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Transcript:
Hello, welcome to Walking in Step with God, I’m Steve McDonald. Today I am so excited to share that we are kicking off a brand new series called ‘Experience God’. In this series, we are going to explore how we can truly be one with God in every single area of our lives. Our home, our workplace, our schools, and everywhere in between. God is not a part-time God, He is available 24/7 at every moment of every day, 365 days a year. God does not take holidays or weekends off. Unlike us, He does not need coffee breaks or naps. God wants you to know that He is available to you at all times whenever you may need Him. In today’s message, we are going to dive into practical ways that we can ask God for His influence in our situation. In other words, ways to ask God for help. One of the amazing things about God is that He loves us so much, that He will make Himself available for any situation, great or small. While He is always aware of our circumstances, He takes great joy in knowing that we desire to lean on Him for support, guidance, reassurance, and peace. God is a loving Father who knows just how much help to give, when to give it, and how to give it in such a way that will help us to grow stronger and closer to Him.
Today, let us explore 3 ways that we can ask for God’s influence in our lives. Let’s explore the idea that we never need to feel as though we are alone and separated from God. God is always with us.
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Welcome back. Let’s continue in our discussion 3 ways to ask for God’s influence in our lives.
Pray for guidance and wisdom
First, let’s pray for guidance and wisdom. When we are dealing with a decision or struggling through a difficult time, we would be naive to think that we know everything there is to know about the situation. We may think we know, but we don’t. Only God knows all of the factors about our circumstances, especially information that we would never have known on our own.
We can trust that God knows so much about us and our circumstances that only He would know the best advice and guidance for us to be able to navigate through our situation.
Let’s also be sure to not be too prideful to think we don’t need additional wisdom from God. If we have a decision to make, God and only God can touch our hearts and minds with ideas and thoughts that we would not have had otherwise. He is not going to twist our arm or push us or pull us, but He will drop information to us in such a way for us to be wiser about a situation and then follow our own free will to choose.
I cannot overstate how frequently God provides me with clear instructions about my career, my well-being and even this ministry. Pray for guidance and wisdom every chance you get about every area of your life so that God can influence your path.
Pray for God to touch the hearts and minds of others
The second step in asking for God’s influence is to pray for Him to touch the hearts and minds of others. In many situations, there are others who will influence the outcomes of your circumstances. Sometimes you are fully aware of the persons involved. For example, a teacher, a manager, a co-worker. Other times, you will have no idea of the individuals involved in your situation. For example, a clerk that is processing a loan application or a hiring manager reviewing your resume among a stack of hundreds of others.
Now, let’s be clear, I am not suggesting we should ask God to change the minds of others. I believe this would be no different from Him changing our minds about a decision. Just as I touched on in the first step we can ask God to give others wisdom and guidance as well.
We should not ask God to make sure the loan agent approves our loan, but we can and should ask God to touch the heart and mind of the agent to have a clear view of our entire loan application. Perhaps, just perhaps there are factors in the approval of your loan that the loan agent would not have originally noticed had it not been for God’s influence. In another example, as your resume sits in a stack of 100s other resumes for a hiring manager, we can pray that God will touch the heart and mind of the manager to have clarity and focus over our resume even though there are 100s of others. God may influence the situation so that the manager is not skimming our resume to rush and get it over with, but has taken a break just before reading our resume so they have a clear mind.
If we ask for God’s influence to touch the hearts and minds of others, we can trust that He will do so in a manner that is best for the situation.
Pray for God’s will to be done.
A third way we can ask for God’s influence is to pray for His will to be done. I have mentioned this truth many times over the years in this ministry. God’s will is perfect. God’s will may or may not be aligned with how we want an outcome to unfold, but His will is absolutely perfect.
It can be difficult to ask for God’s influence by asking for His will to be made known, by asking Him to ensure that His will ultimately is first and foremost. Even I have difficulty getting the thoughts out as I pray from time to time. It is difficult in part because it involves a level of surrender that can be very uncomfortable.
We know that we should trust God, but can we really? Of course we can. That is not what our brain will agree with at first. It will take time to learn to not only trust God’s will but to ask for His will to be done.
When we do decide, and I mean actually decide, to ask Him to reveal and guide all parties involved to His will, we can rest assured that our situation is in the best hands possible. There is no wrong in expressing our desire and will along with this request, but let us rest in our hearts that we have communicated to God our will and desire, but that His will is the most important.
Wrap Up
In today’s message, we explored three ways to ask for God’s influence in our lives. We touched on the idea that we should always ask God for guidance and wisdom about a situation, no matter the level of expertise or knowledge we may have. Next, we learned we should ask for God to also give guidance and wisdom to the other individuals who are part of our circumstances. God will not force us or others for that matter to do or not do any particular thing as we all have free will. He can and will, however, provide guidance and wisdom through the natural world and in our spirit to allow all of us to be more informed and educated about a situation before we make a decision. The last approach we discussed was to pray for God’s will to be done. God’s will is absolutely and completely perfect. Always. Every. Single. Time. Let’s remember that while we have free will, we can always go to God to ask Him for His will to be done, knowing it will be the perfect plan for all involved,even if it is a plan we would not have chosen ourselves.
Are you in a situation where you could use some help from God? Are you looking to make an important life decision? Are you struggling in an area of your life where it seems like there is no hope? Ask for God’s influence today. He is with you at this very moment and ready and waiting for you to lean into Him and His perfect love. Let Him take you and lead you by the hand today.
Are you interested in discovering more about the guidance offered in this message? Learn more in the companion article Going Deeper with the Word: As for God’s Influence
