God’s Ways Are Not Our Ways
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
Ascension
4.9 • 7.1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 March 2020
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fr. Mike describes exactly how God works with us, even though God’s ways are not our ways. It’s like when a person you’re living with asks “What do you want for dinner?” and you say, “Whatever you want.” He then starts offering suggestions, but you turn them all down. After a few minutes of back and forth you both notice that what you really meant was not, “Whatever you want,” but, “You tell me what you want, and then give me the freedom to choose among those options.”
This is a lot like the process God uses when you tell him, “Lord, just do what you need to do in my life.” People may not like the process, but it often works.
When we tell God “just do whatever you want” more often than not he tells us to choose from a list of options. He respects our free will. If you ask him to purify your heart, that’s going to require breaking it so he can heal it. Trust the process, even if it’s going to hurt, and God will lead you to greater things.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Sometimes it's not the process we want, but it is the process that we need. |
| 0:13.9 | Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascentra Presents. |
| 0:16.0 | One of the things that happens a lot of times when I'm talking with couples and marriage |
| 0:19.1 | preparation and then any couple anywhere or even just human beings is, I mean, imagine the |
| 0:24.6 | scenario you've probably lived it before where, say, Jack says to Jill, what do you want to do for |
| 0:29.6 | supper or any decision, right? What do you want to do for supper? And Jill says to Jack, |
| 0:33.7 | it could go either way. Jill says, I don't care, you choose. Now this could go for eating, |
| 0:39.9 | this could go for what we do next, this could go for a thousand different things. One person says |
| 0:44.8 | to the other person, I don't care, you choose. So what does Jack do? Jack says, oh, I don't know, |
| 0:49.1 | what do you think about Chipotle? I don't want Chipotle. Pick again, okay. What about pizza? |
| 0:55.1 | Hey pizza right now. Say, say, choose something else. And at this point, person A, in this case, Jack |
| 1:02.3 | could say, you said you don't care, it seems like you really do actually care an awful lot. |
| 1:07.4 | And Jill's like, no, no, no, no, I don't care. You choose. This makes me just laugh. Why? Because |
| 1:14.8 | the couple can get or the friends, the whoever, the relationship people, they can get so frustrated |
| 1:19.8 | with the other person. And like, wait a second, no, no, no, after a while, like after maybe six to |
| 1:25.6 | 12 to a couple more times of doing this, you realize, okay, this isn't what they're asking for, |
| 1:32.5 | it's not actually what they want, right? The person isn't just saying, okay, you choose, I'll do |
| 1:36.4 | whatever you want. What they're saying is you suggest to me a number of things we could do, |
| 1:42.0 | or places we could eat. And from those things you suggest, I'm going to choose one of them. |
| 1:48.0 | But I want you to be free to suggest whatever it is you want, as long as I'm free to shoot down |
| 1:54.8 | some of those options, right? To make sense? And we can get frustrated with that, or we can just |
| 1:58.4 | realize, oh, this is the process. And that's what I want to talk about. Like, this is the process. |
... |
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