Make My Life Count: Yes! God Speaks and Works Today to Ensure Your Life Will Count

By Lois Smith

This is my story of the times when the Lord had caused me to perceive his amazing presence and to know by experience his preservation of my life.

It is my desire to share how God is continually at work even today in our lives, in this generation, just as he had in previous generations. I want to share the many wonderful times that he has chosen to reveal his hand to me as he has been involved in the day by day circumstances of my own life. I will also write about the times when I saw him work through me and the ways that he would reveal himself to others. It was in those times when he would help them and things would happen in such a way that they were aware that it wasnt me. His desire is to turn people to look to him because his hand is open to meet their need in a way that only he can.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jun 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781512789195

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 Lois Smith.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5127-8920-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-8921-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-8919-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017907958

WestBow Press rev. date: 06/19/2017

Scripture quotations marked (NKJV) are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (Voice) are taken from The Voice™. Copyright © 2008 by Ecclesia Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (The Message) are taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked (TLB) are taken from The Living Bible copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

"Scripture quotations taken from the Amplified® Bible (AMP), Copyright © 2015 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission. www.Lockman.org

"Scripture quotations taken from the Amplified® Bible Classic Edition (AMPC), Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission. www.Lockman.org"

Scriptures marked (KJV) are taken from the KING JAMES VERSION (KJV): KING JAMES VERSION, public domain.

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (HCSB) are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. HCSB® is a federally registered trademark of Holman Bible Publishers.

To Jim my husband, whom I believe has ensured this book, will be placed into the hands of others to read. His input and support has greatly contributed to my book reaching publishing stage

My soul overflows with satisfaction, as when I feast on foods rich in marrow and fat; with excitement in my heart and joy on my lips, I offer You praise. Often at night I lie in bed and remember You, meditating on Your greatness till morning smiles through my window. You have been my constant helper; therefore, I sing for joy under the protection of Your wings. (Ps. 63:5–7 Voice)

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1     Purpose and Potential

Chapter 2     Challenge—A Catalyst for Change

Chapter 3     Recognizing God’s Hand and Voice in My Life

Chapter 4     How I Met the Lord

Chapter 5     Do You Love Me More Than All These?

Chapter 6     One Master and One Lord

Chapter 7     Hear My Words and Act on Them

Chapter 8     His Kingdom Come

Chapter 9     Agreement and Allegiance

Chapter 10   God Speaks to Us in Dreams

Chapter 11   Destiny—God’s Desire for You

Chapter 12   Expect Opposition

Chapter 13   A Mature Spiritual Temple

Chapter 14   Created to Worship God Alone

Chapter 15   The Testing of Your Faith

Epilogue

Prayer

INTRODUCTION

One generation after another will celebrate your great works; they will pass on the story of your powerful acts to their children. (Psalm 145:4 Voice)

This is my story of the times when the Lord has caused me to perceive His amazing presence and to know through personal experience His preservation of my life.

My desire is to share how God still works today in our lives, just as He has in previous generations. There have been many wonderful times when He has chosen to reveal Himself to me as He has been involved in the daily circumstances of my life. There have been times when I saw Him work through me in ways that allowed Him to reveal Himself to others. These things would happen in such a way that the people involved became aware that it wasn’t of me. His desire is for people to know Him personally and understand that He wants to meet their needs in a way that only He can.

All eyes have turned toward You, waiting in expectation; when they are hungry, You feed them right on time. The desires of every living thing are met by Your open hand. The Eternal is right in all His ways, and He is kind in all His acts. (Ps. 145:15–17 Voice)

To know God is also to experience the reality of His goodness and love. This is what He longs for. He wants to change our perception of Him so that we will know and believe the love that He has toward us.

I have seen God take my testimony of His work in my life to help save another person’s life both physically and spiritually. I realized this was His Spirit that was working through me to touch another person’s life. He had met the person’s need at the right time, revealing to them personally that He was to be the source of their life.

The Lord has been teaching me to recognize His voice and to understand how He leads and guides me, as well as learning to trust Him. Sometimes I have faltered and held back, yet He has always been faithful to watch over me and keep me even while I am in that process of learning more about Him.

My first real revelation of God was, Oh, my God, he is real. It was that moment when I experienced His presence.

There was a specific time in my life when I said to the Lord, Make my life count for you. That heartfelt desire was to experience all that God had purposed for my life, whether great or small. It’s not about being an Abraham, Moses, Joseph, or Esther—it’s about being Lois, as He meant me to be.

The big difference in my life was being able to build a real relationship with God. I know now that God does speak to us every day if we will spend the time with Him and listen to what He has to say.

There are times where we feel we are standing alone. That is our perception; discovering we are not is a revelation. Every day can be an ongoing burning bush experience with Jesus.

I have an exciting expectation that the Lord is there waiting, available for me at any time. I am able to share anything with Him, and I know I will get a loving and proper response. It’s the same for each of us. I trust that what I have written will be a real encouragement to you.

CHAPTER 1

Purpose and Potential

F or a number of years I had resisted the idea and even negated the possibility of writing a book. I had not realized the power of testimony. To testify of Him is to encourage other people to turn and look to Him. It gives them a reason to hope and believe in the one who is greater than themselves. It also gives an opportunity for them to experience God’s love in their lives. I had to understand the purpose of testimony before I could really understand the potential of influence that God could have through my writing a book.

Previously, when others suggested that I should write a book, it always amused me because I would immediately reflect upon my school days of sitting in class with a blank piece of paper—and it would still be blank at the end of an essay session. I had considered that if there had been no inspiration to write then, why should it be any different now? Therefore, when friends began speaking to me or when a prophetic word was given to me to write for others to read, I laughed. I would weigh up what had been spoken and simply reason with my mind based on my abilities, and then dismiss it.

I am now able to testify to how much God can change our lives and our perceptions; He does this in order to develop the full potential that He has placed within us. I needed to know that He also imparts His specific gifts to accomplish His will and His work in our lives. This was something that I had not taken into consideration.

In honesty, I was viewing my life only through my eyes and not through His. The thing about weighing up your future based only upon your ability is that it can make it restricting and uninspiring because the limit is set by what you think is possible. When you encounter Jesus, who knows no limits, you will find that He begins to extend the very borders that you have set. He will take you far above and beyond anything you could ever imagine or think possible for your life.¹ This has challenged me to continually trust Him with my life. His purpose is to bring my life into total submission to Him as my Lord. In that place I am equipped in His strength. He will take what we may consider as being an ordinary life and begin teaching us that with Him nothing is impossible; indeed we are then able to do all things through Christ who will strengthen us.²

I am discovering in my daily walk that there is only one person who knows me better than I know myself, and that is my Maker. Truly, a new life begins when we encounter and receive Christ into our lives. This is where old things that have been based upon our perceptions will begin to pass away, and it is where we discover that all things become new.

A lack of understanding of God’s intended purpose for our lives means we could fail to reach our full potential. It is written in scripture that without vision people dwell carelessly.³ It is that intimate knowledge of God that gives us an understanding of the purpose and plans that He has for each of us. Having purpose motivates us into action, and action fulfills and establishes lives with a real sense of fulfillment. God had to change my perceptions in order for me to realize my potential.

Purpose is the powerful motivation that brings focus to our faith. It also gives us an active energy to move forward and achieve possibilities in and through Him. Therefore, we are giving selective attention to that which embraces and believes in a specific outcome. We reach out to lay hold of the promises that are from Him.

He has already formed within us that which will equip us to fulfill His God-given purpose and calling. I call it vision imagery. It’s not something we make up with our own imaginations but something God has placed in us that we could fulfill. It helped me to understand that my life was not without purpose. It’s the same principle as when we make something for a specific purpose.

We have been made in His likeness—in the image of God.

Potential is something that has existing possibilities that have not yet been realized. So we find that we are on a journey of discovering a whole new potential that we have not known or experienced before. What makes this journey possible is the assurance that Jesus gave—that He will not leave us helpless or having to do everything on our own. He has sent a helper to us who will lead us and guide us. That helper is the Holy Spirit.

An interesting example comes to mind of a person who felt he lacked the ability to do what God was asking him to do. This person even suggested that God give the job to another. Who am I talking about? Moses. This example confirms that God’s intention is to work in us and through us.

But Moses pleaded, O Lord, I’m just not a good speaker. I never have been, and I’m not now, even after you have spoken to me, for I have a speech impediment. Who makes mouths? Jehovah asked him. Isn’t it I, the Lord? Who makes a man so that he can speak or not speak, see or not see, hear or not hear? Now go ahead and do as I tell you, for I will help you to speak well, and I will tell you what to say. (Exo. 4:10–12 TLB)

Who makes mouths? I love that question because it turns our focus directly to our Maker. God does everything with a purpose in mind. That question was intended to provoke the thought that He could have designed us very differently, but He gave us mouths. The God who gives us mouths can also give us the words to speak. This applies to a whole range of potential that God gives to us. Moses didn’t have to think about a speech or what he would do; rather, he needed to simply trust the God who was sending him to give him the words to say and do it.

He tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds,⁴ and here we see Him at work laying this foundational truth with Moses. He created us, and therefore He knows better than we do the potential that exists in each of us. All that He has purposed and planned has not yet been fully realized or developed. Nevertheless, the entire possibilities still remain within each of us to prosper our lives.

It is His Holy Spirit who comes and reveals this potential just as He did with Moses. This will involve our personal image of Him as our Creator, and it will involve our perception of His personal involvement in our everyday lives. He is revealing a whole new sense of value and meaning that is placed on our individual lives.

God intended that we should reflect Him through our lives. We should be confident of this truth—that our lives were purposed and planned, or simply put, that our lives were planned with an intended purpose.

Every life is significant in the eyes of God, and we need the same revelation the psalmist had of how fearfully and wonderfully made each person’s life is.⁵ His eyes were upon us even when we were unformed—that’s before our existence.

He was the one who was there in the beginning with us. He has chosen to reveal to us, through His Word, where and when our conception of life begins. This should ignite confidence because we know that where He has begun a good work, He also watches over it to complete and establish it.⁶ We are not a product of something but of someone—God. All the days ordained for me were written in His book before one of them came to be.⁷

So God did just that. He created humanity in His image, created them male and female. Then God blessed them and gave them this directive: Be fruitful and multiply. Populate the earth. I make you trustees of my estate, so care for my creation and rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that roams across the earth. (Gen. 1:27–28 Voice)

I think what really had an influence on me in the above verse was that God would entrust the work of His hands into the hands of humans—that He actually made humans trustees of His estate to care for it. We are trustees of our lives as well. We have a responsibility in realizing our full potentials.

It’s also important to remember that His trusteeship involves others and how we treat them. Our attitudes toward others can build up and release them into their potentials in life, but a wrong attitude could also spoil that possibility. God’s intended purpose has always been to produce life after His own image. That is the image that He created within every individual so that each one of us should prosper in His blessings and reflect His glory.

His creations of humanity can never be considered as ordinary or indeed inferior one to another. How we treat one another is important to Him. Have you ever noticed how this is an ongoing test in our lives that seems to involve our attitudes toward others? I know that this is the case for me since I find that my attitude is being called to account when my weaknesses are exposed. And it is in those times that I have to take an honest look at myself.

I am required to ask myself: What is it that is really taking place when I suddenly find myself in conflict with others? Am I actually just seeking to defend my own actions? Do I want to be right, or do I want His righteousness to live in me? There is a big difference between living for myself and experiencing Him alive in me. The very thing that is motivating our actions may also be hindering our potential in Him. Fear, for example, would definitely be a hindrance to potential.

I recall an incident where I was going to a place to make an enquiry. I parked outside and felt ill at ease. I sensed the Lord saying: Why don’t you want to go inside? And my response was: I’m shy. I had been like this for some time; even from early childhood I had been told I was a shy person. I felt the Lord ask me this question again, and I responded the same as the first time. I sensed that the Lord was looking for a different answer. The Lord clearly said to me, I never created you shy. If I created you shy I would have created you with a definite disadvantage as opposed to others. Shyness is a mask to fear—now go in. This freed me up and dealt with something in my life that would have prevented me from moving forward.

My intention is to show that in spite of where I am in my life; there is nothing that is too difficult for Him. The most wonderful thing since my encounter with the Lord is that I know that He is real, and all the good that’s taking place in my life is a result of knowing Him. He is teaching me that He has created every one of us with extraordinary potential. Man contained the spirit of life that can only come from God, who is Spirit.

By recognising that our lives began in the heart of God, we acknowledge that we were conceived out of His own desire that we should exist through Him and by Him and for Him.⁸

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! (Ps. 139:13–17 NIV)

Truly we are fearfully and wonderfully made in His image. How important to take time to consider just how wonderful those things are that He has worked in us, in order to establish His purposes through us. Precious to you and I are all the thoughts God holds towards us.

How awesome is the capacity and potential contained within us when we consider what Paul said when he spoke from his personal experience: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.⁹ What does the Lord say concerning you and me? The eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.¹⁰ Prepared speaks of that which He has prearranged. That is plainly speaking of things that have not been initiated by our own effort.

It is interesting how Jesus speaks of those things that may well be done in His name but are done apart from Him.

Therefore by their fruits you will know them. Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ (Matt. 7:20–23 NKJV)

It’s amazing how the things that were being done would, at face value, look like good things to do. No doubt the people doing them felt they were accomplishing great things. Jesus, however, dismissed them as they had no relationship with Him. It’s not about doing great things but about, through a relationship with Jesus, doing those things He calls us to do. In this is our full potential and purpose realized.

We are called to see things that may not exist at present as possible. We are fully convinced of their future existence, knowing that God has purposed and planned them.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jer. 29:11 NIV)

When we live in this world without God’s direction in our lives, we may dwell carelessly. Remember that Jesus told us that the Holy Spirit will take that which is His and show it to us.¹¹ We are to ask God for direction. This also draws us into His presence, that place of communion with the Lord where we receive His leading and guiding. Looking to Him also teaches us the importance of reliance upon Him. This is essential to establishing in us that relationship of oneness.

I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me. (John 5:30 NKJV)

If Jesus Himself can do nothing apart from that which He hears from the Father, we know He is showing us the way forward, which is the only way. He Himself tells us, "I