God Waits

It has been over year since I started the whole Journeyman process. So much has happened since I took that initial step into the unknown. From the first day of the process, through the three stages of the written application, finally going to the screening conference to find out what job I was going to do, and then going through two months of orientation there has been a lot of time to think this through. A lot of waiting.
In all reality much of life is waiting. Yet have we not lost the mentality that “good things come to those who wait?” In this corporate America of fast food, high speed internet, and instant messaging there is little room for any idea of waiting. The expectation is that if we can’t have it now it is not worth having. We use this same approach with God in how we spend time with Him. As we pray we expect immediate results, visible results. Or when difficult times arrive we fail to see the growth that comes through trials and tribulations. We suffer because we don’t know what longsuffering is.
The toughest time for me is when I am at a place that I don’t have a direct word from God. I am in a pickle between two different roads and I rush to go down one without really waiting on God to reveal to me what His will is. I have learned so much over the past year through this great waiting period. Going from one event to another, always in anxious expectation of the next season in life I miss what I am experiencing in the here and now, which is my fellowship with Christ. He is always present, always here with me, and what greater privilege is there than to enjoy Him?
Isaiah 30:18 says, “Blessed are all those who wait on Him.” I took this as my personal verse for the longest time, because of the whole blessing factor. But I truly missed what this was actually saying. If we wait on God it’s not that we get a blessing as a reward, but that the actual process of waiting is the blessing. When we wait on God, we show that we are truly trusting God, making Him our trust. Waiting is trusting. When this happens we depend so much on God that we don’t limit God in what He will do in our lives.
Looking back on this verse one thing that I looked over that is so essential in our relationship with God is the first part of the verse. “Therefore, the Lord waits to be gracious to you.” At first glance this seems that we should just expect blessings at any second because of God’s eagerness to bless. What I failed to realize is that God is waiting for me. For me it is sometimes hard to imagine God’s patience. His patience with my whole life in my sin, my walk, and my calling. I felt a strong call to missions when I was fourteen but I ran away from that calling. It wasn’t until a year ago that I took up the path that God had planned for me. God has had this beautiful plan for my life, blessings indescribable, but I ran to what I thought were greener pastures, safer pastures. God waited and waited to be Gracious to me, He waited for me to respond, for me to obey. He patiently allowed me to run from my calling, and even led me to a cave where wind, earthquakes, and fire passed, yet spoke to me in a still small voice, asking me what I was doing there and why I wasn’t where He wanted me to be.
God is so gracious, and is eager to bless us, but many times it is we who have to act in loving obedience. As I have said I have waited for this moment for about a year now, where I will be headed overseas to fulfill my calling. God has been waiting since the foundation of the world. What I have found that many a time when I thought I was waiting on God, it was God who was waiting on me.

Sweet Sorrow

Back in Florida, I sit down reminiscing over the past two months and I can only smile at the Grace given so bountifully. Who am I to receive such? Entering orientation I was full of anxiety and little to no expectations about what was going to happen. I desired to be faithful and obedient but knowing myself I was afraid to fall as so many times before. Immediately I felt a huge burden weighing my soul down that I was literally forced to be humbled to my knees. My sole desire became to know Christ, know Him personally, Him intimately, to be so close it hurt; I would worry about the details later. What happened was a wonderful two months filled with great difficulty but greater glory, always leading me to the throne of His Grace. Though I fell into many a “slough of despond” God always provided a companion on the other side to lift me out. Passing through this world as a pilgrim I cherish the company of the other pilgrims on the same path to the Celestial City. My travels couldn’t have been made without the Faithful and Hopeful that accompanied me. This is what makes our departure so bittersweet. Each assigned to their own battlefield, we must part. In our parting we are left with sweet memories mingled with the sorrow of being without the other. Though we take different roads for the King we will meet at the same destination on the other side of His Good Will. I pray that when my time is up I will be found faithful among the faithful.

A Blossoming Fig Tree

God gives so graciously to all His Beloved children. His blessings are almost too great for our depraved souls to comprehend. What I find so evident in this world and in my own life is that though God's blessings are so wonderful they always are in danger of becoming our greatest curses. The light from the sun, the fruit from the trees, the water from the streams, all things given by our Father are given from His pure Love. The purpose of His gifts is to always lead us to the throne of God, to have fellowship with our Maker, the Maker of all things; Gifts are to be a reflection of God as our Creator. The view now has reversed in that people view God as a means to be led to the throne of their desires and their pleasures, only to be mastered by them. The phrase is accurate, "the things you own soon own you." In John 6:26, Jesus says to the people from the five thousand He fed with fish and loaves, "you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of loaves." How many times do we seek the gifts and not the Giver, the creation and not the Creator? I am not without guilt. As I see a blossoming fig tree and I am grateful for the fruit, but though it might satisfy the hunger of my flesh, it will never satisfy the hunger in my soul. This desire so foreign to any worldly pleasures can only be satisfied in our fellowship with God. Our creator has given us all things to enjoy them, but not to have our joy in them. C.S. Lewis says, “When a love becomes a god, it becomes a demon.” At any point we must be willing to walk away, to die to our pleasures so we can have the ultimate pleasure in Him. We praise God for the blossoming fig tree, but we should praise Him without it as well. With Habakkuk we should always be able to say, “Though the fig tree should not blossom…yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will take joy in the God of my salvation.” (Hakakkuk 3:17,18)