Check Your Spiritual Spam Folder

Motivational Mondays in the Marketplace

By Dr. Kathy Amos

This past week, I transitioned the Business Empowered International Chamber of Commerce to a new email address. Anyone who has connected a new address to an email marketing system knows that the transition involves more than simply changing the sender information.

A new email address must undergo a warming process. During that period, email providers are learning whether the sender is legitimate and whether recipients want to receive the messages. Until the address establishes a trustworthy sending history, emails may be delayed, filtered, or delivered to a spam folder.

I sent several test emails to myself, expecting them to appear in my primary inbox. But I did not see them.

Days passed. By the third week of the warming process, I became frustrated. I felt that enough time had passed and that the system should have been working properly. I kept wondering why the emails were not being delivered.

Then the Holy Spirit prompted me: “Check your spam folder.”

When I opened it, there they were.

Every email I had been waiting to receive had already been delivered. The messages were not missing. They had simply landed in the wrong place.

Immediately, the Lord gave me a revelation:

Sometimes the instructions God sends us land in the spam folder of our minds.

God may speak to us about our businesses, ministries, families, relationships, health, finances, or community assignments. Yet we do not always give His words the attention they deserve.

Sometimes we hear Him while we are distracted. We are listening, but we are also thinking about deadlines, bills, responsibilities, problems, and everything waiting for us to address it. The instruction reaches us, but it never becomes our primary focus.

At other times, we dismiss what God says because it does not sound like the answer we expected. His direction may seem too simple, too inconvenient, or unrelated to the problem we are trying to solve. It may require us to change a familiar process, release an old strategy, have an uncomfortable conversation, or move in a direction we did not plan.

We heard the message, but we did not retain it.

We received the instruction, but we did not prioritize it.

Spiritually speaking, we treated an important message as though it were spam.

Then, when progress slows, frustration increases, or circumstances stop making sense, we begin asking questions:

“God, why isn’t this working?”

“Why haven’t You answered me?”

“Why am I not seeing progress?”

“Why does everything seem delayed?”

However, the answer may have already been delivered. The instruction may already be waiting. The wisdom we need may not be missing—it may simply have been misfiled.

James 1:22 instructs us, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”

Hearing God is important, but hearing alone does not produce obedience. We must receive His instruction, give it the proper priority, and act upon it.

New Seasons Require New Instructions

Whenever God transitions us into a new season, that season often comes with new assignments, relationships, responsibilities, strategies, and processes.

We cannot assume that everything that worked in our previous season will be sufficient for the place God is taking us next. New territory may require us to listen more carefully, establish different systems, develop new skills, release familiar routines, or obey an instruction that initially appears insignificant.

Isaiah 30:21 says, “Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left.”

God is faithful to provide direction, but we are responsible for recognizing His voice and responding to what He says.

Perhaps God told you to make a telephone call, but you continued to postpone it.

Perhaps He instructed you to follow up with someone, change a business process, establish a boundary, correct a recurring problem, apologize, forgive, prepare, rest, study, launch, or let something go.

Perhaps He gave you an idea that you dismissed because it appeared too small to make a difference.

We often want God to give us a major strategy while overlooking the simple instruction He has already placed before us. But the breakthrough we desire may be connected to the instruction we have delayed.

Retrieve What You Overlooked

If an area of your business, ministry, family, marriage, leadership, or community assignment has become unusually frustrating, do not immediately assume that God has abandoned the process.

Pause.

Reflect.

Pray.

Then ask, “Lord, have You already given me an instruction that I ignored, dismissed, delayed, or forgot?”

Allow the Holy Spirit to search your heart and bring things back to your remembrance. Revisit the Scripture, conversation, warning, idea, strategy, correction, or act of obedience that came to you earlier.

Before asking God for another message, search your spiritual inbox.

You may discover that the answer you have been waiting for has been there all along.

When I found my missing emails, I moved them from the spam folder into my primary inbox. In the same way, we must take what God has spoken and return it to the primary place in our lives.

Write the instruction down. Give it your attention. Identify the action it requires. Then obey it.

The message was delivered.

Now it is time to retrieve the instruction and move forward.

This week, check your spiritual spam folder.

Dr. Kathy Amos is a marketplace leader, ministry leader, business coach, consultant, and founder of the Kathy Amos Coaching & Consulting Firm. Learn more at www.businessempoweredintl.com/kacc-firm.