Check Yes or No....
Happy Worship Wednesday, sweet SHINE girls!
I sure hope and pray you are all staying in His Word. Life gets busy, it gets hard to make it happen some days. However, when we make Him our first priority, everything seems to just shift, doesn't it?
When we "seek Him first", we notice His Grace more in our days. This is just a fact.
As I ponder our memory verse this week, the Lord has been revealing some things to my heart.
Our memory verse is: " All you need to say is simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything beyond this comes
from the evil one." Matthew 5:37
If we jump to the verse before this one, verse 36, we read: "And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black."
So, the context here is in regards to making an emphatic oath, or swearing. Such as: "I swear I really do love you!"
However, the Lord has shown me this verse in another way. He has made this verse more personal to me than just swearing.
Maybe this week, you have been thinking this verse doesn't really apply to you, or it just wasn't speaking to you like other verses do.
I ask for your sweet little ear for a minute...:)
As women, we are stretched thin. Beyond thin. We have to-do lists a mile and half long. And that's on a slow day.
We make it our motto to "stay busy". We often believe that if we are busy, we are productive. When we are busy, we are important. When we are busy, we make others think that we can do it all...and with a smile.
Now, compound that by a thousand if you are a people pleasing kind of girl. You don't want to let others down. They are depending on you for heaven's sake! What would they think if you said "no"?
This is where the Lord has been stretching me over the past 2 years.
In the past, I would feel so guilty if I had to say no. I would feel so guilty, that I would over-explain myself. Over and over.
And over.
Not only that, but I would stretch the truth a bit to sound even more justifiable for saying "no".
{did I just say that out loud??}
The poor person getting the explanation was probably exhausted from my exhaustive explanation!
It was like I was trying to convince them and persuade them to believe that I had justification for saying no. Especially if that "no" was to a good thing. Which made it even harder to have to say no. Which made my explanations even more exhausting, if that was even possible.
To make it even more difficult, if I didn't feel like I had a reasonable or justifiable excuse for saying no, I would say "yes". Knowing that I did not have peace about the thing, I still would move forward and say yes.
Why?
I did not want the person to think I was lazy or non-caring, or not "capable" of handling whatever it was. So, I would just say yes. Knowing that my heart and my peace-meter were saying....NOOOOO.
There are several scriptures that talk about using too many words...or in my case, over explaining the heck out of my answer.
"Too much talk leads to sin. Be sensible and keep your mouth shut." Proverbs 10:19
Uhhh, yeah, that's pretty straight forward.
Or, how about this doozie:
"Too much activity gives you restless dreams; too many words make you a fool." Ecclesiastes 5:3
So, basically, I was restless AND a fool. {taking a bow}
The Holy Spirit resides in us, if we are His. If we have confessed Jesus as our Savior and Lord, His residence is INside of us.
“I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my ways.” Ezekiel 36:26-27
So, when we lack peace about saying "yes", it's because the Holy Spirit inside of us is putting on the brakes.
The Holy Spirit protects us and guides us. However, what happens when we go outside of that protection and onto our own path? We are out of His Will for our lives.
That is a scary place to be.
I have been there, done that, and never want to return.
Okay, so you are thinking, little things that we say "yes" to even when we don't feel peace about it don't really matter, right?
I mean, how bad could if be if our reasoning for that "yes" is to help someone out, or to fill a gap that needs to be filled?
This is how I see it:
When I go down that unpeaceful path of saying "yes" to something I knew I needed to say "no" to, I miss what He had in store for me if I would have said no.
I also see it as robbing someone else of the opportunity to say YES to that thing. If I move out of the way, because the Lord is telling me to put on the brakes, it clears the way for someone else to step up.
The Lord sees our future, He knows what is ahead for us. If He sees something hindering the journey He will gently nudge us to step away.
I challenge all of us to let our yes be yes and our no be no. We don't need to explain ourselves to death. Too many words make us fools, remember?
Let's don't let the opinion of what others will think if we say "no" dictate our peace- meter.
The only One we need approval from is the Lord. He is the One we are seeking to please and honor.
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." Proverbs 9:10
keeping the peace,
jill
*Follow along with us in our daily reading plan. You can find it here.
I sure hope and pray you are all staying in His Word. Life gets busy, it gets hard to make it happen some days. However, when we make Him our first priority, everything seems to just shift, doesn't it?
When we "seek Him first", we notice His Grace more in our days. This is just a fact.
As I ponder our memory verse this week, the Lord has been revealing some things to my heart.
Our memory verse is: " All you need to say is simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything beyond this comes
from the evil one." Matthew 5:37
If we jump to the verse before this one, verse 36, we read: "And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black."
So, the context here is in regards to making an emphatic oath, or swearing. Such as: "I swear I really do love you!"
However, the Lord has shown me this verse in another way. He has made this verse more personal to me than just swearing.
Maybe this week, you have been thinking this verse doesn't really apply to you, or it just wasn't speaking to you like other verses do.
I ask for your sweet little ear for a minute...:)
As women, we are stretched thin. Beyond thin. We have to-do lists a mile and half long. And that's on a slow day.
We make it our motto to "stay busy". We often believe that if we are busy, we are productive. When we are busy, we are important. When we are busy, we make others think that we can do it all...and with a smile.
Now, compound that by a thousand if you are a people pleasing kind of girl. You don't want to let others down. They are depending on you for heaven's sake! What would they think if you said "no"?
This is where the Lord has been stretching me over the past 2 years.
In the past, I would feel so guilty if I had to say no. I would feel so guilty, that I would over-explain myself. Over and over.
And over.
Not only that, but I would stretch the truth a bit to sound even more justifiable for saying "no".
{did I just say that out loud??}
The poor person getting the explanation was probably exhausted from my exhaustive explanation!
It was like I was trying to convince them and persuade them to believe that I had justification for saying no. Especially if that "no" was to a good thing. Which made it even harder to have to say no. Which made my explanations even more exhausting, if that was even possible.
To make it even more difficult, if I didn't feel like I had a reasonable or justifiable excuse for saying no, I would say "yes". Knowing that I did not have peace about the thing, I still would move forward and say yes.
Why?
I did not want the person to think I was lazy or non-caring, or not "capable" of handling whatever it was. So, I would just say yes. Knowing that my heart and my peace-meter were saying....NOOOOO.
There are several scriptures that talk about using too many words...or in my case, over explaining the heck out of my answer.
"Too much talk leads to sin. Be sensible and keep your mouth shut." Proverbs 10:19
Uhhh, yeah, that's pretty straight forward.
Or, how about this doozie:
"Too much activity gives you restless dreams; too many words make you a fool." Ecclesiastes 5:3
So, basically, I was restless AND a fool. {taking a bow}
The Holy Spirit resides in us, if we are His. If we have confessed Jesus as our Savior and Lord, His residence is INside of us.
“I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my ways.” Ezekiel 36:26-27
So, when we lack peace about saying "yes", it's because the Holy Spirit inside of us is putting on the brakes.
The Holy Spirit protects us and guides us. However, what happens when we go outside of that protection and onto our own path? We are out of His Will for our lives.
That is a scary place to be.
I have been there, done that, and never want to return.
Okay, so you are thinking, little things that we say "yes" to even when we don't feel peace about it don't really matter, right?
I mean, how bad could if be if our reasoning for that "yes" is to help someone out, or to fill a gap that needs to be filled?
This is how I see it:
When I go down that unpeaceful path of saying "yes" to something I knew I needed to say "no" to, I miss what He had in store for me if I would have said no.
I also see it as robbing someone else of the opportunity to say YES to that thing. If I move out of the way, because the Lord is telling me to put on the brakes, it clears the way for someone else to step up.
The Lord sees our future, He knows what is ahead for us. If He sees something hindering the journey He will gently nudge us to step away.
I challenge all of us to let our yes be yes and our no be no. We don't need to explain ourselves to death. Too many words make us fools, remember?
Let's don't let the opinion of what others will think if we say "no" dictate our peace- meter.
The only One we need approval from is the Lord. He is the One we are seeking to please and honor.
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." Proverbs 9:10
keeping the peace,
jill
*Follow along with us in our daily reading plan. You can find it here.
