Something came up and challenged Michael and I. We were in our own little world, settled and enjoying life, when an fertility idea came up. An idea we hadn’t spoken about in a while. We had surrendered and gotten comfortable in our way of life.
Faced with this new idea, we had to go through the filtering process all over again. We had to come to God with our situation and seek His will and wisdom.
Are you wondering what filtering process we used?
There was a process Priscilla Shirer wrote about in her book, “Discerning the Voice of God”, that brought clarity to me when coming to God to find answers.
Her three points are this – God will affirm His answer to you through Scripture, people, and circumstances.
She reminded me that the Lord wants you to hear Him. He wants you to know His answers and He will be persistent until you understand what it is He’s trying to tell you.
It’s hard as humans to understand the infinite, all-complex Lord. It can be confusing when His light on the path only shows you the ground right in front of you. You can’t see clearly into the future, so you can’t fully understand what He has planned. This causes you to call out to Him, share your dependence of Him, and find out what the next few steps may be.
I so appreciated Priscilla’s advice. Before I read that, I felt confused and scatterbrained. I would worry and stress about how I would find out God’s will for me on such major issues. How would I know what the right choice is? Beth Moore once said, “If you’re in His will, you won’t miss His will”. I took assurance from that; that as long as I was seeking Him, I’d be in line with what He desired of me.
Applying Beth and Priscilla’s advice, I tried to more calmy and logically wait for the Lord’s answer to come. I still had moments of freaking out. I panicked and thought about all the possibilities. That’s the way I was wired. I don’t do well with unknowns. I wanted control, plans, processes. But I’m so thankful that God knew that and gave me grace.
The older I get and the more I seek the Lord, the less freaking out I do. Though I still have moments, the deep inner peace brings me back to the truth that I can trust God to work it all out. I know He’s got the perfect plans laid out for my life. I know that His “plans for me are good” (Jeremiah 29:11), and that He will get the glory. So, whatever may come will have a beautiful outcome.
We can find patience in the waiting knowing He’s in control. We can use the advice Priscilla gave and look for agreeing confirmation between what we read in the Bible, what wise counsellors share with us, and in the circumstances surrounding us. There will be connecting words and stories that align with what Holy Spirit points out in the Bible. The more we anchor ourselves to that, the more we’ll be able to navigate the Lord’s plans for us on this infertile journey.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not rely on your own understanding;
think about Him in all your ways,
and He will guide you on the right paths.”
Proverbs 3:5-6
