Challenges to Knowing and Hearing from God Part 9

We are challenged to take risks, make mistakes, be wounded and rejected.

Our fears can fit into three categories: fear of punishment (God will make me, or others that I love, pay for my mistakes), fear of failure (disappointing God) and fear of abandonment (God won’t take care of me unless I meet His conditions). Each of these is rooted in the lies that feed the power that the world, the flesh and the devil have over our unregenerated souls. Once we become new creations, the Lord starts the process of bringing us into alignment with the truth that because we are genetically a part of His family, we are unconditionally loved (free to be ourselves), unconditionally accepted (free to make mistakes), and unconditionally valued (free to live according to our inheritance).

The greatest lessons are learned, the deepest changes are wrought, through making mistakes. Life is by trial and error. As we learn to depend,

• We become willing to put in the effort without knowing if it will be worth it or if there is a guaranteed reward, but simply because He has asked us to act;
• We risk getting hurt and wounded, knowing it will give us more opportunities to get healed;
• We distinguish between what others call faith and what the Lord says is faith—confidence in the unseen, or what is spiritually discerned and not necessarily supernaturally or naturally discerned or commonly experienced;
• We overcome our fear of man, and become less concerned with how we appear to others, their opinion of us or our actions, their willingness to support our activities, or even their shared perception of God Himself;
• We become willing to have the Lord draw attention to us and what He is doing to and through us, equally accepting the appropriate accolades, criticism and likely rejection for saying or doing something differently than what is expected.