will hunting.

no. not the movie. not like good will hunting. just will hunting. you know, searching, seeking, wanting, needing, and hopefully finding God's will.

it has been hard lately. to confess. to take time away from my daily chug to seek and to search. its been hard because i find myself putting in half the effort...making excuses...and tricking my heart into believing that i am really listening to what God is trying to tell me. when, in fact, i am not.

i think it is one of my temptations--to alter my state of thinking to the point where i can't decipher between the voice of the One who is speaking and the things that are all-to-often leading. its a mean trick satan plays--speaking in your ear while God is working on your heart. because guess what? i learned in anatomy that they are connected. and needless to say, no matter how hard you try to listen to God from your heart, satan always seems to sneak his way into conscious thought--constantly trying to alter God's message.

but the coolest thing, as i found out tonight, is that satan--being a bit inept--isn't BIG enough, GREAT enough, GLORIOUS enough to speak in other ways. he finds his comfy place--for me it is in my ear (for you, it might be in your eyes--him tempting you with what you physically see)--and sticks to it. doesn't change. doesn't move. but God can move. and God can change. and God can speak in many many different ways. sometimes He uses other people. sometimes He uses billboards or commercials or books or nail files (personal experience) or words. and (dare say) sometimes He even uses His word. and that is just what he did tonight.

as if my previous post wasn't indicative enough, i have been struggling a bit lately with my future. my 'type-A' tendencies tends to get ahold of me sometimes. i make lists. i fill out calendars. i brainstorm about time and dates and opportunities. i try to plan my life out. and then i stick to the plan i haphazardly throw together. it is disastrous sometimes. so i have been trying lately to just let go and let God. let God take control...of my lists (although i will still admit to making them), my calendars, my dreams and plans and dates and timeline. and He has--as much as i have let Him.

the purpose of my doing all this has been, primarily, in a fervent attempt to better follow His will for my life. all the while thinking that His will is something to be followed. i do best thinking about God sitting down at the beginning of time, pulling out a file with my name on it, and filling out the calendar for my life (similar to what i do when i haphazardly fill out my own...except God's calendar wouldn't be haphazard). in other words, i've always strived to seek God's will for me thinking that it was something to be sought-after, something He has to offer me, something He wants me to follow.

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. --Romans 12:1-2

that line that i bolded and redded and italicized? that line is equivalent to this one in the NIV:

Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—

his good, pleasing and perfect will. --Romans 12:2(b)

so....the point of all this is that tonight God spoke to me. to my heart. and i couldn't hear anything thing satan was screaming in my ears. in fact, i still can't hear satan. it was like a lightbulb went on tonight. and it is SO cool.

God's will for my life isn't something to be sought or followed. it isn't something that He is just waiting to give to me. it is quite the opposite, in fact. God's will for my life is something He wants from me. something i have to offer him. i, little lousy me, have something to offer the Creator of the universe! and it is only through prayer, through searching and seeking and stopping my daily chug to actually find, that God will speak to my heart and reveal what it is He wants from me. i just have to be willing to give it to Him. and that, my friends, is the next hardest part.

what is He telling you to offer?