Christian Writers Downunder: Divine direction

Monday, 19 February 2018

D-Day

For all those Sesame Street Fans, today’s blog has been brought to you today by the letter ‘D’.

In recent months, I have faced more than the usual amount of disappointments in both my personal and writing life. I recognise that this has affected my level of positivity, and if we were looking at it on one of those mathematics graphs, it has dipped below zero into negativity a few times. Add to this the amount of negativity that is the side-product of what we see on the news every day, and the social and political tension there is on so many different fronts, my soul has become disturbed and at times disgusted. This puts heavy pressure on any positivity index, and I find myself staring at the negative side of the ledger. I realise I am not the only one like this, who has personal and creative disappointments, and unless we unplug completely from the news media, we all have the potential to be disturbed by the things that are swirling in the world around us.

I was heading out bush to the family farm (my favourite place to escape), and my father asked if I would bring the word to their country church the next Sunday morning. I’d done this many times before. There are not many folks out there in that church, but I still believe they are as important as if I was sharing with the larger congregations in the city that number in the hundreds. I was feeling down, to be perfectly frank, but I said yes anyway. It was Dad’s turn to share, and he has been feeling a bit blue himself of late.

When I hung up from the phone call, I said to God: ‘What on earth will I say. I have nothing. I am feeling really down at the moment.’

As is usual for me, God always starts speaking to me with a thought and here is where it started:

The Downward Spiral

It starts with disappointment or feeling disturbed or disgusted.

Then it leads to:

Discouragement
Downcast
Depressed
Despairing
Disillusioned
Doubt
Deceived
Destroyed

In my state of negative mind-set, I thought how ironic that there were so many words that started with a ‘D’ leading to that place of destruction – no hope. Then I thought, I bet there are hardly any words starting with ‘D’ that will lead us back the other way.

I bet wrong.

I teased this all out into a long sermon with Scriptures, but these are the dot points

Decide – Do not keep heading further down. Stop and decide to face the other way, towards God and towards hope.
Delight – Delight in the Lord. Bless his name in worship. Give thanks for every good thing (Yes there are good things. You’re breathing, aren’t you? Do you have clothes and food and water? Start there.)
Declare – From a Scripture in Isaiah 45:19-24 “Declare what is right. Declare what is to be … present it.” There was much more to this point, but essentially, do you have Scriptures or promises from God? Speak them out loud in prayer.
Divine Direction – Keep your heart and ear inclined to God. Let him speak to you. Let him give you direction. Be obedient when he tells you to do something.
Divine Deliverance – Of course this involves the waiting part—waiting for God to reveal how he’s going to sort things out, because we all know, after our best shot, we’re still fumbling around in the dark. It is God who will bring the deliverance.
Destiny – We might have made plans, and sorted it all out nicely in our head, but when it all comes down to it, God is the one who orders our path. He is the light to our feet. He is the rock upon which we stand. He is the one who is our strength when we are weak. If we are going to have a destiny, let it be in God.