Lowest Prompt Hierarchy

I was in my car on my way home from work and I heard God's voice in my head. Now God speaks to me pretty often, mostly to correct something I am doing wrong, and a lot of the time it's pretty short and to the point. It's usually "don't even try" or "aren't I more important?". Short, but super punchy. 

This time was different. This time, He asked me if His corrections for me were any different than how I correct my students. I am a Special Education teacher and I work mostly with kids who need help with their behaviors. I remind my kids a lot to follow my directions the first time, to finish their work and then they can play, or things similar to that. As I was pondering God's question over, He put the line "prompt hierarchy faded to the lowest level necessary" in my head. You may be wondering why on earth that would just pop into my head... 

It's a phrase that special education teachers put very often into goals for their students. It basically means that if the student's goal is to begin their work right away, that we hope for them to master that goal independently, but if they can't we will begin to prompt them lightly, either with visual cues or a verbal reminder. If they still do not start on their work, we move to more intense prompts, such as gesturing, modeling how to begin, or the final step which is moving their arms or body to begin the work. We hope that we don't have to get to the more intensive steps, but sometimes it is necessary.

I was so confused as to why God was putting this phrase into my head, until suddenly the lightbulb went off. God gives us spiritual goals that He wants us to master. These goals show Him that we trust Him and want to please Him, and are doing what is necessary to build our relationship with Him. Obviously, oftentimes we don't independently master these goals and instead put our priorities on other things. When we fail to do His will, God has to begin prompting us and putting either people in our paths, circumstances in our lives, or lines in our heads to get us back on track.

My hope and prayer is that I have the self-control to make right priorities and the strength to continue on when it's hard.