Once, after I gave a talk, a lady came up to me and said that she had been praying for God’s will in her life: whether she should go and work abroad.  She had two children aged 15 and 10 and she was widowed.  If she left for abroad, she would have to leave her kids with her sister.  She said that she was so happy because God gave her the answer through the talk I gave.

I should be flattered, right?  I was scared to death!  I’m not a prophet.  God doesn’t speak directly to me so I find it difficult to believe that God would reveal His will in that lady’s life through me. I was about to protest and tell the lady this, but curiosity got the better of me.  I asked her to explain to me how she came to know God’s will through what I said.

She said that, during my talk, I said that I often worried about my kids’ safety and well-being when they are far from me.  It is when I feel fear that I pray for God to care for them because they are His children, too and my love for my children cannot parallel God’s unconditional love for them.  So, that lady concluded, that it must be God’s will for her to leave her kids and work abroad because God will take care of her kids even when she is away.

I asked that lady just one thing: Did she not hear me say also that sometimes we wonder why our kids have manners and attitudes that are so foreign and strange to us — it is because they adapt the manners and attitudes of the people they are with (their friends, their classmates, the yaya)– whoever is the adult to whom they form attachments.  I remember saying that I wanted my kids to adopt my values so I made sure that I was the one who raised them.  If I had left them to be raised by a yaya or a housemaid, then they would adopt the values of the yaya or the housemaid — the people they are with most of the time.

What I meant to say was that I said so many things that could be interpreted any which way to mean anything depending on the person’s persuasion and frame of mind.  What I said could have been taken out of context (it was taken out of context) and applied to her life situation when all the while, I was speaking from my own experience.  I did not intend for her to base her perception of God’s will on what I said or what happened to me.

This is the risk speakers like me take when we open our mouths: we risk being misinterpreted.

Just last week, two people gave testimonies declaring that they have left their jobs to serve the Lord and study in Bible school because I said that the Holy Spirit is willing to lead us (as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God) but we often resist the Holy Spirit’s leading.  I was stating a Biblical principle, I was not declaring a revelation from God.  When I explained that verse from Romans 8, I was explaining what the verse meant and its implications in our lives, I never claimed that this is God’s will for them: to leave their livelihoods and serve God.  Personally, even Apostle Paul had a livelihood — he made tents while he was serving the Lord.

I admire their decision to serve the Lord and to study in Bible school if this is really God’s perfect will for them.  But if they decided this simply on the basis of what I said instead of on the basis of God’s will for them, then they may be in for a disappointment.  Well, I am praying for that lady and for those two young people who ‘left all’ to follow Christ.

And this, my dear readers, is one of the reasons why I have not been blogging lately.  I have been accused of ‘always telling people what to do’.  So, I decided to do an FVR: “less talk, less mistakes; no talk, no mistakes.”  That’s why I haven’t uploaded a blog post in a while.