God, What Do I Get if I Obey You?

Recently I have been crying out to God that I don’t want all my rewards in this life. Once my mother found me weeping in my hotel room and asked what was wrong.

“I don’t want to receive all my rewards on this earth so that when I get to heaven all I have is a crummy rhinestone Jesus pin,” I told her. “When Jesus passes by there will be many wonderful people throwing crowns at His feet, and there I’ll be, throwing this dumb rhinestone pin, picking it up and throwing it down, again and again and again!”

I don’t want to get all my rewards here on earth! I want some things saved for me.

I want to do some secret things. I want to do some obediences. I want to cross some lines knowing that only God knew what it cost me to cross them.

Why Can’t I Minister in My Muumuu?

One of the things the Lord called me to do last year was go to Australia. Now, I am not a traveling kind of person. I am a homebody.

I don’t like to leave my house, not even to shop. I like to get in my muumuu and do mail-order. In fact, if I could minister in my muumuu I’d be the happiest person in the world.

I decided I would go to Australia if God would give me peace about going. But it wasn’t my peace that was unsettled; it was my flesh.

I tried to make a deal with the Lord. I said, “If the people who asked me to minister send me a business-class plane ticket, I will know that You definitely want me to go to Australia.”

Within five minutes of that prayer the telephone rang. The person on the other end said that although it was 4 o’clock in the morning there, she woke up and felt impressed to call and tell me that she was going to send me a business-class ticket to Australia.

So I told the Lord I would go—and I would even shut up and quit complaining. This was His will, and it was good. I could just hear the Holy Spirit saying, “Well, thank you. I appreciate that.”

During the flight, I got out my praise-and-worship tapes and began to worship the Lord. As I did this, He spoke to me saying, “Cathy, that which you called uneasiness of your spirit wasn’t a lack of peace; it was rebellion.

“You called it something spiritual, but you were behaving like Jonah. You just didn’t want to go.”

When you are flying miles high in the sky with nothing but water far below you, it’s very easy to repent, so I did—over and over again.