Observing God's Ways

A month ago I came across a passage in a book called Christ's Object Lessons, and the passage said the following:

"If we keep the Lord ever before us, allowing our hearts to go out in thanksgiving and praise to Him, we shall have a continual freshness in our religious life. Our prayers will take the form of a conversation with God as we would talk with a friend. He will speak His mysteries to us personally."

I have always been conversational with God. It began, really, with my mum tucking me into bed as a young girl and asking God how His day was, and thanking Him as though He was her best friend and her father. I remember the summer months before coming home to Australia in London, skipping along Mile End en route to work along a six kilometre stretch, beaming with gratitude for His love, His providence, and His unending patience with me. I didn't know where God was leading beyond the journey back to Australia, but I knew that He was so personal that eventually that would be clarified.

Well it took a year for me to gain a real sense of where he was taking me, and the past year has been a year where I have jumped fearlessly into a lot of things. It's where my concept of what the future held for me was quickly rocked by God throwing intervention upon intervention, humbling moment upon humbling moment, and opportunity upon opportunity my way. 

My mum was diagnosed with cancer six months ago and I shifted gear from doing my own thang: living alone, volunteering in a legal centre and studying to suddenly heaping my belongings into storage and any spare nook in the house, and praying for work to do alongside my studies. During treatment my mum has been unable to fly. But as one source of income was threatened, God gave me employment three days following her first chemotherapy session. His timing, not ours. 

I had to give God my heart. I had to step away from myself - my concepts, my decision making models, my "logical" thinking. I had to let Him do some serious remodelling of my heart - knock it down and begin again. And in some ways, this happens often. 

Give me your heart, And let your eyes observe my ways. - Proverbs 23:26.

I face decisions daily that call on me to give my heart to God, and let my eyes observe His ways. They call on me to allow God to reveal His mysteries to me personally. And at some forks in the road, where we're asking God to close and open doors, to make our path plain before our feet and remove perplexities from our lives, we are wrestling with God to bless us with clarity. To speak to us openly, as if a friend.

As this year comes to an end and a new one begins in light of all the victories God has spoken over me and my family and loved ones, I wonder what God will reveal to me. I wonder how He will guide me. I wonder whose path He and I will cross together. But there is one thing I don't wonder, and it is this: that God's reason for everything He calls us to is to draw us closer to Him. 

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