By Sis. Dayan Araujo
One very stressful day, I realized that I had had enough and grabbed my blessed anointing oil. I went through my entire house anointing everything I could put my hands on and prayed as fervently as I could. I anointed door posts, door knobs, stairwells, bedrooms, toilets, showers, shoes, pillows, computers, televisions and foreheads. If it was in my house, it got blessed with an extra dose of EVOO.
Once I was content with every slippery inch of my house, I stood back, admired my handy work and waited. For surely God was in the house. And then, nothing. Hmm, maybe God was testing me, I thought. So I waited a few minutes longer. Still nothing. Did I say the wrong thing? Was I supposed to do a praise and worship song? Should I have used regular olive oil instead? Where was the change? I still felt angry and ready to go Bruce Lee on someone. I recall standing by the door, where moments earlier I called myself rebuking Satan and casting him out of my house. A petulant pout graced my face as I wondered what I did wrong.
It wasn’t until some time after that I realized, I can’t treat God like a cake. I can’t follow a certain recipe and expect that He’ll make all of my bad things go away. What was even more revealing to me was that all of my life that was how I viewed God. I believed that if I got saved, went to church, read my Bible and prayed, life would be honky dory. Not so. It matters not the amount of olive oil you saturate your house in, the number of prayers you can say. Not only are you missing who God truly is, but you limit how great and powerful He can move in your life, when you try to sway God towards your plan of action.
I heard someone say that if you want to make God laugh, tell him what you have planned for the day. Well, God must be rolling on the floor laughing at me on a daily basis, because I actually expect Him to follow my lead. That is, of course, until I get myself neck deep in trouble and have to call out for Him to save me. And then after wiping tears of mirth from His eyes, He reaches down and helps me out of the miry clay. The good Lord dusts me off, sets me back on the right path and waits to see what choices I make. I can’t rely on logic or certain scientific procedures to ensure a life free of trials and tribulations. What I can do is trust that He is God and that He has a plan for me which is for good not evil. And more importantly, He will not withhold any good thing from me. .