Are You Willing to Ask?

Are you willing to ask the question, even when the answer might be no? This is a hard one to answer. I would like to think yes, I would be willing. But my heart tells me that is not always the case. I have always said that I would be willing to do whatever God tells me to do, and that is true. When I do ask, I do what He says. Sometimes there is a little bit of a back and forth conversation. Some might even call it arguing, but in the end I follow His lead. However, I think the main hiccup in that statement is that I don’t always ask. If I don’t ask, I don’t know and I can blissfully continue on with my set plan.

Set Plans

I’m a planner. I like figuring everything out ahead of time and walking out the steps as planned. This is especially helpful when a decision comes up for the second time. Second time around I typically just repeat what has worked in the past. When a situation presents itself again, I don’t always think to ask God if I should do it or not. I just continue with the plan I figured out awhile back.

So COVID has been emotionally tough on this Type A person. Everything I have planned has changed! It seems that I can only plan things a couple days or even minutes ahead of time to avoid another change. This compulsion to control has caused me to pause and reevaluate. What is the posture of my heart? Do I seek to know God’s will or do I strive to control?

Habits are Hard to Break

One of the core values we have as a family is “Connecting with God”. We develop an intimate, daily, and growing relationship with God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit. During the time spent in quarantine, I started asking myself if I am doing this in my life and modeling it for the kids.

Things started to open up here in Kansas over the summer and the girls’ sports teams started to have open gyms. Once we got the emails, the dates went on the calendar and we started to get all the equipment ready. After a week of volleyball and basketball open gyms, I realized I did not ask. I didn’t ask the Lord if that was in His plans for the girls this year. I operated under the assumption that this is what we do, so we did it.

Even in the midst of the COVID scare, I wasn’t having second thoughts, but I was more concerned about the continuation of the habit I was trying to change. During quarantine, I had many conversations with people telling of my hope that families will reevaluate what they say “Yes” to. I was praying there would be more “No’s” to activities and busy-ness and more “Yes’s” to quality family time. And here I was, the first chance I got and I automatically said Yes instead of asking God the question first.

Time to Pause

So on Saturday of that week, I paused and had a conversation with Nathan first and then with the girls. We asked them to spend the weekend asking the Lord if they should play sports this school year. Let’s just say, this brought on some emotions. Understandably so, the thought of not doing sports was not a welcome idea. They hadn’t fully recovered from the loss of the previous track season and the last two months of school. So the idea of continuing this loss was not something they wanted to consider.

We quickly explained that neither Nathan or I felt like the answer was going to be no, but we wanted to make sure we had asked the question. To us the most important thing was the posture of our hearts. Our hearts’ motivation.  Are we willing to ask the question, even if the answer is not what we want? Are we willing to follow through and do whatever the Lord says, no matter what? After discussing things a little deeper, we all committed to praying about it over the weekend. We wanted to take the time to listen for the Lord’s answer.

Will you Ask?

How about you? Is there something you should stop and ask the Lord if you should do or not do? Maybe it is something you have always done. Maybe it is time that you pause and ask the Lord if He wants you to continue doing it or to stop so you can change and do something else. Are you willing? Are you willing even if the answer is different than you had planned? After you think about your own life, think about your children. How are you modeling and teaching your children this way of life? How can you help them do the same process?

But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Matthew 6:33

We’d love to hear from you.  Share a time when you asked and God said no to something you really wanted to do. How did it turn out for you in the end?