God has a scope of work that He is accomplishing in this world, but often for us, His timing can feel like a long and desperate delay. The reason for this is because God has eternity in mind – not just one moment. God’s perfect timing does two things: It grows our faith as we are forced to wait and trust in God and it makes certain that He, and He alone, gets the glory and praise for pulling us through. These devotionals are designed to encourage you during the waiting and help you hold on to faith that God has eternity planned for every heart in due season.
All winter long, with the grass dead and dormant, our sheep depend on us daily to feed them hay (and they will let us know, in no uncertain terms, if they are lacking anything!). But in the spring, the barren, brown field gradually transforms to a lush, green pasture with grass so juicy that they barely need extra water. Like us, our sheep need different things in different seasons.
Moving home with your parents is a humbling decision, but we were so uncharacteristically at peace with this new path that we knew God was behind us. He continually showed us another way to live — we could finally slow down enough in life to see Him move, instead of uncontrollably swirling around in a tornado of bottles and babies.
It’s easy for us to equate God’s promises of goodness with the promise of getting what we want, but that’s not His definition of goodness. God’s goodness is not limited to prosperity or our every desire – it reaches far beneath the surface of our lives into our hearts and spiritual welfare.
God’s answers to a lot of my “Why” questions often seem slow, but that doesn’t mean He doesn’t have a purpose for my struggles in the waiting. Even if we never get an answer for our “Why” questions during this unexpected year, God is still moving and using this time in our lives to teach us and grow us.
When squirming within the tensions of life, do you ever find yourself praying the Lord would pull back the curtain and show you a glimpse of your future? In the weariness of life, do you ever just want to fast forward the dial to get to the storybook ending you’ve hoped, prayed and worked for?
It’s hard to be stuck in winter when you want spring so badly. I try to hurry God along, because I’m impatient and think I know better than Him. I want my spring now, but its time has not yet come. God has a scope of work that He is accomplishing in this world, and it doesn’t operate on my timetable.
Hope is one gift that God has given only to humans. It one of the gifts that sets us apart from every other living thing He created. Hope that you can find beauty in the ashes. Hope that you can find strength to get up and rise one more day.