His Way

“Late in the midnight hour, God’s gonna turn it around, He’s gonna work in your favor!” “Turn it around, open the windows of heaven, overflow. Turn it around, open the windows of heaven, pour out a blessing we cannot contain!” “You’re an awesome God, you’re a mighty king, you’re my sword and shield, you are my strength. And in this one thing, I am confident, you will fight for me, you are my defense!” “We’re blessed in the City, we’re blessed in the field, we’re blessed when we come and when we go, we cast down every stronghold, sickness and poverty must cease, for the devil is defeated, we are blessed!”

If you’ve ever been to a Christian church or listened to a gospel station, you may have heard these songs. They’re great songs that can lift us up when we hear them, and when we sing them they’re even more powerful. Music is one of the most powerful ways we can worship and praise God, and it’s one of the most powerful ways our spirits can be uplifted, even in some of the darkest and most difficult times. There is a story that the devil was the head of the choir in heaven, and that he was the head worshipper, so that’s why there are songs that are powerful in the opposite direction too. That may or may not be truth, but it is true that music is very powerful, and when used for good, it has a great power for good.

All gifts of God are like that. If we use them with His blessing and in the way that He wants us to use them, they can have such great power for good, for helping people, for healing, for bringing restoration of relationships, and restoration of life and hope and peace and all the blessings that God promises to us. But if they’re not used with His blessing, if they’re used with a desire for self-gain or self-fulfillment or self-glorification without the wish to share the blessing with others, they can turn into something that has no life. When we focus our energy toward ourselves and ourselves alone, what had the power for good and light begins to grow dark.

I have a gift for language and communication. I can talk a blue streak as the saying goes, and I can talk to groups and teach and facilitate groups without needing to read a script. When I was acting, the only thing that made me nervous was thinking that I might forget my lines, but I have a great memory for little facts and stories and things that people say or do. I can memorize lines, but when I really fly it’s when I can talk on my own. I can write for days – a friend of mine, after he started reading this blog, asked me how long it took me to write what I’d written. He was asking about one of the entries, and when I told him I wrote one every day and each one took about an hour, he was shocked. Sometimes it takes longer, and sometimes shorter – it depends on if I’m eating while I’m writing and how much scripture I have to look up. I have a supernatural writing partner in the Holy Spirit, and I’m part German and part Irish and so I have a love of language and a gift of the gab. But if I use that gift with something other than encouraging and helping other people in mind, if I don’t allow the Holy Spirit to lead me, it can quickly become a curse. I can hurt other people, and ultimately I’ll end up hurting myself too.

Before I was born again, I wrote a lot of different stories and poems and plays and screenplays. I had the gift then, “For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” (Romans 11:29). I was also always really good at public relations and marketing – a friend of mine once said I could sell water to a drowning man. I was good at what I did back then, but now that I’m working for God, those gifts have taken on a life of their own.  Now when I’m selling water to a drowning man, it’s life giving water from the springs of heaven, and I’m selling it not to make an abundant profit for a client, but to help a person have an abundant life.

The songs that came to my mind when I sat down to write this are very powerful songs. But there’s something even more powerful than they are, and that’s the Spirit of God. We can sing all the songs we want, we can even be in the choir, but if we’re not letting the Holy Spirit lead us, we might as well be chasing after the wind (Ecclesiastes 1:14). But there is something that happens when we allow God to be the leader, when we are not afraid to let Him use our gifts in the way that He knows is best for us and for everyone else. When I am living my life His way, and listening for His voice, then I can sing those songs with real joy, knowing that they are true for me.

As I thought about those songs, another song came into my mind, Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” That’s a great song, too, in its own way, a song that a generation of men and women loved because it was all about keeping faith in yourself. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We need to know that its ok to not let someone else knock us down, we need to know that we can keep going no matter what anyone else says. But the greatest source of faith we can have that I know of can help us to keep going and help us know that we’re worth a great price, it can help us feel how deeply we’re loved and how much we are cared for. It can help us to sing any song about power and strength, and know that we have that power and strength within us. When we have faith in a God who loves us and who went to the Cross out of love for us, we can move mountains just by saying, “I believe.” And when we can believe, and when we can trust in Him, we can start to live our lives His way, and know without doubt that all the promises that He has made for us are true.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan