But I thought this was it!

I often get asked the question "How do I know if what I heard was from God or if it was just me?" There are so many circumstances in our lives where in the moment we are certain we "heard from God", and sometimes these things work out and sometimes they don't. When they don't, we just assume that we didn't hear from God.


This summer I had 2 situations in my life, major life-changing situations where I KNEW I heard from God. These were the types of situations where real things were at stake. Those scary moments where the trajectory of your life can change dramatically, and you really don't want to get it wrong.


One of the situations didn't resolve itself in the way that I thought it would based on what I thought I heard, and by proxy, I assumed that I also hadn't heard from God on what really is the more important situation. It threw me into a spin unlike anything I have ever experienced. Talk about a shaking of my faith. Not my faith in God, but my faith in my ability to hear from God-and HONEY! If you shake my faith in my ability to hear from God, I am sunk. Imagine Peter standing on the gunwhale of the boat, preparing to step onto the water and he wonders "what if that isn't Jesus?"


In talking about the suddnelies of God Jay talked about the time in between the promise and the fulfillment. But lets back it up one more step..... how do I know if what I think is from the Lord, and is it a PROMISE???


We have all heard the story that Katie Holmes knew somewhere deep in her heart that she would marry Tom Cruise one day. When they were preparing to get married, this was a romantic tidbit that got everyone's heart pumping, and we all were inspired to dream a little bigger- which is good. But what about the other 100 million women of all ages who have had that same thought (most of them are now singing "some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers!), but for whom that obviously didn't come true? If these were Christians, would we say that all the other women didn't hear from God?


In Ottawa there is a certain Christian, single, hockey player who is well known, and at some point in EVERY conversation with every single chrisitan woman, this name comes up, and most of the time if a married friend (usually a husband of a married friend) asks about prospects for me, this person's name ALWAYS comes up. There are literally thousands of women and hundreds of Christian woman who are CONVINCED that they are this guy's future wife. They obviously can't all be right...(Besides, we have claimed him for my friend so the rest can just back off!!)... but they ALL think that they heard from God.


This is just one example of this dilemma. So if we are to base our hope on the promise of God for our lives, how can we know that we know that we know that we have heard from Him in the first place?