. If you aren’t submitted to God, you can hit every goal you want and it still won’t matter. But this is not what I want any of us to have to deal with. Instead, I want us to focus on what God wants and this is what it is: He wants us to be led by His spirit and He wants us to never forget Him! It’s 2019! Let’s do it the right way!
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