Are you waiting? Waiting on an answer? Waiting for something to change? Waiting for something to happen? And as you wait, your entire life feels like it’s on hold.
Why the delay? Why this stagnant time where nothing seems to be happening? Why is there so much uncertainty about your future? What is God doing here?
Honey, if you could see what God is doing for you, you wouldn’t question. If you could understand what he is working, you wouldn’t be so frustrated. But sitting here today, you only see today, and maybe today you’re not where you hoped you would be or where you though you should be by now.
Timing.
We have a timeline … then there’s God’s timeline. We have a way … and God has a way. Which one is better? Which one will you put your hope in?
Ecclesiastes 8:6 says “There is a proper time and procedure for every matter, though a person may be weighed down by misery.”
You may be waiting and the wait may be hard, but God is still working. God’s plan is still in progress and at the proper time, the BEST TIME, it will happen.
Make friends with this now and your misery will be lightened … you do not know the way or the time better than God.
I have some great plans working for the next phase of my life. In 3 weeks we are selling everything, leaving our little downtown empty nest loft in Missouri, buying a house in El Paso as our homebase to be near our soldier boy stationed there, and traveling the country on countless adventures hosting retreats in Colorado, California and Tennessee. Dang, that sounds like an amazing plan and we’re just 3 weeks away from stepping into it.
And boom … half of our retreats are rescheduled. Change of plans. Okay, we’ll focus on buying that house and spending time with our soldier boy. Yesterday we find out he is getting deployed.
Well, there goes our entire plan. Now we’ve sold everything, about to be homeless and we’re waiting on a new plan.
And I believe God says “you’re right where I want you!”
Whatever you’re waiting on, understand this, WAITING IS NOT A PUNISHMENT, IT’S A PROCESS.
I know this wait feels like a punishment. Nobody likes being stuck in limbo and being delayed in progress.
This isn’t time out. You haven’t been sent to your corner in punishment. You haven’t been forgotten or looked over. This is time for unfolding. This is time for developing something greater than you had planned. There’s something happening you can’t see and it’s bigger than you can imagine.
When you plant a seed, you don’t sit and watch the soil for immediate growth, do you? You understand the seed is going through a process in the depths of the soil. In the darkness there is change happening you can’t see. If you dig up that seed because you grow impatient, you damage it’s progress. And so you wait, knowing the evidence of change will come, but it won’t happen quickly.
Just as the seed isn’t being punished in the waiting, neither are you. This is just a process.
It’s easy to believe when our plans gets ruined, or our timeline gets thrown out, that we’re being kept FROM something. We had something good working and now we’re being held back from it. This is where frustration and disappointment settles in.
It’s normal to feel that way. I’ve felt that way lately. However, we must be strong enough in our faith to resist the urge to act like a 5 year old throwing a temper tantrum demanding her own way, and remember THERE’S MORE WE CAN’T SEE.
Frustration and disappointment are often the enemy’s seeds of destruction. Our impatience grows, our depression grows, hopelessness grows, and soon we find ourselves infested with weeds instead of the good seeds we planted for a future harvest.
Weeds threaten to overtake a garden. If you don’t pull out the weeds, they will choke out the growth of the good you planted. How do you get rid of weeds in a garden? You pull them out from their roots!
This negative growing in your garden while you WAIT is a threat to your future. Do not allow frustration and disappointment to grow here. It has no place in your life. Pull it out, and get the root!
The root of your disappointment is you had a picture of how you thought life should look, and now the picture has changed. God is a better artist than you. If he’s repainting the picture, I promise it will look better in the end. Replace your disappointment with anticipation. I’m excited to see this new picture God is painting. I trust it will be better than the one I was painting.
The root of your frustration is you had a timeline for when everything was supposed to happen. You don’t control time, God does. And if there’s a perfect time, God knows it and you don’t. 2 Peter 3:8 says “But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day.”
God can do in one miraculous day what you couldn’t do in an entire lifetime! And you’re fretting over your current wait of a few weeks, or even months, maybe even a year? That’s nothing to God. He’s got this and he has the power to make it happen when the timing is perfect.
I banish disappointment from my life because it’s a threat. I continually remember God’s ways and his timing are far better than my ways and my imposed timeline. If I’m waiting, it because better is coming.
In the far East there’s a remarkable tree called the Chinese Bamboo. Unlike most trees, this tree doesn’t grow at all for the first 4 years. The wait is long and it seems growth will never appear above the ground. However, in the 5th year, the tree shoots up from the darkness of the soil and can grow to nearly 90 feet tall in a matter of weeks.
Timing.
Yes, we wait. And sometimes that wait seems cruel and punishing. But it’s just a process. A process of something God is working you cannot see. The day will come when you look back and you see how all things did indeed work together for good.
You’re not being held back from goodness, you’re being prepared for greater goodness. This isn’t a punishment, this is a beautiful process unfolding.
