Lord, What Am I Supposed To Do???

Today I was highly upset. For two reasons. One, one of my professors is a very interesting person. The class has no syllabus and no structure...the highest grade on the midterm was a 70 and when she tests us on information, we can have EXACTLY what was written on the worksheet or exactly what she told us, but it's still not enough. Madness.

Secondly, since I missed the deadline for a Critical Language Scholarship to completely pay for Russian study abroad... I'm planning to apply to a language school and I am applying for a scholarship which, if I get it, could pay for the entire tuition and thing. Which is wonderful, right? Wrong. Because what I really want to do is go overseas. I want to go to Russia. I love Spanish, I do, but Russian is what I want to focus on right now.

So. I was upset. It looks like I may get a C in a Spanish class and then I can't go to Russia. So after my class, I went to the language lab and started randomly googling Russian Scholarships. My thought was there must be some money out there for people that want to study Russian. Plus, to show my frustration, I changed my gchat status to: Lord, what am I supposed to do???

Little did I know...as I was searching, this is what the Lord said to me: If you want to go to Russia, do it. Do what you need to do; search out the programs, apply for scholarships and aid. Then leave it all to me.

Well. Then, I started to find some various programs and most of them gave links to scholarships that could pay a lot of, if not all, of the costs. I certainly did not really expect God to give me an answer seconds after I put my gchat status up, but He did. Then, I went and shared this...revelation (for lack of a better word ;) with another Dove Sister. As she praised God with me, she also told me that I sounded like David in 1 Samuel. (It was sort of funny that she said that I sounded like David, because last week I was thinking that I wanted to be like him. I want to be a woman after God's heart, you know??? )
So I looked it up. It is in 1 Samuel 30:8 and it reads:

8 So David inquired of the LORD, saying, "Shall I pursue this troop? Shall I overtake them?"
And He answered him, "Pursue, for you shall surely overtake them and without fail recover all."

To give a little context, David basically came to a city, Ziklag, only to discover that the entire place had been ravaged. It had been burned down and family's had been taken captive, including David's two wives. It was such a bad situation that his own people were talking about stoning David because it was so grave. But it says in verse 6 that David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.

After drawing his strength from God, that was when David asked Him what he should do and the Lord told him! Do it! Do it and you will surely succeed and get back everything.

The thing is, I was not in that mindset earlier today. I was not strengthening myself in Him, I was wallowing in myself and in my situation. But, as soon as I inquired of the Lord, even though it was not intentional, God answered me!!!
See, what we have to remember is that at times we can honestly be searching for all the right answers in all the wrong places.

As far as my class goes, I had pretty much given up hope...and as for the language school...my thought was that I would take it, but it was not really what I wanted. Did I pray about any of these situations? Not really. And that was my mistake. I did not strengthen or encourage myself in Him. I did not inquire of Him until I was through, but praise God for always being there! I wonder if God is sitting there like, when are they going to just ask me? When is ADE just going to ask me what to do?

Because instead of asking Him what to do, I was just sitting there, concentrating on what I saw, concentrating on the surface. When the Word clearly states that we walk by faith and not by sight. So even though what we see may not be what we want, we need to take our eyes off of our circumstances and place them on the Father. David wrote in Psalm 121:

Psalm 121

A Song of
Ascents.

1 I
will lift up my eyes to the hills—
From whence comes my help?
2 My help
comes from the LORD,
Who made heaven and earth.

3 He will not allow
your foot to be moved;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, He
who keeps Israel
Shall neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The LORD is your
keeper;
The LORD is your shade at your right hand.
6 The sun shall not
strike you by day,
Nor the moon by night.

7 The LORD shall preserve
you from all evil;
He shall preserve your soul.
8 The LORD shall
preserve your going out and your coming in
From this time forth, and even
forevermore.

When we are distressed what are we supposed to do? Call on the Lord. And in this entire Psalm, we are assured of all the things God will do for us. He will keep us, preserve us from evil...and ultimately solve our problem. He knows both our wants and our needs, so aside from the fact that He's, you know, God, that's another reason we can trust His answer. We may not get what we want, but that could very well be because it is not what we need.

So. What am I going to do? I am going to apply for these scholarships, including the language school. As for my class, I am going to finish the semester out strong with the final and trust God for the rest.

We tend to rush to others or to something else when we have problems or maybe even just keep it within ourselves and try to figure it out.

As we leave this semester behind I challenge you to do as David did: Lift your eyes to the hill and inquire of the Lord. Draw your strength from Him....He has all the answers anyway.

***Dove Sister Adeola Oyelabi***

Wait.

For the past few weeks, I have been feeling so TIRED. So much is happening in my life, so many problems, storms, hurts, and just plain old LIFE. So what do I do?

I open my Bible to uplift me. But really I don't want to be uplifted.

All I hear from God, all the Bible tells me, all I hear at church, on the radio, on the Internet, from my mother, from everyone, is WAIT.

But I don't want to wait. I want relief now, and if I can't get it, I don't want to be uplifted. I want to wallow in my self pity. So what do I do?

I open my Bible. To Lamentations.

Now this is what I'm talking about, five whole chapters of straight up sorrow.

That is, until I get to Chapter 3. See, God will find a way for you to get what you need.

Lamentations 3 starts out with all the crying, of course, about what afflictions God has put on His people. (By the way, I use the New Living Translation most of the time, because I have Nu Life. Lol.)

1 I am the one who has seen the afflictions that
come from the rod of the Lord’s anger.

2 He has led me into
darkness, shutting out all light.

3 He has turned his hand against me again and again, all
day long.
4 He has made my skin and flesh grow old. He has broken my bones.

5 He has besieged and surrounded me with anguish and distress.

6 He has buried me in a dark
place, like those long dead.
7 He has walled me in, and I cannot escape. He
has bound me in heavy chains.

8 And though I cry and shout, he
has shut out my prayers.

9 He
has blocked my way with a high stone wall; he has made my road crooked.
10
He has hidden like a bear or a lion, waiting to attack me.

11
He has dragged me off the path and torn me in pieces, leaving me helpless and
devastated.

12 He has drawn
his bow and made me the target for his arrows.
13 He shot his arrows deep
into my heart.

14 My own people laugh at me. All day long they
sing their mocking songs.

15
He has filled me with bitterness and given me a bitter cup of sorrow to drink.
16 He has made me chew on gravel. He has rolled me in the dust.

17 Peace has been stripped away, and I have forgotten what
prosperity is.

I have felt like all of this! This is what I was feeling! All I see is darkness, no one to help me, my prayers go unheard, my own people laugh! But then, what does it say next?

19 The thought of my suffering and homelessness is
bitter beyond words.
20 I will never forget this awful time, as I
grieve over my loss.
21 Yet I
still dare to hope when I remember this:
22 The faithful love of the Lord
never ends! His mercies never cease.
23 Great is his faithfulness;
his mercies begin afresh each morning.
24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance;
therefore, I will hope in him!”
25 The Lord is good to those who depend on
him, to those who search for him.
26 So it is good to wait
quietly for salvation from the Lord.
27 And it is good
for people to submit at an early age to the yoke of his discipline:
28 Let
them sit alone in silence beneath the Lord’s demands.
29 Let them
lie face down in the dust, for there may be hope at last.
30 Let them turn the other cheek to those who strike
them and accept the insults of their enemies.
31 For no one is
abandoned by the Lord forever.
32 Though he brings grief,
he also shows compassion because of the greatness of his unfailing love.
33 For he does not enjoy hurting people or causing them
sorrow.

What! But let me put this here, I like how it says it in the King James Version, verses 22-23: New mercies every morning! Anew! Fresh everyday is His mercies! That is when I just gave it up. I gave it all up to Him. Because He knows! He know what I am going through. He knows it all, my trials that will work great works and lessons in me. Then I read this, written by Silent Abandon blog:

Every day that we wake up is a new day. The sun has been made to rise again by God. New opportunities… new challenges… new decisions to make. Yesterday, although it has been important to us and shapes who we are - and we should on occasion listen to the voices of yesterday, yesterday is over and gone. Today. Today you have the chance to be who you wish to be… to right wrongs… to repent… to find your courage… to love your enemies… to finally fix that fence… to pray… to begin the habit of thankfulness and gratitude for the God who has made another day for you. Another day for you to make the day about Him.

In the middle of birth and death is today. Just as the verses of hope above are in the middle of the book of Lamentations. May we all find the guts to live today.

Then I read on.

37 Who can command things to happen without the
Lord’s permission?
38 Does not the Most High send both calamity and
good?
39 Then why should we, mere
humans, complain when we are punished for our sins?
40 Instead, let us test
and examine our ways. Let us turn back to the Lord.
41 Let us lift
our hearts and hands to God in heaven and say,
42 “We have sinned
and rebelled, and you have not forgiven us.

Why was I trying to do things and make them happen when God wasn't ready for them to? He knows everything under heaven and I didn't trust Him enough to know what was best for me. So ashamed. But guess what I'm doing now? Only a few of my situations have changed for the better. I am still tired. But I am not antsy. I'm waiting.

---Dove Sister DeAnna Rhodes---