ME-ssentials – Undecided – Day Twenty-Four
ESSENTIALS for Me NOT to Be: Undecided
September 24th, 2021
What’s your ESSENTIAL?
Essential: absolutely necessary; indispensable; the essence of a thing; inherent and intrinsic, vital
Just as there are so many ESSENTIALS for me to be, there are just as many ESSENTIALS for me NOT to be. Let’s explore those the other half of this month!
James 1:5-8, ‘And if anyone longs to be wise, ask God for wisdom and He will give it! He won’t see your lack of wisdom as an opportunity to scold you over your failures, but He will overwhelm your failures with His generous grace. Just make sure you ask empowered by confident faith without doubting that you will receive. For the ambivalent person believes one minute and doubts the next. Being undecided makes you become like the rough seas driven and tossed by the wind. You’re up one minute and tossed down the next. When you are half-hearted and wavering, it leaves you unstable. Can you really expect to receive anything from the Lord when you’re in that condition?’ (TPT)
Have you ever been around that person, perhaps it’s a family member or a friend or maybe a co-worker or even a boss, who is indecisive? You could be directed to go prepare that document…’oh, but first, I need a cup of coffee and a donut.’ You grab your jacket to run the errand and at once you’re scolded because the phone is going unanswered. Maybe you’re invited to go shopping with your friend and she calls moments before you are to leave the house and says she’s ‘not feeling it’ today, maybe another day instead. In fact, your friend has been doing this so frequently, the next time she invites you to something, you mumble, ‘Sure’, knowing you have no intention of planning to go, and then she is put out by you when you’re unavailable. Maybe it’s an unreasonable and unreliable parent or spouse and you’ve given up on their promises because they keep getting broken and waylaid. Frustrating, isn’t it?
I wonder if that’s ever how God feels when I pray to Him. I ask for Him to bless this decision I feel He has led me to make and then the next prayer I utter later in the day tells Him I have no clue what He would have for me to do. I pray for Him to teach me to trust Him and wait upon Him for His perfect timing then I ask Him to bless my plan to move forward in a decision I have been waiting on Him to show me how to make. I thank Him for His provision then promptly complain because I am certain I won’t be able to make ends meet this month. I plead with Him to intervene in a situation then wring my hands in despair as I attempt to decide how to help myself. I am so wishy-washy, flaky like dry skin from a sunburn, and I hope He’ll overlook my flaws and answer anyway. But what is God to answer…which part of the prayer? To help me trust and wait or bless the impulsive mistake I went and did on my own? To allow me do it in His time frame or fix the chaos I created when I made my own time table? To heal the broken relationship in His way and His timing or mend the mess I caused by manipulating circumstances?
See, we ask things of God, but I think are truly undecided that we trust He will do what He says He will do, so we do it our own way and cause the downfall, reap the bitter fruit of fragile friendships, taking liberties that are only licensed to God Almighty. Just like the unreliable and indecisive people in our daily lives, I think we must not be any different to our Father, with our see-saw, teeter-totter requests and demands. I wonder even if He would rather I be transparent with Him by telling Him I struggle with trusting Him for a response when I am asking something of Him, so perhaps would He help me mean what I say and say what I mean. After all, doesn’t He know me better than I know myself and isn’t He fully aware I all too often spout promises I have no capability of keeping on my own? Instead of being so doubtful, I need to be more trusting!
