There were a couple of instances last week when I felt that God spoke to my heart. Instances when He told me to do something in particular.

Now I must admit when I hear people say that “God told me to” do such and such I cringe, especially when it doesn’t seem to line up with the word of God.

How do people hear from God?? It doesn’t seem to me to be like Moses in the Old Testament where they met on Mt Sinai and spoke together.

It seems to me it comes more in the form of scripture which speaks to our heart or we get an idea or feeling about something.

Now I also cringe when I use that word “feeling”, I don’t believe we should use our feelings to decide anything.

A couple of weeks ago I had an incident at church with a certain lady. A lady who just doesn’t seem to like me and she had a go at one of our children.  Now I don’t know about you but you can have a go at me, but start on one or more of my children and my hackles rise, especially when he wasn’t doing anything wrong.

Now I let my emotions take over and although I didn’t really have a go at her my tone of voice showed signs of frustration.

At the time I thought I was justified, my child wasn’t in the wrong, how dare she. You must see where I am going with this I am sure.

I must admit also to harbouring feelings of frustration and annoyance and this stayed with me until one evening last week, when I was in the shower.  (I tend to have these thoughts in the shower, maybe it is because I am not focused on anything in particular).

The thought that I had was the following: I shouldn’t have spoken to that lady that way, (even if she was wrong). I should show her love even when she doesn’t like me and last but definitely not least I really felt the urge to apologise.

I believe this was God speaking to my heart and I remember saying to him, really I need to apologise???? and guess what, the answer was yes.

Now you can dodge doing what God wants you to do for a certain amount of time until you just need to do it. So instead of wasting time I decided that I would apologise and I really felt better about the whole thing immediately.  Unfortunately our younger two children were unwell and my husband asked me to stay home with them, so I didn’t make it to church. Instead I wrote her a nice card and apologised to her for my words, I didn’t justify myself by saying that my son did nothing wrong, I plain and simply apologised to her for my attitude.

My attitude is all I can work on, I am my own problem, she isn’t my problem, she is in God’s hands.

I also have to come to a place where I can forgive her even if she doesn’t apologise.  This I believe to be one of the hardest things, but so very necessary for my own spiritual health.

Dear Lord, please help me to love this lady, to help her, care for her and forgive her. Please help her to forgive me and let us come to a place where we can be friends. In Jesus name, Amen.

Ephesians 4:31-32 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you

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