Remember when you were still young, your friends would come over to play with you. You’ll have so much fun, playing all sorts of games. Time will fly you’ll even forget about the things you were told to do. Come the time you feel hungry, you go ask for food to your mom. She’ll look at the number of your friends and politely say “there’s no food my child, go play with other kids”. You’ll sulk and go away because you saw it and deep down you know it’s there, she just doesn’t wanna give it to you. Sometimes you even ask for your own leftovers she’ll deny you had any.
You didn’t understand why because all you wanted was something to eat, well, sometimes to brag to your friends about that great meal you had the previous night, she just put a stop into that. But the moment your friends leave, she’ll call you to give you food. Sometimes the same leftovers she told you that you didn’t have.
Unfortunately, sometimes you’ll have to pay for the sins of your friends first, before you get that food. You’ll eat it with tears on your face because friends turn everything upside down sometimes and simply leave when it’s convenient for them and you are always alone to clean up their mess and back then punishment was a thing if you were told to do something and you forgot to do it or you did something you were not supposed to
I’m not much of a Christian, I pray when time for that comes. If I didn’t, I still don’t feel bad about that, however, I sometimes think of God as a parent. He punish you when you are wrong, helps you when you need help, let you learn some lessons a hard way. He gives you what you want when He feels the time is right. He tries to take you away from certain situations. Unfortunately, when it’s not what you want, when you still love being there, you refuse to see any danger in it and He simply let you learn of the outcome a hard way. He just holds back his blessing from you until you move out of the situation He doesn’t want you in.
Just like your mom when she tells you that there’s no food in the house, when she tells you the bread she sent you to buy is finished when you ask for your share, she understands that your friends will eat your food and leave to eat in their homes leaving you starving, but you don’t understand that because you are hungry. You just wanna eat, you sulk, feel like she’s mistreating you. You don’t understand the bigger picture she’s looking at, you don’t understand she is protecting you
I think that applies to God’s methods, He doesn’t give us what we want because of the people we are surrounded by. He probably realizes that not all of them are with us for purely what we give them back, but for other things. Some people look after us because they realize the potential we have, they know if they stick around a little longer they might benefit a thing or two. Some stick with us because they know we will make good husbands or wives not because they love us and other people stick around because our presence in their lives add something positive to them, something of value they can’t afford to lose when we move away from them
Maybe before we complain that our dreams don’t take the shape we push so hard driving them into, we should evaluate the people around us. The things we do that might be hindering our success, our breakthrough. We should try to take a quick check whether the people around us aren’t the reason God is holding back His blessings on us.
He speaks to us, just like our parents, but we don’t listen because His teachings aren’t always what we want. You can feel this is not right, but instead of following your instincts you go on and do it and when it fails you wonder why. Perhaps if we could listen thoroughly, just like we do to our parents when it suits us we might get different results to everything that we do He knows best, what’s good for us and when it’s the right time to give it to us. We should try to meet him halfway, listen to his teachings a little more.
