Obedience, Disobedience, and Hearing God's Voice by Maria Sachlis

Are there consequences for disobeying the Lord's leading in our life? After reading this, you may want to ask, "Lord, is there an area in my life where I am not fully obeying You?"

Maria writes: In January 2018 the Lord suddenly (to me) put me in the Master's program at CLU. I had no plans to do anything so rigorous as college, though I wanted to know the Bible better and was searching for a new goal or direction in my journey with God.

But at the time I was (and still am) working full time at a demanding job which required travel. I was also the administrative lead for a robust healing ministry at our church, which included the service prayer team, an appointment ministry in which I ministered in about half the appointments for women, and a weekly healing prayer class. Even I, an overachiever, knew I could not handle all 3 things.

So I immediately started asking God what should I give up? What were His wishes for my time? I figured that withdrawing from the healing ministry was the most logical, but since He put me in it then I needed a clear word from Him if and how I was to withdraw. His answer: "I will order your steps". Great. Well, I assumed that meant that I just needed to pay attention to what I needed to do each day and I would be fine.

Except I wasn't. I kept asking for His guidance and kept getting the same answer. Meanwhile I had finished the Communion with God CLU course and the Hearing God Through Your Dreams SOTS course, and had started my first Bible course. I was journaling and learning to interpret my dreams. Then in September I started having a weird heartbeat issue. I had tests and everything. Everyone asked me if I was under a lot of stress. No, not really, just the usual, sort of. Hah!

A month or 2 later I had my appointment with my spiritual director. After hearing me whine for about 5 minutes yet again about how all this was too much and I'm just not getting a clear word from the Lord, she says, "Maria, I've never done this but I'm going to do it now. Is there a consequence to disobedience?" Gulp!! Well, since I had just finished the lessons on Genesis and Exodus, obedience was in the forefront of my mind. And of course I knew exactly where this conversation was going to end. I knew I was going to have to resign from the healing ministry. But it took me the better part of an hour to actually deal with that reality. So many aspects to wrap my head around - my own identity and several years of hard intense work wrapped up in the ministry, who was going to lead the ministry, what about the people I was in the middle of working with, what about how much my pastor leans on me and his expectations? But I made the choice to obey and that night I sent an email to my pastor to request a meeting.

Over the next few days the Holy Spirit showed me the many ways that God had been telling me to withdraw from the ministry, but I had resisted. He wanted me to learn to listen in multiple ways, not to rely only on journaling. God had been speaking to me through my heart - at about the same time I started the college courses, my interest and passion for the healing ministry started to wane. I had had dreams, which I chose to only partially interpret. People had mentioned to me that I needed a break. My trusted advisors questioned me about remaining in the ministry. God's own Word was speaking to me about reading His word and obedience to Him being most important. While I knew He had commanded me to do the schooling, I was interpreting his lack of clear direction to give up the healing ministry as not being His will. I should have realized that instructing me to start school meant to obey that and stop doing anything that stood in the way of the current instruction. In prayer, multiple people had quoted to me Isaiah 43:19, "See, I am doing a new thing".

Now, I completely expected that my premature heartbeat issue would resolve once I took a concrete step toward obedience and met with my pastor. But it didn't. It was perhaps a little better. So I carried on, working through the process of responsibly withdrawing from the ministry and moving through my class lessons. With each step and over a few months, the heartbeat issue lessened but it was still there. I couldn't understand - I was being obedient, prioritizing my studies and actively working on transitioning the ministry. Why wasn't I healed? I received healing prayer, had an inner healing prayer appointment, checked to see if I needed more deliverance, all to no effect. After a few months, a successor was named. Woohoo! But that heartbeat issue was still there a little bit. Would I have this forever??

In March 2019, at a Sunday service, our pastor commissioned the new healing ministry administrator. I felt a strong compunction to then pray for her privately, imparting my anointing and transferring my authority to her. It was powerful!

That was the last day that I experienced a premature heartbeat.

Is there a consequence to disobedience? Yes, there is.

Does God do all He can to get you aligned to His will? Yes, He will - for your benefit, the benefit of the world, and to His glory. Can you hear God's voice in different ways? Yes, you can. And you better be paying attention! CWG's training and the Leader's Paradigm are extremely helpful in discerning God's voice in your life (and mine!).