Unwavering: Learning to Do the Next Right Thing in Your Walk with God

By Margo Fieseler

Consider it pure joy!

Though hundreds of women gather weekly to hear Margo Fieseler teach them how to love and live God’s Word, the details of her life before Christ are largely unknown. Most people see the compelling Christian teacher running a non-profit that opens the door for people to know Jesus personally, passionately, powerfully, and pre-eminently. But, there was life before Jesus. In this life-story devotional learn how salvation radically changed one woman’s life, healed a marriage and family, and restored a soul as only God can do. In addition to an authentic and vulnerable narrative, you’ll be able to study the Bible’s application in your own life through devotions and journaling. Discover the key to walking victoriously, rather than in woundedness. God isn’t done with Margo and He’s not done with you. Nourish an unwavering faith as you learn to “do the next right thing” in your walk with God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Sep 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973635802

Margo Fieseler

Margo Fieseler is the founder and teacher of Margo Fieseler Ministries, a non-profit organization providing leadership and teaching to hundreds of women in Southern Wisconsin. A wife and mother of two daughters and many collies, she spent twenty years in the professional world and five years in radio before launching her ministry with a passion to have people come to know Jesus. When she’s not teaching or leading women, Margo can be found enjoying her lakefront home in summers, the ski hills in the winter, and walks with her dogs all year long.

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Copyright © 2018 Margo Fieseler.

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.

This work is based on the experiences of an individual. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the content.

Contributing Editor: Reji Laberje

Interior Design Elements: Sarah Rickaby

Cover Design: Sarah Rickaby

Author Photo: Paul Moroder of Moroder Photography

WestBow Press

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-3579-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-3578-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-3580-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018909145

WestBow Press rev. date: 08/27/2018

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Scripture quotations marked AMP are taken from The Amplified Bible of 2015 (AMP) Copyright © 2015 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, CA 90631. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

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Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

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Contents

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Prologue: Someday

Chapter 1     I Got This

Devotions: God’s Pursuit of Me

Chapter 2     Um … Not So Much

Devotions: Conviction

Chapter 3     What Took You So Long?

Devotions: No More Detours Away from the Heart of God

Chapter 4     Squeegee the Shower

Devotions: Learning to Obey

Chapter 5     God Always Has Plan A

Devotions: God Is Good…All the Time

Chapter 6     Trusting the Unseen

Devotions: Always for My Good and His Glory

Chapter 7     Less like My Putrid Self

Devotions: God’s Purifying Process

Chapter 8     I Am Fit

Devotions: I’m an Overcomer

Chapter 9     Highly Favored, Richly Blessed

Devotions: My Identity in Christ

Chapter 10   Knowing Jesus

Devotions: Standing on His Promises

Addendum

About Margo Fieseler

This book is dedicated to my mom, who gave away her life so I could find mine.

Prologue

Someday

Today is my someday.

For years, I’ve been asked, When are you writing your book?

My tummy would roll around, my mind would fuzz, and I’d stare blankly, answering, Someday.

Today is my someday.

I used to imagine myself seated in an overstuffed chair, curled up in a blanket, my collie at my feet, and sipping a cup of English breakfast tea. Meanwhile inspirational verbiage flowed through my fingertips as I clicked away on my laptop. Of course, my location would be idyllic, like a well-appointed she shed, a lakefront cabin, or a twentieth-floor balcony overlooking the Mediterranean.

Only when I finally took my focus off all the externals so I could write the perfect book and started asking God to reveal His plan, way, and timing did my someday come.

This book isn’t intended to highlight my adventures. Rather, my impassioned prayer is that somehow, someway, God is using a broken vessel like me to share His life-changing love, grace, mercy, and power. If He can radically rescue, restore, and release me to be about His kingdom work, then He can do the same for you.

When your steps with God become unwavering, doing the next right thing with Him is as natural as walking. Oh, you might trudge through mud at times or hike up some slippery slopes, but God (my two favorite words) will always hold your hand.

Don’t let go of His grip.

Join me on the best adventure ever as I learned to do the next right thing in my daily walk with God. He promises it will be worth it.

You’ll find, woven into a true narrative, a total of fifty-two devotionals to gently guide you along a path of doing the next right thing with God.

Read them again and again. Do a few at a time, pick the ones that most call to you, or absorb them as you follow the story. Journal your unwavering thoughts. They are God’s Word that spoke aloud as I learned to do my next right thing in my walk with Him. I pray that you, too, will hear Him as your steps become unwavering.

By the way, two externals were constant while I was birthing this book.

1. Sipping English breakfast tea

2. Petting my faithful collie at my side

Chapter 1

I Got This

Mom. It all started with my mom.

I know what you’re thinking: Well, of course it did, Margo; after all, she carried and birthed you.

They’re not just the physical beginnings I mean, though. They are more than that. They are the emotional, mental, and spiritual beginnings that came from my mom. My mom affected every portion of my heart, soul, mind, and strength—for good. At the time, I didn’t always think her influence was for my good, but through the years that truth has become very evident.

During my birth, I was already in trouble. My umbilical cord was tightly wound around my neck. As the obstetrician went into rescue mode, my mom trusted God for the outcome. She proclaimed a verse she had committed to memory from her King James Bible. A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones (Proverbs 17:22 KJV).

That’s who my mom turned to first—God and His Word, the Bible—no matter what life circumstance bumped into her. Instead of the normal crying out in physical pain during labor and delivery, she cried out to her personal God. Later in life, I thought, How odd that that was the verse spoken over me. I would have rushed to a portion of scripture to help or comfort me, such as Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand (Isaiah 41:10 NIV).

But no! Mom’s focus was on me—this little baby she hadn’t met yet but whom she loved with all her momma’s heart.

She prayed for me.

She didn’t pray for her welfare or for the easing of her pain but for her child’s heart. She prayed that, through all the turbulence of breaking into this world, my heart (mind, will, and emotions) would be blessed by the one who’d created me—the one who had already ordained every day before even one of them had come to be. 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 (Psalm 139:15–16 NIV).

When life bumps into you, it’s what’s already inside that spills out.

Mom taught me that when life bumps into you, it’s what’s already inside that spills out. Mom would hold a glass of water and ask, Margo, what’s gonna spill out of this glass if I bump into it?

I answered, Water.

That’s right, honey, because water is already inside that glass. Her eyes twinkled, and her mouth curved upward as she placed her hand on mine as if to say, Be careful what you fill yourself with.

And when life bumped, jarred, or blasted into her, it was evident to all that she would overflow with Jesus.

His power.

His wisdom.

His strength.

His authority.

His love.

His mercy.

His grace.

His peace.

Through it all, mom would walk in JOY. How? She chose to put

Jesus first,

Others second, and

Yourself (herself) dead last.

If only I would have listened. I was being given wisdom that was pure and peace loving right from above through my precious, God-given mom. Mom was not only beautiful on the inside but also drop-dead gorgeous on the outside. She had huge brown eyes you could sink right into. People automatically were drawn to her. I loved being around her.

We had so much together time since my two sisters, Marcia and Marilyn (my dad called us the 3M Sisters), were ten and eleven years older than I. While my siblings were already attending college and making wedding plans, Mom was teaching a Good News Club in our home and sharing the gospel with other kids in the neighborhood.

My friends hung on her every word as though she were the pied piper. Mrs. Lance, Mrs. Lance! they’d call out.

Mom lightened up the room and served her famous stove-top popcorn to grubby, little outstretched hands. Sometimes my friends chatted more with her than with me because she continually poured herself into them.

I wanted to be like my mom.

No matter who came over, they loved her. I was so proud, but I never wanted to accept the fact that it was Jesus who had made her like that.

That’s when she’d tenderly turn to me and whisper, You’re missing out on God’s best for you right now, honey.

Then she’d wander off, singing. Yes, singing in her glorious soprano voice. She and her twin, Margaret, had been a harmonizing duo throughout their younger years, so all her favorite old hymns—His Eye Is on the Sparrow, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, How Great Thou Art, and Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus—would burst forth from her lips. Even when she upset me with a firm voice (a rare thing that came only when I deserved it), she came back later and apologized. Seriously? Even now?

I used to think (even though I knew it was impossible) that if God could have picked a wife, it would have been my mom.

As I approached my college years, my own wisdom seemed so much better than Mom’s (or God’s). It was so much more fun.

I had always heard my pastor, Sunday school teacher, vacation Bible school helper, and Youth for Christ (today called CRU) leader share the same godly wisdom, but my way seemed better. That was the problem. It only seemed better. I should have heeded God’s wisdom, but instead I declared to all those around me, I got this.

The way of fools seem right to them, but the wise listen to advice (Proverbs 12:15 NIV). I definitely played the fool. So onward I coursed my way, proclaiming, I got this. Even if I was sinking or stinking it up, I’d push ahead full speed.

All the while, my precious mom prayed.

Lord, don’t give Margo any peace until the peace of Jesus rests in her. So God was on the hunt to capture my heart, as she had prayed even before I was born.

God was on the hunt to capture my heart even before I was born.

The Hound of Heaven: Jesus. Always pursuing me. Always coming after me. Always wanting me. It was I who continued to avoid, evade, and keep on the wrong road for years. Thankfully, He never gave up on me. (Actually, He can’t. He’s God. It’s not His nature to give up on us.)

And Mom prayed on.

Throughout my college and young adult years, I was full of defiance, disrespect, and disobedience. Her faithfulness to God’s promises never wavered. And God heard her cry—not in her timing or in her way, but nevertheless she clung to His promises. Mom stood on them.

I can hear Mom’s lilting soprano voice even now, singing,

Standing on the promises of Christ my King,

Through eternal ages let His praises ring.

Glory in the highest, I will shout and sing.

Standing on the promises of God.

The song went on.

The song of God.

The song of Mom.

My mom.

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Father God, thank You for choosing my mom just for me, a mom who would give her life away so I could find mine. Year after year after year, she never stopped trusting Your best plan for me. I am forever grateful.

And thank You, Jesus, that there is always someone standing in the gap, even when we stubbornly go our own putrid way, proclaiming, I got this.

You pursue us, even when we try to ignore Your outpouring, sacrificial love. I’m so grateful You’re the Hound of Heaven, who is always coming after us in Your