CHECK YOUR FOUNDATION by Christie Smith

My niece and I are praying over a pretty big question in her life..."What does God want me to do next year?" She's teaching at an orphanage in Mexico right now and is trying to figure out if she's supposed to stay there another year, go to language school, serve somewhere else, or come home. Big question...yes. But I don't think it's as simple as answering that one question. A question that specific gets answered through other, broader questions. What does God want from his children/people? Then...what does God want from me as a woman? If we are taking care of the "big picture," the generalizations of the Christian life, then we are ready to hear the answers to the more specific questions. 

I'm a mother of five and I don't have to answer the types of questions that my niece is facing, but that doesn't mean my questions are less pressing or important. You don't get married and have kids and then coast through life. The questions keep coming and tend to affect more people! 

"Where are we supposed to live?" 
"Am I supposed to work or stay home?" 
"Where do the kids go to school or am I supposed to be homeschooling?" 
"What about our finances? What do we 'invest' in?" 

As parents we run the risk of becoming complacent in our life if we aren't constantly asking ourselves the same questions we did before we were "settled down." We have to continue to ask ourselves "Where does God want me to serve next year?" for the rest of our lives, continuously offering our lives to Him. And the process of answering that question never changes. We have to be the people of God and the women of God He calls us to be today and everyday. Then we can ask what He wants for our tomorrows and for our family's future. If we skip any part of these steps, we run the risk of getting the wrong answers to the more specific questions we ask God because they are all related. 

It's why God doesn't give us the plans for our lives from the beginning...He knows it would totally freak us out! We wouldn't be able to handle it. We wouldn't be mature enough to accept it. It would be like putting a big T-bone steak in front of a newborn baby. There's no way their bodies could digest it, and they don't even have the tools to eat it...teeth, motor-skills to be able to cut it up, or the digestive system to even digest something that big. The same is true as Christians when it comes to being able to "digest" God's will for our lives. We have to develop and mature in the big, generalizations of spiritual growth before we can handle the more specific areas. If you're having problems in specific areas of your life, maybe you should go back to the foundation of your walk with Christ. I know from experience that when your foundation is shaky or crumbling, if you're trying to build in the next part of your life before your foundation is stable...you're going to make some wrong choices and in the end it will all come tumbling down! So, if you're trying to answer some specific questions and you're having trouble hearing God answer, check your foundation!