I have learned that one of the biggest mistakes that we can make as a Christian is to think that God does not talk to us because we are not worthy of His doing so because He is the God who created the entire universe and we are merely a human being.
The truth is that God is trying to communicate with us all the time. We have to learn to recognize the way in which He is trying to communicate with us.
For a number of weeks before my wedding in 2002 I kept getting a picture in my head of a needle and thread and along with the picture came a thought that I should take a needle and thread with me to my wedding. I dismissed both the picture and the thought thinking that I was merely being overly anxious and that I wouldn’t possibly have need of those items. My wedding dress was made for me by a competent professional wedding dress designer and so, I couldn’t see that anything would be wrong with it.
However, on the day of my wedding, while zipping up my expensive new wedding dress, the zip on the dress broke. We did not have a needle and thread but someone had pins and, so, my dress was pinned closed at the back. Unfortunately, while walking down the aisle, my Dad accidentally stood on the bottom of my dress and the pins opened up.
Just about everybody I knew, including my new boss was there. They all saw my petticoat and watched in horror or amusement while the wedding photographer pinned the dress together again at the back while the first hymn was being sung. Nobody said anything about it afterwards. I think this was an indication of how much everyone there pitied me for what had happened. I think that my parents-in-law, who had been angry that my husband hadn’t asked his wealthy uncle to his wedding, were suddenly very glad that the wealthy uncle was not there.
I recognized afterwards that God had been trying really hard to tell me to take the needle and thread for a number of weeks, but I did not realize that it was Him. I didn’t think that Someone as important as He is would care about something as insignificant as a needle and thread. I now know, although I have missed recognizing God’s voice on a number of occasions over the years, that it is vitally important for our lives that we learn to recognize when God is communicating something to us and that we act on what He instructs us to do. It could mean the difference between life or death, but that is a story for another day.
