This one was a Pinterest find. I don’t know if I’m clever enough (or brave enough!) to come up with this. However, I can think of several occasions where this would have come in handy. 🙂
“Their actions are crooked, and their ways are wrong.” Proverbs 2:15 (NLT)
Do you ever just feel stuck, confused, or at a loss about something? I have found myself in situations like that on a number of occasions. Something that I’ve learned about God’s character though is that He doesn’t want us to be confused. He’s also not afraid of nor offended by our questions. God wants us to come confidently and boldly to him without being afraid. We shouldn’t be afraid to ask God about anything. He wants relationship with us.
“For God is not a God of confusion but of peace…” 1 Corinthians 14:33 (ESV)
“So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God…” Hebrews 4:16a (NLT)
We should feel free to ask God about something we don’t understand or about something that confuses us. We can ask God for direction when we don’t know what to do about a situation. Additionally, God wants us to approach him with our needs. Anytime we need an answer, we can and should ask God!
We are free to ask God anything we want. If we don’t understand something, we can ask God! It could even be something as simple as a question about the use of a word we don’t understand in the Bible. I shared before about a time when I decided to ask God about the meaning of the word “glory” when I heard the term used in the phrase “show me your glory”.
I didn’t understand what “glory” meant in that context nor how God could show it to us. So I prayed, “God, what does ‘glory’ mean? How can you ‘show me your glory’?” It was several months later before I got an answer, but it came nonetheless! I was listening to one of my favorite speakers, Beth Jones when she explained that “glory” meant God’s physical, tangible presence. Then I also saw the New Living Translation of Exodus 33:18 “Moses responded, “Then show me your glorious presence.” This again answered my question that I had asked God several months prior. God was faithful to answer me, and He’s done it multiple times since.
More recently, I had an opportunity to ask God for some help and direction as I have struggled some with leading a group of teenage girls in our church youth group. Without getting into the whole story, for time’s sake, let’s just say that I’ve been acting in reluctant obedience for the past 9 months to this “call” to be a small group leader for our students!
Working with the student and/or children’s ministry is WAAAAAY out of my comfort zone! As I expected, I felt that I was in over my head when it came to dealing with younger maturity levels. On many nights our group was quite chaotic, and I don’t do chaos well. I was almost at a breaking point, when I decided to ask God for direction on how to handle this situation at which I felt that I was failing miserably.
What story??
I woke up in the middle of the night unable to go back to sleep with several things on my mind. I got up, made cup of hot tea, grabbed my journal, and started praying and asking God about some things. I determined that I would write down whatever “answers” came into my head. As I prayed and asked God for direction, the phrase “tell a story” came into my mind. So I wrote that down. Then underneath that I wrote “What story??”
My friend, Laneice, at church shared this hilarious “bootleg” clip of the War Room movie by comedian Anna Douglas. I couldn’t stop laughing when she showed it to me!
“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” James 4:7 (NIV)
I love taking self-assessments. I’ve always found them fun and interesting. Many of my students over the years have seemed to enjoy them as well. Most people love to learn new things about themselves or confirm things they might already know. I think learning more about ourselves and getting some strategies to put into practice can help us to accomplish the tasks that God sets before us and help us to be successful in the things that God has called us to do and be. Since we discussed success a little last week, I thought it might be fun to share a learning styles self-assessment as a tool to add to our toolbox for success!
In the classes I teach, both a success skills class at a local college and a life skills class at a women’s restoration home, we spend some time learning about learning styles and preferences. Knowing how we learn can affect both our success in school and in our careers. We can utilize these learning styles to our advantage to help throughout our lives.
Self-awareness and understanding that others sometimes learn, think and behave differently than we do can also help us manage relationships with others better (both personally AND professionally). Through self-assessments we can analyze and modify learning techniques and behavior patterns to get more out of learning, whether it’s at school, work or even learning and growing spiritually.
The first learning styles assessment we discuss in my class is the VAK system, which is an acronym that stands for Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic. This set of learning styles focuses on learning through our senses:
Visual: Learning by seeing
Auditory: Learning by hearing
Kinesthetic: Learning by movement
We all use all three when we learn, but most of us have one or two dominant learning styles or preferences. We typically default to our dominant preference when we take in new information.
Visual learners tend to take in and understand information by actually looking at it, either in writing or some other visual format (pictures, videos, demonstrations, or visualization). These are the people that when you ask for directions they will either write them out for you or draw you a map. If they are assembling a new piece of furniture, they will probably look over the directions first or watch a tutorial video on how to do it.
Auditory learners tend to take in and understand information by hearing it or talking about it. When asked for directions they will give you verbal instructions. If they are assembling a new piece of furniture, they will probably read the directions aloud, have someone else read the directions to them, or just ask somebody who has already put a similar piece together about how to do it.
Kinesthetic learners tend to take in and understand information while moving around or by touching things. These are the people that when you ask them for directions they might say, “Follow me. I’m driving right by there.” Additionally, they might use their hands and point a lot when describing the directions to you. If assembling a new piece of furniture, they will probably disregard the instruction manual altogether and just start assembling.
I saw this posted on my sister’s Instagram recently. I think my heart about jumped out of my chest when I saw it! Anything even resembling a spider scares me!
“…Israel’s troops lost heart and were scared stiff.” Joshua 7:5b (GW)
Success. What is success? What does a successful person look like? How do we know when we’ve achieved success? I mean success is something we all strive for, right? It goes to reason then, that we should know what it is that we are aiming toward.
So who gets to define success? I think it’s safe to say that culture, society or the rest of the world probably defines success significantly differently than God does. Culture might say that success looks like wealth, power, status, fame, happiness, and fortune. Are these things bad? No, not at all. Some of the people that the bible calls “successful” had these things, but they didn’t always. Quite frankly, they were called successful before they even had these things!
Joseph was second in command to the Pharaoh of Egypt, making him rich, powerful, famous, respected, and so on. However, God called Joseph successful when he was a slave and a prisoner before he ever got to the point of status, wealth, power and fame.
“The LORD was with Joseph, so he succeeded in everything he did as he served in the home of his Egyptian master. Potiphar noticed this and realized that the LORD was with Joseph, giving him success in everything he did.” Genesis 39:2-3 (NLT)
“The warden had no more worries, because Joseph took care of everything. The LORD was with him and caused everything he did to succeed.” Genesis 29:23 (NLT)
David was considered one of the greatest and most beloved kings that ever lived possessing all of the things previously discussed…fame, power, fortune, wealth, and more. However, He was considered a success even before he became king. In fact, he was an underdog, a servant to Saul, and even a fugitive escaping Saul’s wrath and jealousy when he was called “successful”.
“David continued to succeed in everything he did, for the LORD was with him.” 1 Samuel 18:14 (NLT)
Yes…this dog DEFINITELY looks dangerous. Be very careful around this dog.
“Your teeth are as white as sheep, recently shorn and freshly washed. Your smile is flawless, each tooth matched with its twin.” Song of Solomon 4:2 (NLT)
I cry during praise and worship. Is that weird? Does anyone else do that? Truthfully, sometimes it does make me a bit self-conscious! I tend to hope nobody sees my tears or sees me trying to covertly wipe my eyes. What if they think I’m weird? What if they think something is wrong? What if they try to console me, and I have to just say, “Oh no, I’m fine. I always cry during praise and worship. I’m just weird like that.”
Of course, it never fails that they play a song at church where I’ll get really emotional, and then right as it finishes they’ll say, “Now turn around and shake somebody’s hand, and have a seat!” Oh great! Not only do I already feel a bit abnormal for crying, but now I have to let somebody see my puffy red eyes, wet face, and maybe even mascara streaks down my face (…that is on the rare occasion that I actually put mascara on that Sunday morning or was brave enough to attempt to apply it in the car while Eric was driving—mascara and lip stains are dangerous to apply in the car you know!).
Do I chance people seeing my blubbery face or do I just come across as rude and sit down quickly bending over as if to grab something out of my purse so people can’t see my face?
I remember when I was very young, maybe elementary school age, I would be in church singing along to the music, and I would see this lady cry during praise and worship. She did it every time. I don’t know why, but I would just sit there and stare at her sometimes. I couldn’t figure out why she was crying. So one day I asked my mom, “Hey mom, why does Nancy always cry during praise and worship? Is she sad?” I can’t remember my mom’s exact words, but she tried to explain to me that Nancy was not sad. Quite the opposite actually. My mom said she was crying because she was happy and because she loved God so much.
I didn’t understand then. It wasn’t until I was older and experienced some of the same emotions myself that I understood. Remembering Nancy has helped me process my reaction as an adult. It helps me to say, “It’s okay if I cry during praise and worship. I’m not crazy, and I’m not alone. Remember Nancy? She cried too.”
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