Lead Us to Know Your Heart Lord

Sometimes our lack of trust in God and our thinking we know best can stand in the way of truly experiencing the expression of Godʼs best in our lives. Help us Lord to know Your heart and nestle in the true essence of who You are! Pure Love!

- H.C. Daniels

#GCG Blog 06 (Reflection) - Written by: H.C. Daniels

Can I share something with you? Hopefully we can just have a real moment in this blog post today. When I had my first daughter, I did not think that the mood-swings, attitudes, eye-rolls, and all the things would start so young. Sigh. Donʼt get me wrong, I absolutely can not imagine my life without my girls. They truly are the best and such gifts from God. But those moments we have from time-to-time when my initial reaction is to snap her back into reality so she realizes I am the adult can truly have me wondering how are we going to make it. This one here…help me Jesus. I have had to call on His name quite a bit. I think I speak for a lot of us when I say…I have such an appreciation for my mother now. Donʼt we all gain that after we have kids of our own wondering how in the world did our parents do it. My mother made raising three of us look like a sunny day in the park, warm smiles to go around with the breeze hitting us perfectly every time ready for a magazine cover. I mean, we werenʼt perfect, but I didnʼt know it was all.of.this. Yes I am on a vent session at the moment. Bear with me. I guess now that I think of it, I would see her praying at 5am on her knees. That is probably when she was like Lord what am I going to do with these hard-headed children. When I ask my mom was I like this at eight, she just says “…yeah you had your moments. This is just how things go with kids her age.” Thanks mom, so cool and collected, can I send her to you for the weekend (smile).

So if you are wondering about the short and skinny (of what happened)…I was interacting (thatʼs the best way to describe it) with my older daughter and doing my mom thing in the morning as the girls were going to summer camp and per instructions, I went to put some sun block on her face so itʼs applied prior to camp. Even though we have melanin in our skin, I have had sunburn before and it is not pleasant. Well this morning, you would have thought WWIII broke out. Why in the world is this such a fight sometimes. Girl, you know I need to do this every morning. She of course did not want me to put it on her face and was ducking, dodging and fussing the whole time with the clock ticking. You know most kids have the most issues or want to show you everything under the sun in the morning when you are trying to get out the house. In a nutshell, I kind of lost it because I, frustrated after too many minutes of this, am like just stand still because we gotta go. Gentle parenting has some good points but after awhile kids need to be moved along. Just sayin.

Pondering a little later, which sometimes can be a good thing allowing time to calm the initial emotions, I wondered why in certain situations she didnʼt trust me and the things I ask her to do or let me do to help her. This wasnʼt just the sunblock. According to her pediatrician, this is typical behavior for her age. Really?!? Pre-teens and then teens. Then I went into my psychoanalysis mode because the doctorʼs answer wasnʼt enough and if you know me I have an analytical brain and research most things. Was she acting out because I wasnʼt meeting a need? Was she rebelling because I missed something? Then the Lord in His gentle way pulled me back off the ledge and reminded me that He has got her and not to put so much pressure on myself, she will be fine.

Side note: I think sometimes, with Godʼs help, we have to check the ideals in our head regarding ourselves and others and realize there isnʼt a place for them in reality. Life is not a scripted show. But God can and will carry us through those less than ideal moments as we cast our cares on Him. He will sustain us and give us rest (Psalm 55:22 and 1 Peter 5:7).

As I continued to ponder, God as He so lovingly does, showed me sometimes I can act the same way with Him. God is trying to do something for me out of His kind and beautiful nature and I have been instructed in a certain way however, I just want to do something my way thinking it will benefit me in the long run. I am laughing (now) because I have had to learn the hard way, Godʼs way is always the best way. He sees things we can not. But sometimes I can respond just like my daughter. Yes you have to go to bed on time because if you donʼt, you will not get enough rest. They could care less about rest and just want to stay up because they have limited foresight. Godʼs instructions are perfect all the time. If we as earthly parents care about our kids how much more will our Father in heaven instruct us in ways that are best for us (Matthew 7:11).

With this in mind, and my daughter still being young, I also thought about the fact that a sign of spiritual immaturity or area of weakness in our lives, can be evident in our lack of trust in God. This lack of trust can cause you to lean on your own understanding or perspective to make decisions until you realize you do not know what only God knows and we need His guidance and leading. Jesus wants us to believe in His good heart towards us just like I would love for my daughter to know I only have her doing things or do things for her that are in her best interest. We serve a good Father who loves us so very much and wants us to live a life that is abundant and fruitful in Him! But we have to trust Him and His love for us so we donʼt end up with an unwanted sunburn so to speak. This is how we can seek, wait and rest in Him because we are confident in knowing He will always give instruction that will benefit us. Then we can rest assured in who we know He is, a loving Father who just wants His children to trust Him with their lives and enjoy the fact that we can.

Trust Him and enjoy the beautiful presence of the Son in our lives without the sunburn!