Please don't tell me...

Before I could see her I could hear her coming around the corner and then she stopped before entering.

  "Please don't tell me to change.
      Pleeeease don't tell me to change cause I have
      something on that I weared before.
         I weared this before!!
           This is what I want to wear!
              I won't 'burn up' cause we have fans on."

After pleading her case, our 4 year-old entered the room where I was working and I braced myself for the outfit of the day.  Maybe it would suffice to say that we need to spend more time on English grammar, yes.  But I determined that her chosen wardrobe was, indeed, fine for the day ahead and then it hit me...
As silly as it seems, this is the exact approach I take with God again and again.

I wonder if He smirks or rolls His eyes and thinks, "what now?"  I mean, I may not actually say the words, "God, please don't tell me to change" but good grief, I think it.  And I wish it and I sigh it and I imply it...not necessarily about my outfit each day but about my life, yes!

I argue my points of validity.  I tell Him how this or that worked in the past.  I remind Him about the things He said He'd do and sometimes I'm even quick to point out that things aren't exactly lining up like He promised, as if MY ideas are going to work better or something.

And then as He would have it, I'm prompted to review scriptures like Ecclesiastes 11:5 that say, "As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things." 
And Isaiah 29:16, "You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be the clay!  Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'He did not make me?' Can the pot say of the potter, 'He knows nothing?'"
And Isaiah 45:9 & 64:8, "Does the clay say to the potter, 'What are you making?'", "O Lord, You are our Father.  We are the clay, You are the potter; we are all the work of Your hand."

Occasionally I hear, "Your outfit is beautiful," but sometimes my Father says change is necessary.
Surrendering is hard stuff.  But as He's proved again and again, in spite of my pleading, God knows what He's doing.

When I'm tired, when life gets harder, when I feel restless, and especially when the enemy attempts to convince me that old ways are better than the new thing God is proposing, I am grateful for our spunky 4 year-old that helps me put it all in perspective.

 "A changed life lived for Christ is the greatest proof to man there is a God--a God who is alive and working in frail human vessels like ourselves.  It was with people like ourselves that Jesus set out to change the world--and did it."

~Carolyn Lunn