One of the biggest lies Satan tells us or wants us to feel is that “we are running out of time” or that “time is not in your favor.”
I totally disagree and this is coming from someone who isn’t known for letting “grass grow,” nor one who does a whole of hesitating. I like to move pretty quick. I also like to make a decision and move forward. But I have learned the hard way to slow down just a bit…to walk/run behind God and not in front of Him. Sometimes a quick decision isn’t the best decision. In fact, now if someone is pushy for me to make a decision quickly, I tend to push back and SIT DOWN.
Part of my “learning to drop my hands” meant realizing I had to slow down and filter everything through God’s hands. What did that look like? Praying about it…and waiting…and sometimes the answers have been slow…very slow…like years.
If you study scripture and the lives of those in the Bible, you find people like Moses who waited for years in the dessert after his quick decision to take matters into his own hands. Abraham and Sarah had to wait years for their promised son and we see how not waiting and taking matters into their own hands worked out for them. NOT. It brought some pain.
Thankfully God is a God who cause all things to work for them who are called according to His purposes (see Romans 8:28). What I have learned, and now put into practice, is to wait. God has developed the fruit of the spirit of “patience” in my life. Time, I have learned, is my friend and waiting is God’s best Yes, best plan. To get there I cannot have the mentality that “time is running out!” Or put my eyes on man/others and allow seeing what is happening in their lives to be a model for my own life.
This is when Psalm 37:7 needs to be in front of me. “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!” I can’t allow Satan to lie to me about the timeframe and plan for my life! I know that if Satan does this to me, he does it to countless people. I see it in my husband and in our children.
Understand, your/my circumstances may be unique but you/we are not. God is the same today, yesterday and forever. His character, as I have studied it, is not quick. When He does move, it seems to be almost instantly. God seems to use time as a refining tool for us…to slow us down…to shape us. In my life, for sure, He uses it to teach me HE is in control and I am NOT….that His timing is perfect and to trust Him.
Do you feel like Job did in Job 6:11? “What is my strength, that I should wait? And what is my end, that I should be patient?”
If you are impatient right now, if the circumstances you are enduring are painful, I encourage you
to fall at the feet of Jesus…
to dive into His word…
let it encourage you…
let it strengthen your trust….
and dependence on HIM, not man nor woman.
Study history as is recorded in His word. Study the lives of Moses, Noah, Abraham, David and Joseph. Allow it to encourage and train you in how God works in our lives not just for our greater good, but for others as well.
Remember….all those people I mentioned had no idea when their life was being lived just how much their example would be used to affect millions.
Remember this truth as well–He loves me/you just as much as He did them and desires to use us in the same ways.
May Psalm 25:2-4 be our prayer today.
“O my God, in you I trust; let me not be put to shame; let not my enemies exult over me. Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame; they shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous. Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths.”
“If the Lord Jehovah makes us wait, let us do so with our whole hearts; for blessed are all they that wait for Him. He is worth waiting for. The waiting itself is beneficial to us: it tries faith, exercises patience, trains submission, and endears the blessing when it comes. The Lord’s people have always been a waiting people.” ~Charles Spurgeon