Afterthoughts

When something happens, whether good or bad, the FIRST place your heart turns to share it, is a very telling sign of where you are at in your belief and WHO is the trusted FIRST in your heart. 

You will run straight to the very thing that you believe in, trust in, rely on FIRST as your source of truth and help. God wants to take this time of Standing to teach you how to make that Person HIM. How to help you know Him well enough that when you need help, you think of HIM first and foremost, not as an afterthought, but as THE Though of where your greatest help comes from. 

How blessed and graciously favored is he whose help is the God of Jacob (Israel), Whose hope is in the LORD his God, Psalm 146:5

People are creatures of habit because the brain sets up paths to get what the body needs. Whatever your need is, the brain has a path to take you where you need to go to get you what you need. The path it chooses is the one with the least amount of resistance, the greatest results, and the quickest outcome. It sets up paths based on your past experiences. 

When you stub your toe in the middle of the night, your brain will remember and tell you to take a different path next time. When you go to a certain person for help, and they discourage you, cause you to leave the conversation more of a mess than when you went in, your brain will put up a “do not enter” sign on that path for the next time you need help. 

This is what the LORD says: “Cursed is the person who trusts in mankind, who makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the LORD~Jeremiah 17:5

When you feel insecure, you will do what you know to do to regain that security, which may be reaching out to your spouse, who has in the past always made you feel loved, secure, and safe. But now, because of their hard heart, you walk away feeling even MORE insecure. The brain has to learn, this is no longer a safe path, it’s now become dangerous and untrustworthy. The next time you feel insecure, your brain will go back to that path and stand there looking at the entrance. It will remember what used to happen, but now what has changed. How you left that place feeling worse. It then struggles with “Now what? Now, where do we go for help? Who do we trust now?” And new paths will form as you test out different alternatives.

My paths with God started out not giving great results because, in my most desperate times, I went looking for instant results, with a demanding desperation that He MUST talk to me now.  I never got what I was looking for from God, because I had learned that people can give you instant results and relief. I wanted to FEEL BETTER. I got feedback, validation, direction, confirmation, and sympathy. What I didn’t always get was truth. But hey, as long as they made me FEEL better, I was ok if I wasn’t sure it was truth. I didn’t care for truth at that time, just cared about stopping the pain and making myself feel better. God didn’t help me the way I wanted. 

With God, I got silence and emptiness. I got frustrated as I opened the Word and got overwhelmed with the vastness and just where was I supposed to be looking. I needed help RIGHT NOW, and what was presented to me was a huge book with the answers, but no one to tell me what page, what verse. No one to cry to. To wipe my tears. No one to tell me if I was right, wrong or at least headed in the right direction. I tried those paths at the beginning of my Christian walk when I needed instant help, and only left them feeling angry and frustrated because I was still a very immature person who walked by sight, feelings, emotions and trusted in what I was feeling, hearing and seeing. I had not yet learned to walk in the spirit. Had not learned to walk by my spiritual eyes, or hear with my spiritual ears. 

My need to feel better above my need for honest truth misled me to seeking second best. Led me to seeking what would help my flesh, pride, emotions, and feelings, even if that false hope and peace left me worse off in the long run. Over time, I learned that lesson the hard way, and became a truth-seeking. I matured enough to want the best, the VERY BEST.

When you need help and want the BEST help, the help that is selfless and has YOUR best interest at heart. The help that is true, honest, and won’t mislead you, and is full of knowledge and wisdom, and produces good fruit, you will learn to crave that kind of help. Trust in, adhere to, rely on it. 

Trust [confidently] in Him at all times, O people; Pour out your heart before Him. God is a refuge for us. Psalm 62:8

First, you have to determine and set your heart on this kind of help. You have to let go of second best and make a commitment to wanting what is the very best. you have to know it’s out there. And if you come to realize that you don’t want it, then you have to figure out why. There are some that don’t want help, they just want an audience as they complain and lament over their plight. 

If you don’t know what you need, your brain won’t put you on the right path. 

Step ONE. Determine in times of struggle, who you believe has become your FIRST best.
Step TWO, Is that truth? If it’s not God, then why?
Step THREE. When is the best time to seek out that help? 

I found that seeking out help BEFORE the crisis came, formed the path that I would later need and take at the moment I needed immediate help. Get it? Don’t wait to form your relationship with God, ONLY in the time of desperate crisis.

In my quiet, peaceful times, reading the Word of God and learning scriptures, learning Who God is and how He expected me to react to situations helped me when the trials came. These became trusted paths that led me to the results I needed. 

When fear, insecurity, anger, pain came at me……….I learned that worship, prayer, and just crying on God’s chest brought me comfort because His Word was in my heart from prior time spent with Him, and at those times, I was able to let that Word come back and bring me what I needed. I also learned to recognize when self-pity, and unbelief came to try and steal that truth from me. Tried to get me to feel sorry for myself and question if God really was with me and speaking to me.

These intimate times with God helped me develop a sincere trust and confidence in Him. All the other paths that I had trust in faded away and became second best. He became my FIRST choice, not an afterthought. When I was devastated by what my husband said, I knew from past experience that if I listened and trusted, relied on, and had confidence in my husband’s words or actions, I was going to become a hot mess. BUT when I learned to take what was said or done and go straight to God FIRST I could come away with perspective and insight. I learned through experience that taking what my spouse said and running to friends or family was not helpful either. They got into their feelings and emotions and reacted through it. Thinking they were helping me, they left me regretting my decision to share with them. 

God never made me regret going to Him during my storm. Not when I had made Him a priority. When I had predetermined that He was my BEST  help, not my last resort. Not something I had to do begrudgingly, or because I was using Him to get what I wanted. No, when I came to fully rely on, trust, have full confidence in the Lord. He became my ONLY trusted Source of information. The ONLY place I wanted to go. And that path became so important to me. It became something I desperately craved and desired and revisited over and over. 

When a ministry,  friends, family, even your hard-hearted, lost spouse has become your FIRST best source for truth, information, wisdom, and you put your faith, trust, confidence and fully rely on them instead of God, that is an IDOL that is come above or beside God. Nothing should replace Him as your Source. He takes second to no one! 

We have to learn from the paths that are leading us astray. Paths that are hurting us and not helping us. Paths that are telling us what we want to hear, but not what we need to hear. Paths that are distracting and keeping us from seeking the ONLY path that we need to be on.  The path that teaches you how to be that tree firmly rooted and grounded in Him. 

5“Cursed is the man who trusts in and relies on mankind,
Making [weak, faulty human] flesh his strength,
And whose mind and heart turn away from the LORD.
6“For he will be like a shrub in the [parched] desert;
And shall not see prosperity when it comes,
But shall live in the rocky places of the wilderness,
In an uninhabited salt land.

7“Blessed [with spiritual security] is the man who
believes and trusts in and relies on the LORD
And whose hope and confident expectation is the LORD.
8“For he will be [nourished] like a tree planted by the waters,
That spreads out its roots by the river;
And will not fear the heat when it comes;
But its leaves will be green and moist.
And it will not be anxious and concerned in a
year of drought Nor stop bearing fruit. Jeremiah 17

Standing with you,
Sheila Hollinger