I woke up early this morning feeling the gentle prompting of Holy Spirit, prompting me to get up and write. He has become my gentle alarm clock. I don’t always know what word He’s going to give me to write until my fingers hit my keyboard. This morning the word that He wanted me to share is this:
God is “tinkering” with you.
What does that mean? I laughed when I heard the word. It made me think of Holy Spirit bent down inside of us moving this over there. Shuffling this over there… Throwing this out of me… “Redecorating.”
Once you make the decision to give your life to Christ, Holy Spirit takes up residence and begins the work of refining you. I call this process, “spiritual growing pains.” He begins growing you… Do you remember having “growing pains” as a kid? “Mom, my legs ache.” Or girls, remember “training bras?” Your body was changing and growing and you felt the change.
Well – as with the physical body, so is the case with your spiritual one. God uses Holy Spirit to grow you and there are times when you can REALLY feel the changes.
“For You have tried us, O God; You have refined us as silver is refined.” (Psalm 66:10)
God uses Holy Spirit to get into the heart of who you are and begins the work of refining you. What is He refining? Well below is just an example of a few things He has refined in me in the 32 years since I made Him my Lord and Savior. And it is a life process – as long as you have breath in your body and are open to hearing what it is Holy Spirit wants you to work on deep within you for the better meant of you… If you have been praying for a closer walk with the Lord, than there may be some inner restructuring of your thought process that needs to occur so that you can hear Him better. Spiritual growth is one that occurs over a period of time. We live in a sinful world, and sometimes when you come to Christ there is “gunk” from the world that resides on you that needs to be cleaned off in order for you to go deeper with the lover of your soul. Allow Him to do this. Allow Him to change what needs changing in you. He really knows what He is doing and it is why He has given us Holy Spirit. He is there to teach us and to grow us into a deeper understanding and relationship with the Father.
God changes the way you view things. When you become a Christian, God removes the scales from your spiritual eyes so that you can understand spiritually the battle you have been participating in. He begins to give you understanding. As you read through His Word, the Bible revelation after revelation will occur to you! You begin to have clarity of mind. And it is exciting! You have come into the knowledge that You have a Heavenly Father WHO REALLY LOVES YOU! And you begin to want to know Him better. The way you do that – it is to open up the Word of God and READ it! As you do so scripture will come alive to you. God will speak to you through His Word. What ever is prevalent for you for this time in your life will become apparent to you. The Bible is called the “Living Word” because it REALLY IS alive with words that will transform you and bring you into a closer walk with God. Before you begin reading His Word, pray that Holy Spirit will direct you to the passages He wants to have stand out for you and then – He will really WOW you with what He has to say to YOU. It’s personal and it’s amazing when you begin to realize that God wants to talk to you and one of the ways He does this is through the reading of His Word. What He shares with you may be different than what He shares with me because you are in a PERSONAL relationship with Him which means it’s JUST between you and Him! Get ready for some really eye opening revelations and cool conversations with the One who LOVES you and has called you by name. When I first got saved I had never read the Bible before and the more I read the more I wanted to know about this One who had loved me enough to die for me! Jesus LOVES you and when you begin to allow that love to envelop you – wrap around you like one blanket of love – don’t be surprised for the flood of emotions that fill your soul. It is REALER than real.
God gives you new desires. I had since the age of three loved and studied theater. I knew throughout my childhood that I wanted to be an actress. I just knew it. From the moment my mom bought me the album “West Side Story” from a yard sale – I fell in love with musicals and with acting and later with Shakespeare and knew without a doubt that THAT is what I wanted to become…. But when I gave my heart to Christ at the University I was attending and I began seeking God as to what HE wanted me to do with my life, our conversation went like this:
“Lord – I love You. I want to be in the very center of your will. What is it You want me to do with my life?”
His response is one I am sharing with you, verbatim. Truly.
“Kelly,” He said to me. “It is as plain as the nose on your face….” (Did you know the Creator of humor has a great sense of humor??)
“What is Lord? What do you mean?” I asked in curiosity, not understanding where He was going with this conversation.
“I have called you to write.”
Now you have to understand that I have always written… I have kept journals, diaries, written short stories all while growing up. Not thinking anything of it. It was just a way of expressing what i was feeling, it was nothing I intended to do anything with – it was just what I did. I share this with you because maybe as you are searching for what God wants you to do with YOUR life, it is something that you have ALWAYS done. Something that you are good at. Something that you just do. Maybe you don’t even think much of it – you just ENJOY doing it. It could be cooking, writing, singing, tinkering on cars, putting things together or taking things apart. It could be ANYTHING and usually if it is – it is a special gift or quality that God created in you and it may be the direction or calling that God has put upon your life. For me, it was something that I had always done. And yes, it was so obvious that I did not realize that writing is my calling. Or as I like to put it, “I am a scribe for the Lord.” And with that calling and discovering that calling makes me accountable with what I do with that knowledge. I have a responsibility to the Lord once I know what that calling is – to be obedient and walk in it… (Hence Holy Spirit waking me up at the wee hours of the morning to share a word with you.)
Some of the “tinkering” God allows will be instantaneous and some will happen over time and depending your level of resistance to what Holy Spirit brings to the surface of you. It may take a life time. Be open to it. It is for the better-meant of you. Sometimes refining is painful. There may be healing that you may need to experience. Allow Holy Spirit to heal parts of you, you didn’t even know NEEDED healing. It is a growth process and it will start out in baby steps. God knows what He is doing. TRUST Him.
I cannot list all the ways that God will grow you. I know that my own walk with the Lord is a journey of revelations. About Him, about me, about diving deeper in a relationship with the One I love more than anything or anyone else. As I open myself to growing in Him, He grows me. He shows me the things that need to be changed in the way I think – about others, about life, about myself. Years of living without Him in a sinful world that tries to have us live without knowing our dependence upon God, has had to be redone in my life. Man’s way of thinking is NOT God’s way. Daily we need to seek God and ask Him to show us the parts within us that need changing. Knowing that when we do so, He will do so in love. Sometimes (because we can be so stubborn) we fight Him on this. Only to eventually come to the realization that God really does know what He is doing, and allow Him to do it. Kind of like a kid who stinks and needs a bath – and fights their parent because they don’t want to take one. But once they get that bath – they feel SO much cleaner and comforted and peaceful. God loves us so much, SO MUCH more than we can comprehend. There is truly NOTHING better than allowing Him to “tinker” deep within us. He created us, He knows us intimately. He KNOWS what He is doing. We just have to allow Him to do it.
Stop fighting Him on it – take that bath. Let Holy Spirit wash ALL over who you are. He’s got your best interest in mind. And you will come forth like the child who was bathed…. Wiped clean by the blood of Jesus. Full of Holy Spirit peace that passes ALL understanding and full to the brim with God’s love. The absolute BEST place to be…. Truly…
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