Graham Aitchison's Blog, page 7
March 23, 2012
Listen for God's voice
If there is one thing that has got me through the last 10 years in my Christian walk, it's been about learning to identify and obey the voice of God. I want to share a bit about different ways that He speaks to us as His children and why His word is most important above all else.
The main way that He speaks to me is usually just through a still, small voice in my soul that I just know hasn't come from me, and it's like it brings all of my other thoughts to a complete standstill. For example - once I was praying about a job that I was failing in miserably due to a poor work environment and the job being completely unsuited for me. I was frustrated and angry and asking God why I wasn't succeeding in this role and He simply said "Maybe you aren't supposed to succeed in this role." Sure enough, He was right and success was not His plan for me in that awful job but rather learning about perseverance through difficulty.
God also speaks to His people through dreams. Just recently I was sound asleep and in my dream it's like I was talking with God about my struggles and He kept encouraging me to open up to Him about what I was feeling. I managed to address some strongly rooted issues in my own inner struggles while in the middle of a God inspired dream. This insight that I gained while I was asleep helped me to process and continue to heal some of the tension that has kept me so highly strung for so long and is now finally unraveling.
Someone once told me many years ago that I will face many critics over the years and people trying to sway me from the path that I was on but when that happens I need to hear the voice of God. The path I have been on has been a path to finding inner healing and it's come through digging into the heart of my deepest and most painful struggles to unpack and unravel what is there. Many have told me that I am focusing on the negative and that I need to stop being so morbid and turn my focus to positive things and that I'm making things worse by what I am doing, but I have continued to hear God's voice encouraging me to continue to go down the path I was walking down and that it was what I was meant to be doing.
I've learned that nothing is more important than hearing the voice of God and obeying what He says when it comes to different situations. If others disagree with you then so be it - it's not between you and them but between you and God and if doing what He wants you to do pisses other people off, then they can go and take it up with Him. God doesn't always speak the way that we expect Him to and He doesn't always say what we think He should say - but He says everything for a reason.
His reasons for saying things can be different to how we interpret them. Shortly before I went through complete burnout last year, God put someone on my heart very strongly and no matter how much I protested, God would not let me let this person go so I began to place my hopes and dreams upon this person as I believed that they were going to be an important part of my future. God never actually said that they were going to be an important part of my future but based on His refusal to allow me to let them go I began to believe that they were. Shortly before I collapsed through burnout it became strikingly apparent that the future I had been believing for due to hearing from God was not going to happen and due to my already fragile mental state I crashed completely.
I had not heard wrong as God had encouraged me to hold onto the hope that I once had but His reasons were different from mine. I know I heard His voice and I was obedient right till the end. I thought I was going to be blessed but God used my obedience to His voice to break my hopes and dreams for this future I believed in so that I would break completely. It sounds horrible and it was traumatizing at the time to say the least but I have come to realize that it needed to happen for my sake because I needed the time off to get my first ever proper rest and I couldn't heal completely without breaking completely first.
What I learned from all of this was to listen for what God has to say and don't immediately assume you know why He is going to say it as His purposes are greater than ours and He might set us up for a totally different outcome than we expected. But if we listen for Him and obey Him, He will protect us (even if it means we have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death as I did) and He will see us through.
Take care.
The main way that He speaks to me is usually just through a still, small voice in my soul that I just know hasn't come from me, and it's like it brings all of my other thoughts to a complete standstill. For example - once I was praying about a job that I was failing in miserably due to a poor work environment and the job being completely unsuited for me. I was frustrated and angry and asking God why I wasn't succeeding in this role and He simply said "Maybe you aren't supposed to succeed in this role." Sure enough, He was right and success was not His plan for me in that awful job but rather learning about perseverance through difficulty.
God also speaks to His people through dreams. Just recently I was sound asleep and in my dream it's like I was talking with God about my struggles and He kept encouraging me to open up to Him about what I was feeling. I managed to address some strongly rooted issues in my own inner struggles while in the middle of a God inspired dream. This insight that I gained while I was asleep helped me to process and continue to heal some of the tension that has kept me so highly strung for so long and is now finally unraveling.
Someone once told me many years ago that I will face many critics over the years and people trying to sway me from the path that I was on but when that happens I need to hear the voice of God. The path I have been on has been a path to finding inner healing and it's come through digging into the heart of my deepest and most painful struggles to unpack and unravel what is there. Many have told me that I am focusing on the negative and that I need to stop being so morbid and turn my focus to positive things and that I'm making things worse by what I am doing, but I have continued to hear God's voice encouraging me to continue to go down the path I was walking down and that it was what I was meant to be doing.
I've learned that nothing is more important than hearing the voice of God and obeying what He says when it comes to different situations. If others disagree with you then so be it - it's not between you and them but between you and God and if doing what He wants you to do pisses other people off, then they can go and take it up with Him. God doesn't always speak the way that we expect Him to and He doesn't always say what we think He should say - but He says everything for a reason.
His reasons for saying things can be different to how we interpret them. Shortly before I went through complete burnout last year, God put someone on my heart very strongly and no matter how much I protested, God would not let me let this person go so I began to place my hopes and dreams upon this person as I believed that they were going to be an important part of my future. God never actually said that they were going to be an important part of my future but based on His refusal to allow me to let them go I began to believe that they were. Shortly before I collapsed through burnout it became strikingly apparent that the future I had been believing for due to hearing from God was not going to happen and due to my already fragile mental state I crashed completely.
I had not heard wrong as God had encouraged me to hold onto the hope that I once had but His reasons were different from mine. I know I heard His voice and I was obedient right till the end. I thought I was going to be blessed but God used my obedience to His voice to break my hopes and dreams for this future I believed in so that I would break completely. It sounds horrible and it was traumatizing at the time to say the least but I have come to realize that it needed to happen for my sake because I needed the time off to get my first ever proper rest and I couldn't heal completely without breaking completely first.
What I learned from all of this was to listen for what God has to say and don't immediately assume you know why He is going to say it as His purposes are greater than ours and He might set us up for a totally different outcome than we expected. But if we listen for Him and obey Him, He will protect us (even if it means we have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death as I did) and He will see us through.
Take care.
March 16, 2012
Be still and know that I am God.
I'm writing this blog mainly as an encouragement to myself at the moment. My recovery from burnout has slowed down greatly recently and although change is coming in the not too distant future as I am about to move into a new place, very little else is happening. I'm not getting any words from God about much of anything these days and it's frustrating at times to say the least.
Psalms 46:10 says "Be still and know that I am God." This simply means that even when we can't see it, important things that we currently know nothing about are happening behind the scenes. I remember an old lyric from a DC Talk song that says "God is always working." This is very true and He works even when we can't see it.
I remember when I worked as a junior account manager for a big IT firm up in Auckland. People would write or call me and ask for quotes and I'd tell them I'd email them with the details. Then they'd go off and do something else while I got to work on this for them. Just because they couldn't see what I was doing, didn't mean I wasn't doing anything and eventually once I'd finished all of the research etc I needed for their quotation I'd email it off to them and they would read the fruits of my labors in preparing this information for them.
I sort of look at God the same way. We can ask for things at times such as a wife/husband, a new job, a direction or something else like that and if it's God's will I believe He sets to work on those things. Sometimes He gives us specific instructions about things we need to do in order to help these things along but when He doesn't I believe Psalms 46:10 applies. Be still and know that I am God. I'm not asking you to do anything because I have it in hand and I am doing things My way at My time.
God works on the things that He knows we need and that we have asked Him for in much the same way I worked on those quotes for customers. They didn't call me every 5 minutes and ask what I was doing or if I'd forgotten about them or remind me of what they wanted because they trusted me to get the information off to them and in the end their trust was rewarded. God asks the same of us. To sit back and trust Him with the things that we need and to believe that things are always in motion on our behalf even if we can't see them.
It can be frustrating, especially when it takes longer than we want and may not work out exactly as we had planned, but that's when we need to know that God knows best. I'm having to remind myself of that constantly at the moment due to how slowly life is moving for me. Even though I can't see things changing for me right now there are things happening behind the scenes that God is doing for me and things He is preparing that I know nothing whatsoever about. But I don't need to know right now. All I need to do is sit back and know that He is God.
Psalms 46:10 says "Be still and know that I am God." This simply means that even when we can't see it, important things that we currently know nothing about are happening behind the scenes. I remember an old lyric from a DC Talk song that says "God is always working." This is very true and He works even when we can't see it.
I remember when I worked as a junior account manager for a big IT firm up in Auckland. People would write or call me and ask for quotes and I'd tell them I'd email them with the details. Then they'd go off and do something else while I got to work on this for them. Just because they couldn't see what I was doing, didn't mean I wasn't doing anything and eventually once I'd finished all of the research etc I needed for their quotation I'd email it off to them and they would read the fruits of my labors in preparing this information for them.
I sort of look at God the same way. We can ask for things at times such as a wife/husband, a new job, a direction or something else like that and if it's God's will I believe He sets to work on those things. Sometimes He gives us specific instructions about things we need to do in order to help these things along but when He doesn't I believe Psalms 46:10 applies. Be still and know that I am God. I'm not asking you to do anything because I have it in hand and I am doing things My way at My time.
God works on the things that He knows we need and that we have asked Him for in much the same way I worked on those quotes for customers. They didn't call me every 5 minutes and ask what I was doing or if I'd forgotten about them or remind me of what they wanted because they trusted me to get the information off to them and in the end their trust was rewarded. God asks the same of us. To sit back and trust Him with the things that we need and to believe that things are always in motion on our behalf even if we can't see them.
It can be frustrating, especially when it takes longer than we want and may not work out exactly as we had planned, but that's when we need to know that God knows best. I'm having to remind myself of that constantly at the moment due to how slowly life is moving for me. Even though I can't see things changing for me right now there are things happening behind the scenes that God is doing for me and things He is preparing that I know nothing whatsoever about. But I don't need to know right now. All I need to do is sit back and know that He is God.
February 18, 2012
"For they know not what they do..."
Jesus uttered these immortal yet seemingly crazy words while He was being raised onto the cross. For the longest time, those words infuriated me and seemed to only further the terrible injustice of His death which He voluntarily laid His life down for.
I believe I finally understand these words now and that has come through the revelation that I received in August of last year about the core of my issues with depression and anxiety. I was a volatile, unstable and angry child and a fearful, timid yet occasionally very violent teenager. I got called a lot of things throughout my childhood and teenage years (and sometimes even in my adult years) - a spoiled brat, a crybaby, a horrible person.... and the list goes on.
When I discovered what the root of these issues was (which I will identify in my book that is soon to be released) all of the powerful and confused feelings that drove my erratic and often unpredictable behavior all of a sudden began to make sense and the more of them that I was able to unpack and work through, the better I felt until I have come to the place where I am in now - a place where the healing is very nearly finished and I've managed to turn all of that unrelenting pain and distress into peace and insight.
While others were continually and intentionally judging me on my actions, Jesus was able to see past that and chose to forgive me for my actions simply because I knew not what I did. Instead of focusing on what I did and judging me accordingly (which, although was probably the right thing to do in many regards, only made matters worse) He chose to focus on the reasons as to why I felt driven to do and say the things that I did which I was not aware of at the time. That's a pretty amazing kind of grace if you ask me.
It's certainly taught me that I need to learn to do the same. It's easy for me to verbally and possibly even physically blast someone who I think deserves it and if I see someone who claims to be a Christian acting in a place of continual ignorance causing harm to others, there is a part of me that wants to go and put my foot up their backside and scream at them "WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE YOU IDIOT!! SEE WHAT YOU'RE DOING!!" In some regards, this may be the right thing to do if lead by the Holy Spirit but I have discovered the need for grace and compassion for people in that kind of situation.
That person may be struggling with something dark within themselves that at this moment they have no comprehension of whatsoever and are acting the way that they are out of a desire to try and understand and heal the confusion that they feel within themselves but can't pinpoint and therefore can't deal with. Just because someone doesn't appear to be dealing with something doesn't mean that they are not trying to. I spent so much time with counselors, pastors, friends and quite frankly, anyone who would listen at times going on and on about my problems and I never found an answer. Not because of the people I was talking to or because I wasn't trying to, but because the depth of my struggles were hidden from me at that point in time.
Someone coming and putting their foot up my backside and telling me to "get over myself" or "stop being afraid and just do it" or whatever might have seemed like the right thing to do in some regards but I can guarantee it wouldn't have helped me (and didn't help me when it did happen) - it just made me worse because everything in me was screaming out and saying "I'm trying!! I want to get better it's just not working!!". It was only once the core of my struggles were revealed to me in August last year that I finally began to understand what had kept me so tense for so long and what allowed me to begin to heal. I used to see screwed up people walk past and be angry at them for not sorting their issues out. These days, I see them go past and say - "there but for the grace of God, go I."
My point in all of this is that you never know what's going on in another person's heart. The Holy Spirit may inspire you but most of the time I believe what is needed for these people is grace and prayer. God knows what's going on in their hearts even if they don't have a clue themselves and some people genuinely have no idea what the cause of their struggles are so they don't know how to heal them, and just punishing them isn't going to help. God is the one in the know. Trust Him with their lives.
Take care.
I believe I finally understand these words now and that has come through the revelation that I received in August of last year about the core of my issues with depression and anxiety. I was a volatile, unstable and angry child and a fearful, timid yet occasionally very violent teenager. I got called a lot of things throughout my childhood and teenage years (and sometimes even in my adult years) - a spoiled brat, a crybaby, a horrible person.... and the list goes on.
When I discovered what the root of these issues was (which I will identify in my book that is soon to be released) all of the powerful and confused feelings that drove my erratic and often unpredictable behavior all of a sudden began to make sense and the more of them that I was able to unpack and work through, the better I felt until I have come to the place where I am in now - a place where the healing is very nearly finished and I've managed to turn all of that unrelenting pain and distress into peace and insight.
While others were continually and intentionally judging me on my actions, Jesus was able to see past that and chose to forgive me for my actions simply because I knew not what I did. Instead of focusing on what I did and judging me accordingly (which, although was probably the right thing to do in many regards, only made matters worse) He chose to focus on the reasons as to why I felt driven to do and say the things that I did which I was not aware of at the time. That's a pretty amazing kind of grace if you ask me.
It's certainly taught me that I need to learn to do the same. It's easy for me to verbally and possibly even physically blast someone who I think deserves it and if I see someone who claims to be a Christian acting in a place of continual ignorance causing harm to others, there is a part of me that wants to go and put my foot up their backside and scream at them "WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE YOU IDIOT!! SEE WHAT YOU'RE DOING!!" In some regards, this may be the right thing to do if lead by the Holy Spirit but I have discovered the need for grace and compassion for people in that kind of situation.
That person may be struggling with something dark within themselves that at this moment they have no comprehension of whatsoever and are acting the way that they are out of a desire to try and understand and heal the confusion that they feel within themselves but can't pinpoint and therefore can't deal with. Just because someone doesn't appear to be dealing with something doesn't mean that they are not trying to. I spent so much time with counselors, pastors, friends and quite frankly, anyone who would listen at times going on and on about my problems and I never found an answer. Not because of the people I was talking to or because I wasn't trying to, but because the depth of my struggles were hidden from me at that point in time.
Someone coming and putting their foot up my backside and telling me to "get over myself" or "stop being afraid and just do it" or whatever might have seemed like the right thing to do in some regards but I can guarantee it wouldn't have helped me (and didn't help me when it did happen) - it just made me worse because everything in me was screaming out and saying "I'm trying!! I want to get better it's just not working!!". It was only once the core of my struggles were revealed to me in August last year that I finally began to understand what had kept me so tense for so long and what allowed me to begin to heal. I used to see screwed up people walk past and be angry at them for not sorting their issues out. These days, I see them go past and say - "there but for the grace of God, go I."
My point in all of this is that you never know what's going on in another person's heart. The Holy Spirit may inspire you but most of the time I believe what is needed for these people is grace and prayer. God knows what's going on in their hearts even if they don't have a clue themselves and some people genuinely have no idea what the cause of their struggles are so they don't know how to heal them, and just punishing them isn't going to help. God is the one in the know. Trust Him with their lives.
Take care.
