God Blesses Obedience!

Sometimes when the Holy Spirit calls us to do something, whether it's as minor as a wardrobe change or as major as calling someone to the mission field, we can typically come up with at least twenty seemingly convincing excuses to disobey the calling.

I was speaking with one of my clients yesterday, a Baptist missionary in India. She's in her mid sixties so I assumed she has always been in the mission field, but yesterday I got the chance to talk with her more in depth about her ministry and I found out she was just called to be a missionary four years ago! She said she received the calling in the year 2000, but made excuses for an entire year- "I'm too old, it's too hot, there's diseases over there, I don't know the native language, I don't have the financial resources..." etc. Finally God told her, "enough with the excuses. These people need to hear the Gospel". So in 2001 she went alone to a small village in India to fulfill the Great Commission. She was met with persecution, as this is a Hindu nation. There were initial language and gesture barriers to overcome. For example, here we love to hug and be affectionate, but over there that is almost considered an insult and it's certainly a breach of etiquette. She had to learn the basic language. Now they have a successful seminary and medical ministry in several villages. All because of one woman's obedience to God's calling and the others who followed her example.

For me, it was God calling me to feminine mystique. It was funny because this was even before we had the thread on wearing pants vs. wearing skirts. I guess the Lord does speak to us through not-so-subliminal messages. So I made all these excuses. I said, "I would like to wear modest skirts and tops, but I don't have the money to buy new clothes and God...I'm trying to lose weight so I don't want to waste money on clothes that won't fit me in three months and ya know, I love blue jeans and I can't do anything in skirts" It went on and on. Last night I was really feeling convicted and I decided to clean out my closet. I came across five modest, ankle length skirts my grandmother had given me all from Talbots. I pulled them out and realized I had tops to match every single skirt. Praise God! I no longer had to worry about going out and buying tasteful, modest skirts. Two of them were denim so they could be worn with casual attire. One was a little more dressy and the other two were floral print. So not only do I have the skirt issue covered for now, but when I do lose some weight I don't have to worry about not being able to wear the skirts I have now because I didn't buy them in the first place.

It just goes to show you, God always provides a way for us to obey Him and how wonderfully blessed we are when we do!