Guidance
The true disciple shall always know what he ought to do, though not necessarily what another ought to do.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom To Live By, p. 86
Category: Guidance
10 Posts
No One Can Steal Your Destiny.
No one can steal your destiny.
No matter what anyone “does to you” along your path to either personal or professional happiness, that person cannot interfere with your destiny. Only you are in control of that, within the master plan created with God. You will encounter setbacks in this crazy world of seven billion souls that will frustrate and challenge you. We all do. But your destiny cannot be changed or diminished by another human being’s actions when you are firmly on your path toward carrying out God’s plans.
The old adage “When one door closes, another one opens” is absolutely true. God will always provide new opportunities for you if the actions of another interfere with your divine mission. Such interference is only temporary. How can it be anything else? God is bigger than any human being’s free will, and he will always steer you in another, healthier, and more abundant direction. The divine architect will not have his master plan thwarted because one of the laborers doesn’t want to do his or her part on the building site that day. He will find new laborer for you to partner with so that you can continue to build your monument. And when you know that all such setbacks are temporary, you will find it much easier to forgive humans for being human.
— Kathleen McGowan, The Source of Miracles, p. 134-135
Hearing God’s Voice, Together
The secret of the Christian life — and the Christian marriage — is that you don’t have to figure it out. You don’t have to figure life out, you don’t have to figure each other out, you don’t have to figure parenting out, or money or family. You have a counselor, you have a guide — you have God. What a relief that we don’t have to figure it all out! We get to walk with God. That is the beauty of Christian spirituality. This is not about mastering principles; it’s about an actual relationship with an actual person who happens to be the wisest, kindest, and, okay, wildest person you will ever know.
— John and Stasi Eldredge, Love and War, p. 130-131
Power in Waiting
Sometimes, the picture isn’t finished yet. Ideas, possibilities, hopes, dreams float around, circling us like asteroids around a planet. We may think events in our lives are happening aimlessly, without purpose. All we see are disconnected, floating blobs. We reach for them, try to grab them in our hands so we can connect them, force them into a whole, force them into a picture we can see, something that makes sense.
Let the pieces be. Let yourself be. Let life be. Sometimes, chaos needs to precede order. The pieces will come together in a picture that makes sense, in a beautiful work of art that pleases.
You don’t have to force the pieces to fit together if it’s not time. You don’t have to know. There is power sometimes in not knowing. There is power in letting go. Power in waiting. Power in stillness. Power in trust. There is power in letting the disconnected pieces be until they settle into a whole. The action you are to take will appear. Timely. Clearly. What you’re to do will become clear.
— Melody Beattie, Journey to the Heart, p. 356
Intuition
Intuition provides options. When you are connected to the instinctual self, you always have at least four choices . . . the two opposites and then the middle ground, and “taken under further contemplation.” If you’re not vested in the intuitive, you may think you have only one choice, and that it seems an undesirable one. And perhaps you feel that you ought to suffer about it. And submit. And force yourself to do it. No, there’s a better way. Listen to the inner hearing, the inner seeing, the inner being. Follow it. It knows what to do next.
— Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves, p. 118
Obedience
Obedience is the key to all doors; feelings come (or don’t come) and go as God pleases.
— C. S. Lewis, Letters, 7 December 1950
Your Own Story
I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no-one any story but his own.
— Aslan, in The Horse and His Boy, by C. S. Lewis
Reward for Working Well
He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another harder and better one.
— C. S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy
When We’re Ready
I was certain that God had a greater purpose for me, and I prayed every day for Him to reveal it to me. At first I was expecting Him to show me my entire future all at once — maybe with a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder thrown in for good measure. But I came to learn that God never shows us something we aren’t ready to understand. Instead, he lets us see what we need to see, when we need to see it. He’ll wait until our eyes and hearts are open to Him, and then when we’re ready, He will plant our feet on the path that’s best for us . . . but it’s up to us to do the walking.
— Immaculee Ilibagiza, Left to Tell, p. 114
Accepting God’s Will
To accept the will of God never leads to the miserable feeling that it is useless to strive any more. God does not ask for the dull, weak, sleepy acquiescence of indolence. He asks for something vivid and strong. He asks us to co-operate with Him, actively willing what He wills, our only aim His glory. To accept in this sense is to come with all the desire of the mind unto the place which the Lord shall choose, and to minister in the name of the Lord our God there— not otherwhere. Where the things of God are concerned, acceptance always means the happy choice of mind and heart of that which He appoints, because (for the present) it is His good and acceptable and perfect will.
— Amy Carmichael, Gold By Moonlight