"What, LORD, what about this? What? Is this right? Help me here! Is this Your will? Is this spacious place, this refuge for people, this place to run to that we'd been praying for... not that at all??? Were we wrong? Because, it's okay if we were, we only want Your will. It's not for us anyway! Not for our glory, but Yours! But is this Your will? Or have we just so easily excepted the closed door as being that it is?"
In my frustrated confusion that's what I asked Him. After people had such a knowing of what God wanted done... the door was shut! And, those that were asking excepted the closed door as the will of God. But me, after there had been so much prayer, I couldn't help but question it. I couldn't rest in such ease of acceptance.
I wondered.... is it really, really, really God that closed the door?
I could not help but think: when Moses went before Pharaoh after God had sent him, Pharaoh did not immediately and readily and graciously submit to Moses' request. Mind you, it was God's request that He had sent Moses to request for! It was a fight before Pharaoh let the Israelites go! And Joshua was told to go in and possess the land that was promised to be given to him.... but the inhabitants of the land did not bow down and move over and off at his coming. It was a fight before possessing the land. That very land that God's very own chosen people were SENT to go to, and promised to be given! Satan does not move over just because we approach someone and ask. Satan does not just give up and give us the land just because we want it.
I can't help but wonder: Do we know how to fight?
We ask and pray, and we hope and believe.. but do we know the first thing about fighting? And if we believe, really believe, then won't the belief, the faith, be tested to see if we really believe it or not? Isn't it part of the requirements of believing in the fight of holding on to what we believe has been said and promised to us?
Do we know how to fight?
Do we fight?
Do we even expect to have to fight?
Do we know what fighting is?
Or do we bow at the closed door that we've prayed to be opened, and being that we find it closed (because Satan dare not want us to go in and posses it), we bow and call it closed by God's very own hand? When possibly it wasn't God's hand at all? Are all the closed doors closed by Him? Is it really Him? And how do we know??? Because I know that IF we know that it IS God's hand that we really don't want to go there. We really can be happy and satisfied with knowing that it's simply not His will, therefore it's not best, and we can submit to God's answer whether our will and our want was hoping for the other thing or not, because we know Him enough to know that He knows best and that in the long run, we really do want what He wants... whatever that is.
Our problem comes when we aren't sure of His will. How do we know what His will is? HOW do we KNOW what He wants??? How do we KNOW His will for any thing???? When an important matter in our walk on this earthly sod in the roles chosen for us to play comes up, perhaps a "life or death" matter for one or for many, how do we really KNOW what His will for that matter is??? HOW??? We can think strongly that God is leading us to do something, we can be greatly convicted of it;... then what changes what we were so convicted of the day before?? Does a mere measly meager "No" change all of that? Just because the door doesn't swing open do we become doubtful of what we first ever thought to begin with??? Is that the way it should be??? A wishy-washy double-minded man depending on the accessibility of the door that swings on its hinges or if it's barred shut or not?
I don't know.
How do we know?
How do we really, really, really know what His will is?
And why do we think that by believing we won't have to fight to possess what we're believing for?
These things baffle my mind. It's wonder won't quit wondering. I need to know!!! I keep putting before God all of these things that I don't understand. Asking Him about certain things that I've been believing Him for - for days and weeks and months and years of thinking this a thing to be something that He has said to me...yet the door still has not opened. "LORD, is this You or not??? LORD, is this Your will or not??? LORD, did you say this to me, or did my own mind make it up??? Do I continue to believe, or am I foolish in thinking it ever Your will at all in the first place??? LORD, HOW do I KNOW Your will and what You want???" Because if I know it's Him, I can fight!!!!!!! I can hold on to the hope and fight for the thing in total belief for it, because of my belief in Him no matter the struggle or the man in my way, no matter the door that looms locked and imposes. But if I'm not sure, I can't and I won't. And I'm not naive enough to not know that Satan still slithers up to us as he did in the very beginning of time in the Garden of Eden and whispers his very first question that he asked of man, "Did God really say ___?" And with his questioning what I had originally thought that God had said to me, I begin to doubt that it's God's will at all, and if God really said or He didn't.
"If any man lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. BUT when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does..." Those verses follow the ones that say, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you KNOW the TESTING of your FAITH develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking in anything." (James 1:5-8,2-4, emphasis mine)
The testing of our faith still comes!!! Just as it did for Abraham, for Isaac, for Joseph, for Moses, for Joshua.................. and on and on and on until our turn! And as surely as the testing of our faith still comes is the truth of "without faith it is impossible to please God" (Heb 11:6). And I believe that sometimes believing is a fight! We must fight for things that we believe in, in order to possess it. Yet, I don't think believing is the only thing. Where's the fight? I don't think we really understand what fighting means. I don't think that it's faith alone with our saying aloud that "we do believe." I don't think it's prayer alone. Or maybe that's incorrect? Maybe that really is exactly what fighting is? BUT I don't think that we can call a battle being fought and it really qualify as fighting with only being on ours knees for a night. I think fight sometimes gets up day after day after day and is not thwarted by a door disguised as "closed" by God's hand because it didn't fall open at the first breath blown from us in our asking it to.
Doesn't that make sense? I am needing God to give me wisdom here. I really do go to Him with the question, "How do I know?" And I really do wonder if we're missing what "fighting" really means? I really do wonder if what we do really qualifies as being called a fight as He's called us to do? Can we call what we do fighting? In our armor, we're only given one weapon with which to fight with: "the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." Revelations 1:16 tells us of Jesus (Who IS The Word): "from out of His mouth came a sharp double-edged sword." What does that mean? He told the disciples to "speak to the mountain." In the desert when satan was tempting Jesus, testing and trying Him, Jesus quoted Scripture. Scripture doesn't tell us that He stopped to pray! He spoke Scripture to the enemy. He uses His sWord. What does that mean??? Do we wield the sWord... really?
How do we know? How do we know His will? How do we KNOW it for sure? And do we really think that we won't have to fight for what His will is? Can we call all closed doors, doors that have been shut by His hand? How do we know when satan slithers constantly and consistently with his, "Did God will say" echo? Those questions that make us wonder if God really did or not? And do we even really know the first thing about what fighting is?
I'll be honest, there are a land of giants, enemies that possess a land that I feel with all of my heart that God has told me is His promise to me... I feel He's told me to clear them out, to go in and possess it, so that His Glory will Shine! not for mine! not for me! HIM!!! Him!!! HIS Glory alone!!! "So that all the people will know that I am God and there is no other"!!!!! I look like a grasshopper up against these giants! They're huge! They're mighty! And they're mean! And because the "Israelites" of today (God's people, Christians), because they themselves haven't been this way before, they've spied the land, and want to run the other way and leave the enemies in that land where they are! All the while saying, "We can't attack those people, they are stronger than we are... The land we explored devours those living in it! All the people we saw there are of great size!... We seem like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we look the some to them... If only we had died in Egypt! OR in this dessert"!!! So God let them die there!!! They died there!!! So many died!!!!... never going into a land that had been promised, for fear of driving out the enemy before them! They only wanted to go if they were invited, and if the door was graciously opened to welcome them in.
There's a land that I do believe that God has promised to me (and I don't mean earthly sod). He's entrusted me with a hope for a thing that looks incredibly hopeless, the most impossible looking thing that I think that I can even think of. It's crazy! A ridiculously looking hope in most Christians' eyes. But a hope nevertheless that won't let me go. Not that I won't let go, but it won't let me go!! GOD keeps placing it in my hand when my hands threatened to drop the craziness of it. I've prayed. I've sought His Word. I've asked His will. I've asked Him again and again and again. And I want you to know that I'm talking GIANTS here in that land... Giants!!@!! Something bigger than me!.. .and they don't want to leave!!! To get then to... will take a fight!! And I'm not sure that I know what fighting really is! And in my I-don't-know-how-to-fight place where I am, satan whispers, hollers, yells, accuses, shakes his head all over my face: 'Did God really say that to you? You just made that up! God didn't really say! And God won't do that too-big-of-a-thing anyway!'
How do I know for sure if it really is His will or not? And if it is, what's it mean to fight for it? And if it's so big and will be used greatly to show His Glory, what makes me think it won't be a fight in the first place? Is it He that has closed the door that I've not been able to open? Or, are the walls that surround its gates of the enemy? I just need to know!!! The 'gates of the enemy' don't scare me so much, because I KNOW the ONE Who has the power to possess it!.. the power to remove it... or the power to crumble it. I just have to know that I know... and fight for what I know is right! What's the closed door mean? And who was it that closed it?
I still have questions that I seek answers to. God knows my heart. I can honestly say that I am seeking Him with every bit of it. He promises that the one who does will find Him. My hope is in Him! My trust is in Him! "I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His Word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning" (Ps 130:5,6)! Abraham was a long time in receiving his promise.... most of them were. It's my turn. It's my season. It's my wait. It's my generation. And if you're reading this, it's yours too. I long to SEE what my heart hopes for!!!!!!!!!!! For HIS Glory!!!!! For His Name's Sake!!! To show the Magnificent of HIS GLORY!!!!!!!!!... so.... that(!!!) people will know!!!
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"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.... By faith Abraham, even though he was past age... was enabled to become a father because he considered Him faithful who had made the promise" (Heb 11:11).
And now us, in our turn, if God saw fit to write about us, what would ours say? By faith _______, even though _________ was enabled to ____________ because (s)he considered Him faithful who had made the promise. Or, could He not say that about us at all because our faitha and our fight has failed Him?
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