Psalm 119:108-110 (NLT)
Lord, accept my offering of praise,
and teach me your regulations.
My life constantly hangs in the balance,
but I will not stop obeying your instructions.
The wicked have set their traps for me,
but I will not turn from your commandments.
We all have a tendency to take life into our own hands. As David says in Psalm 119, “My life constantly hangs in the balance.” Just as God has shown us His faithfulness, His goodness, and His provision, we in essence say, “Oh, hey, thanks God! I’ve it from here.”
But we don’t.
We have something inside of us that was fearfully and wonderfully made. A brain. In these complex creations, God has programmed us for one purpose…to seek Him. But He has also given us the gift of creativity and imagination. We are all programmed to seek Him in our own unique way.
For me, one of my most favorite of ways to creatively connect with God is through writing. See, we serve a creative and imaginative God. He is the creator of the world! He just imagined what He wanted the universe to be, and He created it. Interestingly enough, He spoke His creation into existence with words, with The Word.
It is so beautiful to me that God uses so many different mediums to reach His people. He crafted each of use with passions, and talents, and personalities, and interests. With these unique combinations, we each have an equally unique opportunity to connect with God in our own way and to share His love and grace with the world.
But sometimes, what God intended as a means of heavenly communication, we steal away for earthly and selfish purposes. We take our imaginations and let them run wild. Sometimes they run so far that we lose sight of God. He never loses sight of us, but we lose sight of Him as we chase after our wildest dreams.
We desperately want to take hold of our hopes and dreams with two hands, fists wrapped tightly around them, so we don’t lose hold of them. We’ve imagined it, so we best not lose it.
But God terribly longs for us to open our hands to Him, to surrender our will and our hopes and wildest dreams to Him. He deposits seeds into our imagination and wants for us to turn it back to Him.
Sometimes our flesh is our worst foe. We are poverty minded. We don’t want to lose what we have, when really, we have nothing but God. Our flesh says, hold tight, you won’t achieve that dream unless you go after it…don’t let it go.
We try so hard to do it on our own. Our dream to hold on to or to lose.
What if we, instead, placed that dream not in clenched fists, but in open hands? If what God deposited into us, we then took back to the Father, and said, “yes, Lord, this dream you’ve given me…yes, bless me and lead me in this God-sized dream.”
Now God might not take us to the dream the same way we would have ventured to get there on our own. Just as I decided to make a turn one direction and the GPS yells at me, “MAKE A U-TURN WHEN POSSIBLE,” God is going to send you a different route.
Why? His ways are higher than our ways, His thoughts higher than our thoughts, and His timing, perfect.
God is constant, though. His direction is ever-present. His promptings always at hand. We need only to be still. To listen. To obey.
When we open our hands, when we give our great big God-inspired dreams back to the One who conceived them, they will be blessed. He will fulfill our dreams. He will fulfill His dreams.
Word Filled Woman 