He is changing my mind

It's been a while since I've written a post that was anything other than just an update on what our family has been doing. Posts filled with cute pictures of family, parties, snow, etc. I love doing these posts because they are sort of a scrapbook of our lives. It's great to be able to share these fun memories with family and friends and anyone else who may stumble on this blog. But when I originally started this blog I thought I may use it in other ways too. Maybe just to ramble on about whatever is floating around in my head. Today that's what I'm going to do.

For the past several months I've had this thing on my mind. If I'm being really honest this thing has been in the back of my mind, always there but not quite my focus, for a couple of years. I've always had a certain outcome I wanted regarding this thing. A very clear picture in my mind of the way things would be. Maybe I'll explain what this thing is in a later post, but for the purpose of this post it's not important.

I began wondering if the picture I had in my mind was the plan God has for my life. When it first struck me that we may have different ideas I quickly pushed that out of my head. I certainly want to follow God's path for my life. Don't I pray for that very thing nearly everyday? But this is a biggie and I wasn't so sure that I was willing to surrender if God had different plans. So, for a while I ignored this thing. It wasn't something I needed to worry about right now anyway.

One Sunday I listened to our preacher's sermon and he said that we should ask God to guide our thoughts. For some reason this struck me. He didn't say that we should submit to the will of God (even though we should). He didn't say that we should pray about that which is on our heart (even though we should). He said we should ask God to guide our thoughts. Hmmmmm. I don't think I had ever heard it said that way. But eventually I began to pray for that very thing. I prayed that my thoughts would be God's thoughts - not the other way around. I prayed that even if God had a different idea about this thing than I did that my mind and heart would be open.

You know what happened? Almost instantly I could feel my grip around this thing begin to loosen. When I say instantly I mean that very day I began to think that if things didn't go exactly my way then that might be okay. This picture I had in my head for years began to blur and the possibility of a different picture started to focus. I was so shocked that I really didn't admit that God was doing exactly what I had prayed for - He was guiding my thoughts.

I'm not sharing this so that I can say, "Look what I did!" I'm sharing this so that I can say, "Look what He did!!!" God's power is limitless and I imagine in the vast expanse of His power guiding my little mind to be more in line with His thoughts regarding this one thing is a pretty minor task.

This change in my heart is just one of millions of examples of the fact that the God I serve is not some all powerful being floating in the sky. He is not separated from me. He cares about me. He heard my heart and He changed it. God is not sitting up there handing out punishments and destinies at random. He carefully and intentionally designed each of us and has a specific purpose for our lives. It is my desire to fulfill that purpose for my life. I don't know exactly what that is, but Iwill continue to ask God to guide my thoughts.