By Arlo Mellors, Jubilee Church Wirral

Every morning while I am walking my dog, Merlin, before work, I pray and thank our Father for all the wonderful things He has done for me in my life and for my family.

I then ask God for help in certain aspects of my life, and recently, specifically with a situation which is of my own doing.

I remember a very good friend, on numerous occasions, reminding me of Proverbs 3:5:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.

About three years ago I made a decision which now has caused a lot of stress and heartache. When I made this decision I did not speak to Gerry about it.

I prayed and asked God to help me out of the mess I had created.  For some time I didn’t take much notice of any thought in my head after I had prayed, although on occasions I could sense God was telling me and showing me that I needed to:

1. Trust him
2. Stop doing things my way in this situation.

Over those three years I was not constant in my prayer life. Sometimes I went and spoke to members of the church for guidance, and all of those I spoke to said the same thing: listen to what God’s saying to you and act upon it. And the action I needed to take was to speak to Gerry and discuss what I had done. I knew I had to do it, but I bottled it frequently, and continued to lean on my way of doing things.  I coped fine with it to start with but slowly it began to unravel, putting me in difficult situations.

At some point recently I was praying to God and asking why He was not helping me out of this mess.  I felt like I kept praying and praying but the situation only got worse not better. The longer time went on, the more difficulties I seemed to have. So, I went back to a member of the church and spoke to them again and asked for prayer, and it was said to me again, do what God is telling you –  and that was tell Gerry.

We had a guest speaker last week. The preach was about acting on what God is telling you to do. I knew that this was God speaking to me to do the right thing about this situation as it was getting out of control. I went for prayer and had a sense of it all being ok.  I remembered when I was growing up my parents said to me to always tell the truth even if you get into trouble. I brought up my children with the same values, but when I started to look at myself, I realised I was being a hypocrite and I was feeling very ashamed, guilty and frightened.

God does work in ways that are so good and God opened a door for me on that day.  I was walking across the church and Gerry was near by and just looked at me and said, “You don’t look happy”.

At that moment I didn’t even think of an answer, I just opened my mouth and the words “I am not, I need to speak to you when we’re at home” came out. I knew the Lord had set this up. I was finally trusting God and letting him deal with this.

As I was driving home, I just said to God, “You said I must trust you, and that’s what I did.”

It was not a nice feeling talking to Gerry about the mess I had made……

With all the emotion around the situation, Gerry was gracious and understanding.  I still feel ashamed and guilty. However, what I do know is: Always listen to what God is saying, and always be obedient. And never underestimate what love can do.   

Arlo Mellors, Jubilee Church Wirral