Still Loving, Still Praying, Still Moving Forward

Have you even been going through a season and needed reassurance from God? Like, need Him to reiterate something that He's already told you? Sometimes, you simply need that calm, comforting reminder that says, “You heard Me correctly. You're still where I want you. Keep moving forward.”

Well, that's where I am today.

Recently, I fell back into thinking about how some people I love dearly have treated me and have spoken about me all of my life. I couldn’t understand it. When the hurt comes from people you love, it creates a weird confusion. You begin questioning what's wrong with you.  I believe I've blogged about it before. 

I had a deep conversation about it with a man who has been like a father to me since I was young. He's also been a spiritual mentor throughout my life. Over the span of a few days, we talked for hours. During those conversations, he put words to things I've felt deeply but I've never said aloud, simply because it was hard to put into words. 

Then, today, I listened to Bro. Johnson....and he pretty much repeated everything we had discussed days prior.  

THAT is how God works!

He knows exactly when we need confirmation. He knows how to send a word through someone we trust and then establish it again through someone who knows nothing about the conversation. It wasn’t coincidence. It was God gently reminding me, “I see you. I haven't forgotten you. You're right where I want you.”

Today, I feel in my spirit that God is nudging me to keep moving forward, even though the yearning for my siblings and family still hurts. Missing them doesn’t mean I made the wrong decision. Loving them doesn’t mean I have to reopen a door God instructed me to close.

I can be apart from them and still love them. I can be apart from them and still pray for them.  I MUST.  To be obedient to the things that God has instructed me to and not pray, would be missing the mark on so many levels.  

God can touch them, speak to them, and work in their hearts without me being physically present. Their healing and transformation don't depend on my proximity. God can reach places in them that I never could!

Today, I am as confident as I was when He first told me to shut the door.

He instructed me to close it for a reason. If that door had remained open, I would not have walked into the places He wanted me to go. I would've been hindered....perhaps by guilt, obligation, confusion, or the constant temptation to return to what God was calling me away from.

Closing the door wasn't an act of hatred or unforgiveness as some claim.  It was an act of obedience.

That obedience has come with a cost. Sometimes the cost of answering a higher calling is being misunderstood by the people you desperately wish could understand. Sometimes it means grieving relationships that still matter to you. Sometimes it means trusting God with the people you love while continuing down a road they cannot walk with you.

I truly do have a higher calling on my life, and that calling has a cost.

But God has also been kind enough to remind me that the cost is not meaningless. The closed door has a purpose. The separation has a purpose. Even the ache has a purpose.

So I will keep moving forward. I will continue praying. I will leave the door in God’s hands, and I will trust Him with what is on the other side of it.

I heard Him correctly then.

I hear His confirmation now.

And I'm right where God wants me to be....and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.