Of the many things I have been learning in my relationship with this imperfect-perfect human, my favourite has been trusting ‘the once’.

In the past, I have been like Gideon, asking God for signs, proofs and confirmation after confirmation when He tells me to move. I’ve let fear, doubt or pure rebellion make me second guess Gods instruction sometimes and most times, God has indulged me, allowing His mercy prevail over my deserved consequence and has extended chances over and over again, of which I am so grateful, but as I’ve grown, I’ve seen God teach me that I must learn to obey with just the first word or first instruction and not seek any confirmation, proof or have too many questions.
God has been teaching me the bulk of it in my relationship with Nelson.

Nelson mostly shares his opinion and thoughts on something just once and if I make a fuss about it or fight his opinion, he’ll indulge me and not say anything contrary again. It’s happened time and time again where I’ve got to the end of a matter by myself and been mad that he neither agreed or countered me, and then I realised he did at a point but I fought it and so, I would have to retrace my steps back to his initial opinion, thought or suggestion.

Over time, I’ve now learnt to listen to ‘the once’, I’ve learnt to take the once opinion, thought, suggestion, plea or idea as it comes because he won’t push again, neither will he insist or force me to accept it.

I sat recently at work and in reflection, God said “you’ve learnt faster through Nelson what I’ve been trying to teach you for so long”.
It threw me off guard for a minute, and then it hit me, God showed me that indeed, my requests to God for another sign or another confirmation has drastically reduced, I hear the instruction once and I’m running with it, neither indulging my doubts, fears or allowing my over logical personality have the best of me.

God reminded me of ‘my colleagues’ in this area; Moses who had several excuses after God told him that He had chosen Him to take the Israelites out of captivity and to the promised land, Gideon who asked for sign upon sign to be sure God was really asking him to go and deliver Israel and also Barack who insisted Deborah follow him to battle to be sure He will win against the opponent despite God already saying He would.

They all could’ve just trusted in Gods instruction the first time.

Truth is that God will not stop indulging our weak areas of asking for signs, proofs and confirmations when we are unsure or even doubtful of what He has asked us to do, but His indulgence should not stop us from seeing that He wants to bring us to a place of total trust in Him, where “the once” is enough for us to hear and move with. I know it could be difficult with the uncertainty of this world but we forget that we are the ones who struggle with uncertainty, God doesn’t, He sees it all so clearly, so how about we just trust Him the first time He speaks by saying “yes Lord” and just moving.

On a side note, I’ve been more intentional about looking at the rare things about Nelson and our relationship, maybe there’s much more God is teaching us individually through our relationship.