Getting To Know God Better 21

Just relax and listen for a minute.

If you are like most people you don't take instruction well. You don't mind suggestions, but you hate to be told what to do. More than likely you've earned that place in your life, family, career.

• You've earned the right to autonomy from the pejorative actions of others. 
• You've earned the right to be so stubborn that your spouse or best friend don't even try to tell you anything anymore.
• You've earned the right to stand firm in your ways and live in your own bubble.
• You've earned a place with the dinosaurs of your time.
• You've managed to nitch out a place where you are embedded inside and surrounded by a thick barrier of obstructions, diversion s and aversions to change.
• You've done well developing a shell of protection that is as hard to crack and an oyster shell.
• You are set and have it your way and your interest level in learning something new about yourself is below 0 on a one to ten scale

Here's the issue with this kind of thinking. If you are in any way anti-instruction you are locking yourself out of the inner place where God speaks to you to instruct you and console you and educate you and make you wiser. God does these things not only through the indwelling Holy Spirit and through Bible reading, but through the ideas and actions of others. That's right, even though you think so and so is ignorant and so and so is this or that, God uses so and so to reach you.

For a few days try to listen carefully to what people are saying to you.
Make a pledge to yourself not to respond until you have fully evaluated their message and prayed about it and asked God for guidance and instruction through it. Maybe God will instruct you to not heed what was said and to move forward as you have already proposed, but maybe there is a message there that can advance your cause.

The idea is to be more open to instruction, criticism, the din of family and friends. Immerse the words of others in the pool of Bethesda and see what comes out healed and fresh. If it is at all possible that you are stifling your own growth this simple method of discernment might really pay off.