"What's Next?" (pt.2)

How can I know I am making the right decision?

Now that you are certain that God has a plan and a purpose for you, how do you get to finding it out?

I tell God all the time, “God, you have the plan in front of you, I do not know anything, so I’m going to need you to literally SHOW ME the way to go”. I have no way of guessing what program God wants me into or what job offer he wants me to take… but thank God I can ask Him!  

First off, it’s important you have that time with God where you ask Him what His purpose for your life is. You cannot make a move without asking God that question! It’s like being a trumpet player in an orchestra trying to play a note without having the leader telling you which one to play and then showing you how to play it. It’s like dude, what are you doing? You are not the lead nor the boss here. Ask God, it is very simple! Secondly, we must also be ready to listen!!! A lot of us probably will not like what we hear, especially if you’ve been going the WRONG WAY this whole time. You may have taken all the prerequisites to become a doctor but then God goes and tells you to go into marketing… You need to go before God with humility and ready to trust what it is He will reveal.

It is one thing to ask but a WHOLE DIFFERENT THING to LISTEN.

“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” John 10:27.

Those who know God will follow Him. Where He leads, they will follow. And by ‘knowing’ I mean, they know Him. If you know God, you essentially know without a doubt that He is first of all, faithful and true and knows all things and most importantly, that He has a plan for you just as He has promised in Jeremiah 29:11 and that it is a good plan. 

But if you do not seek God to find out which way to go, you will experience a lot of failures and oppositions and you will lose everything! Because we all know, nothing is secure if it is not in the hands of God. One thing that is important to remember though, that even though you know you are following the will of God, it does not mean things will not go bad… in fact things will go very bad I promise you that!… BUT… because you followed Christ there and He led you to where you are, you can ALWAYS call on Him and use it as leverage and say “God, you brought me here… I did not bring myself here, but you did, and that is why I know that you will bring me through it!” So the only difference between following your own path vs. following God’s is that there isn’t much God can do for you when you put yourself in a situation… what YOU will need to do though is, retrace your steps back to Him.

For others like me, who have asked God what their purpose is, and who know they are on the right path but can see the road coming to a dead end ahead, and who still do not know whether they will have to make a right turn or a left turn in order to continue the journey … keep praying. You won’t find your answers on the web or by staying away from God…

To get to know someone you need to spend time with them correct? The same works with God. It’s communication that will make the relationship stronger and you will start finding out things about Him you did not know before. If you do not communicate with God, how do you expect to know Him and hear Him when He speaks? In order to hear God’s voice, you sometimes need to move in real, real, real close to him and be very still and quiet in order to hear your next instructions. So brother and sister, if that's you right now I encourage you to move in closer, run faster, dive deeper, seek harder… do anything you need to do to be close to Him and once you do get your next instructions ACT ON THEM.

Don’t look at your circumstance. Whatever God tells you, it may seem impossible but it's not your job to figure out how things will work out, you need to just keep walking by faith and not by sight. Even when you do not see any other path ahead, you must always remember the kind of God we serve? Is He not the one who makes a way out of no way!!!???

Whenever I’m driving and someone is shooting me instructions, I like it when they tell me ahead of time when I need to make a right or a left turn… you know, just so I can prepare and make sure the path is clear… but do you know, God does not need to let you know ahead of time when to steer left or right, because whenever He does tell you to make that right or left turn, it DOES NOT MATTER WHOEVER IS IN YOUR BLIDSPOT, He will remove them to make room for you, because when God says it is time to move… you can move!

“Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give people in exchange for you, nations in exchange for your life”.

Isaiah 43:4 (NKJV)

“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 1:6 (NIV)

By: Vicky (Vessel Speaker)

"What’s Next" (pt. 1)

One chapter just finished… Ok, so WHAT’S NEXT?

I have to start this off by saying, I am going through the same thing you are also going through. It is my first time in a while that I am going through this transition… from high school to college/university and from college/university to the real world. I also have the same questions as you. The same worries and the same anxiety you face, I go through as well. I’m saying this because I need you to know that I do not have all the answers to your questions, however, I still want you to keep reading so you may understand why you need to look to the one who does carry all the answers you may have about your future.

First of: stop stressing!

You may have heard this a thousand times, but please let it really sink in this time: God knew before you were born [Jeremiah 1:5]. I mean like He knew you before you were conceived, before your parents even knew there was a baby in there, God knew, and He also knew exactly who you were and who you were going to become. He planned it all right from the start. Do you seriously think He has known you for all of this time and yet forgot to plan a future for you? Like fam, if He knew you for this long, it means He was preparing something very special for you, and you were born with that plan already written down. So there is no reason for you to ever doubt the fact that God even HAS a plan for you, because I promise you He does. And on top of that, He says in His word, in Jeremiah 29:11, that this very same plan is meant to prosper you, to give you a hope and a future. So not only can you rest assured that God has a plan for you but you can be confident that it’s a good one!

You have a purpose

So if we know this already, why is it that we still doubt God’s plan for our future?

In my case, I start doubting when I do not see the results I want, when I want them. I’m probably not the only person whose family is always on their back wondering what they want to do once one event is over. It’s like they congratulate you for finishing and graduating from school and in the next sentence they’re already pushing for answers on what it is you’re doing next. I mean it’s normal, I do it too. Because in life, you have to move on, once one thing ends, it’s literally on to the next one. But you know, at some point you kind of get tired of speaking out of faith, especially when there isn’t exactly a plan in place and it does not seem promising either. You feel like you’re saying anything to please your relatives and to get them off your back but the truth is, you have stopped believing in your plan because you, yourself, know that your average probably isn’t even close to meeting the requirements to enter into the program or the school you want and you know for sure your resume is not filled with qualifications and experience you want and need in order to obtain your dream job, and you’re most certainly not where you thought you would be when you made that ten, five or even two year plan. That panic and stress you felt by trying to make everything work out probably turned into discouragement, discontentment as well as depression at some point right? I’ve been there… and later on you start doubting yourself, your plan and God and you ultimately start losing faith.

So soon after that, it’s only natural for your prayer life to go from 100 to 5% real quick, and before you know it, your prayer life is non-existent because you’re tired of praying for something that looks impossible or that just seems like God does not want to grant your prayer request for some reason when you know He knows it’s the ONE THING you really want. You then become hopeless to a point where you don’t even find the need to pray to God for anything else.

So doing my devotion and reading the word? – forget that… that’s not happening. Praying for my church? –Not happening either. Thanking God for waking me up? – I would much rather spend 5 hours on social media…

What this is, is shutting God out. And instead of moving in closer to Him so that I can ACTUALLY hear him redirect me, I’m moving further away... much further. That is us giving up on Him before even asking Him what it is He wants us to do. You may have lost patience. You may have doubted. You may have even lost all your faith, but that is the result of one lie of the enemy we all believed… That thought of “I’m never going to reach my goal” or that lie of “Your average will never be high enough to get into the program you want” that we thought was true… All those lies are meant to drive us away from God and from ever finding out our purpose, because the enemy knows, once you know your purpose there will be nothing to stop you! All obstacles will be a joke to you because you know you’re attaining your goal someway and somehow despite the challenges.

God created each and every one of us with a purpose

Do you want to know how I know you have a purpose and future?

Because you woke up this morning. God would not have woken you up this morning if He did not have a plan for you today. Each day is different. He let you see today for a reason. And you should never doubt that God let you live another day just to make your life miserable or to annoy you or even to abandon and ditch you…

Would God ever bring you to it to then leave you?

Do you really think God would bring you through something just to leave you hanging? Are you trying to tell me that God allowed you to finish elementary school by passing through each grade, as hard as it seemed at the time, to then bring you through middle school and help you survive failures, and disappointments and then bring you through high school where you thought you would never make it through alive… just so He can abandon you NOW? Then how could you also think that He could help you through first year, where you got that first bad grade and thought it was over for you, then allow you to pass on to your second year where you really did not believe you were cut out for your program, then God graced you to pass through third year and let you see shaky months and very tough moments and now that He has finally brought you ALL THE WAY to your last and final year… after all of those sleepless nights, those long nights spent in prayers and those days hanging on to God, you think He can just say “this is it, that’s all I had planned for you, sorry son/daughter”? No! Impossible! God is not a quitter!!! [Hebrews 13:5]  What the Lord starts, He must finish! [Philipians 1:6] God did not bring Moses and the people of Israel out of Egypt just to have them stand in front of the red sea and stare at it… and then be captivated and brought back to Egypt…no… He brought them there because He knew He would bring them through it… literally through the sea! God’s plan for them did not stop, the same way God’s plan for you keeps going so long as you have breath in your lungs!

So many examples can prove that God never quits on His children. Look at Joseph, Esther, Abraham, Job, Jesus… literally everyone! God brought them all from point A to point B, then from point B to point C and so on and so forth. Even look at your own life. The times when you thought “This is it, my life is over”… your life never really ended did it? Someway, somehow, you made it through… because God made a promise and He’s not about to break that promise today and not ever. So you cannot ever think that our God could bring you from point A to B but ditch you when it’s time to go from point B to C… nah!!!! It’s impossible…

“God is not human that He should lie, not a human being that He should change His mind. Does He speak and then not act? Does He promise and not fulfill?”

Numbers 29:19

“I will never leave you nor forsake you”

Hebrews 13:5

By: Vicky (Vessel Speaker)