“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”
George Eliot
God’s voice challenged me over the weekend when I heard Him say, “Become who I’ve created you to be!” He said He would dispel the lies the enemy has fed to me and release His truth and revelation of who I am in Him. God encouraged me to no longer hold back and to cease my timidity in embracing His call on my life.
The Holy Spirit convicted me with this truth: It is just as much of a sin to hold back from being who God created me to be as it is to try and be someone who God hasn’t called me to be. I repented of my reluctance and my dragging of feet in regards to embracing my divine destiny. God reminded me of James 4:17: “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do, and does not do it, to him it is sin.” Ouch! Once again the Holy Spirit gently nailed me. If I know what God wants me to be doing and I avoid it like Jonah and run in the opposite direction, or even if I’m procrastinating and dragging my feet in fulfilling His will, then it is sin. God showed me my reluctance to obey is just as much a sin as if I charged on ahead and did something He didn’t want me to do. I love God’s kindness which leads me toward repentance. (Romans 2:4b)
And in God’s benevolence, He also showed me why I wasn’t fully grasping His will for my life. It boiled down to a perceptual set firmly fixed within my heart. I first learned of that term in my Psychology 101 class my freshmen year of college. A perceptual set is “a tendency to view things only in a certain way and can impact how we interpret and respond to the world around us.” Unfortunately, if our perceptual set is inaccurate, it will skew how we see things. It’s as if we’re wearing colored glasses and everything becomes tinted that color.
God revealed to me how past hurts led to my perceptual set and my knee-jerk reaction was to run as far away as possible. I saw how my unhealed heart kept me from wholeheartedly obeying God. Sin, pride, fear, unbelief and the vows we make, all thwart us from fulfilling our divine destinies.
After I repented, I asked God to change me, to help me accurately see things from His viewpoint. I don’t want my perceptual sets to prevent me from obeying God. I told God, “You have Your work cut out for You, to heal and change my heart so I may without reservations, embrace wholeheartedly Your will for my life. Change me within Holy Spirit so I do what You want me to do. Make me into Your woman you want me to be. Fashion me Lord to reign with You and empower me to fulfill my divine destiny.”
“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”
C. S. Lewis
Relevant Reflections:
1. How have perceptual sets from a hurting heart prevented you from fully obeying God’s will?
2. What sin is holding you back from embracing your divine destiny?
3. Repent and ask God to restore your heart.
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