Tag: waiting on God

For the waiting, we need a little courage

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I was five minutes early and already nervous.

A friend and I were meeting up so we could drive together to an event.

The plan was simple.  Meet in the parking lot at 5:00.

At 4:55, I started worrying.

Did we say 5:00 or 5:30?  Did I have the time right?  What if we had miscommunicated?  What if I told her the wrong day?  The wrong place?  The wrong time?

This could be a disaster.

By 4:57, I pulled out my phone to double-check our messages.

Okay, I’m safe.  This was the right day and time and place.

But what if she couldn’t see my car where I was parked?  What if she pulls in the other side of the parking lot and misses me completely?

I crane my neck around, glancing from side to side.  Then I actually drive through the parking lot to make sure she wasn’t already there waiting for me and I’m just being ridiculous.

It’s 4:59 now, and yes, I am absolutely being ridiculous, but it’s taken on a humongous snowball life of its own and I feel powerless to stop it.

I am worrying about being late and about traffic and maybe we should have said we should meet earlier.

I am worrying about miscommunication and how I should have called her that day to verify the details one last time.

Then I start worrying about my friend.  What if she is hurt and in a car accident somewhere and she can’t call to tell me because she’s in an ambulance on the way to the hospital?

And then, just as I’ve worked myself up into frantic worry….my friend pulls in.

It’s 5:01.

She’s fine.  I’m fine.  We’re completely on time.

I really am ridiculous.

Every single day, I tell my son to ‘be patient’ about 20 times.  Maybe 50 times.

He wants juice.  He wants snack.  He wants Bob the Builder on the TV.   He wants to play a game.  He needs help with a toy.  He wants me to read a book.

What do I say?

Okay, in just a moment.  Be patient.

And, I act like he should just accept that.  I act like it’s a perfectly reasonable request for him to just snap on some patience.

But today, I’m recognizing that it’s hard.

I ‘m supposed to teach him patience, of course.  I still need to keep asking him to wait sometimes.  This doesn’t mean I need to answer his every whim and will immediately and turn him into a tiny tyrant.

No, I teach him to ‘be patient,’ but I do it with some understanding that what I’m asking him to do takes oh such a long time to learn.

Some days he’ll get it just right.

And some days he’ll fall to pieces just like his crazy mom does when she’s waiting for a friend in a parking lot at 4:55 p.m. and they’re supposed to meet at 5:00.

There’s something more, too: All these years, I’ve recognized how waiting takes patience (and who likes learning about patience?) and it takes trust (and who finds trusting without controlling easy?).

BUT IT ALSO TAKES COURAGE.

David wrote:

Wait for the Lord;
    be strong, and let your heart take courage;
    wait for the Lord! (Psalm 27:14 ESV).

and again:

Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
    all you who wait for the Lord! (Psalm 31:24 ESV).

I’ve missed it a million times.  I’ve read those Psalms and sang them and written them in my journal over and over again, but today it hits me in a new way.

GOD SAYS THAT IN THE WAITING, I NEED TO TAKE HEART.

I NEED TO BE COURAGEOUS.

I NEED TO BE STRONG.

And, that’s exactly what I need to hear in seasons of waiting because when I’m waiting, I’m full of doubt and questions and worry.

I think maybe I heard God wrong.  Maybe this is going to take forever and He’s never going to bring me through this situation.  Maybe the deliverance won’t come after all.  Maybe I’m in the wrong place.  Maybe there was miscommunication.  Maybe I missed God and He was already here and gone and now I’m outside of His will!  Maybe God is done with me and now He’s just left me here in this place.

I’m being ridiculous, I know it.

But it’s in the moments of waiting that I feel most abandoned and most afraid.

AND IT’S IN THE MOMENTS OF WAITING THAT GOD SAYS EXACTLY WHAT I NEED TO HEAR THE MOST:

Don’t believe the lies.  Don’t fret over the future.  Don’t question the calling.  Don’t doubt God’s ability or willingness to care for you.  Don’t think you’re alone.

BE STRONG, AND LET YOUR HEART TAKE COURAGE.

Originally posted February 12, 2016

God isn’t too late, but He’s not early either

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A deadline.

Few obstacles pound harder at my faith than a due date, a deadline, the tick-tocking down of time until God has to either come through or He doesn’t.

I know, I know.

God’s timing is perfect.  

He is never late.

I cling to the promises and repeat the reassuring phrases to myself, but God likes to push right up against time boundaries, doesn’t He?

He usually doesn’t show up early, that’s for sure.

Sometimes, He’ll let me pace nervously right up until the last second before He shows up in His glory.

To Him, one day is like a thousand years.  Time is fluid and free.

But it doesn’t work like that here on this physical planet.

Bills and meetings and due dates are a little less subjective here.

Besides that, I hate being late.  I like to be early.  I like to be the first one to arrive, the girl sitting in the parking lot for 5 minutes collecting her thoughts, not the one zooming in 5 minutes late and haphazardly throwing her minivan into park and jumping out the door.

I’m the opposite of a procrastinator (whatever you call that).  I like to have things settled two weeks in advance, not at 11:59 p.m. right before the midnight deadline.

But God knows this about me. So God helps me to cement this shaky faith onto some sturdier foundation.  And God, with His sense of humor and His infinite wisdom, does this by bringing me toe-to-toe with deadline after deadline and coming through for me at the last possible second.

Not because He likes to drive me crazy.

Because He loves me, of course.

Last week, though, I read about Jesus’ first miracle in a new way:  A wedding miracle, a miracle of substance:  Changing plain old water into the finest wine for a marriage feast on the verge of social disaster.

I think as I read that Jesus didn’t just change water into grape juice.

This wasn’t just miraculously altering the chemical makeup.

Jesus bypassed time. 

Quality wine like that would have required years to make–to ferment–, but Jesus simply told servants to fill jars with water and serve it up, and the wine simply was.

Margaret Feinberg writes in Scouting the Divine:

When it comes to making great wine, time is your friend. Yet Jesus didn’t need to wait.

In the past, I’ve tried to explain it all to Him, how some due dates are pretty set in stone and we people here on earth do actually have to follow them or bad stuff can happen.

But today, He explains it to me….

How when I tell Him something will take two weeks…

When I say there’s not enough time for Him to come through for me….

He tells me He can turn plain old water into aged wine in an instant.  Something that should take years is completed in less than a second.

GOD ISN’T JUST ABLE TO DO ANYTHING; HE’S ABLE TO DO ANYTHING AT ANY TIME.

Not only that, but even when circumstances and the world and your own eyes tell you that God is simply too late, even then He is not too late.

Jesus showed up at Lazarus’s home days after Lazarus had already died.

Jesus waited too long to come and heal His friend.

But even a deadline as firmly set as death wasn’t too much for Jesus to overcome.  After four days in the grave, Lazarus walked right out of the tomb when Jesus called him back to life.

And maybe after hundreds of years of waiting for the Messiah convinced many Jesus that God wasn’t able, wouldn’t fulfill His promises, couldn’t ever bring the miracle to pass.

Yet, Paul says,

BUT WHEN THE SET TIME HAD FULLY COME, GOD SENT HIS SON, BORN OF A WOMAN, BORN UNDER THE LAW… (GALATIANS 4:4).

The set time fully came and that’s precisely when God acted.

And the time wasn’t set by any man.  It wasn’t set by a government, by a bill collector, by a judge, by a teacher, or by any human rule or law.

GOD HIMSELF SET THE PERFECT TIME FOR THE PERFECT SALVATION, AND HE WAS NOT A SECOND TOO EARLY OR TOO LATE.

So, we’re human and in this world we have deadlines and due dates, we have words like ‘late’ and ‘overdue’ and ‘delinquent.’

Sometimes we think the clock and the calendar rule over us like arbitrary and cruel overseers, always demanding, always penalizing, always stressing us out.

But our God doesn’t need time to deliver you or time to save you.

He’s not working frantically, racing the clock, sweating with panic as the seconds tick down.

He’s not asking for extensions or inventing delay tactics while He scrambles to get things done.

GOD’S PERFECT PLAN INCLUDES HIS PERFECT TIMING.

Originally published 11/20/2015

12 Bible Verses about Trusting God’s Timing

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verses-on-gods-timing

  • Psalm 31:15 ESV
    My times are in your hand;
        rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!
  • Ecclesiastes 3:1 ESV
    For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
  • Ecclesiastes 3:11 ESV
    He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
  • Ecclesiastes 8:6 ESV
    For there is a time and a way for everything, although man’s trouble[a] lies heavy on him.
  • Isaiah 40:31 ESV
    but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
        they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
    they shall run and not be weary;
        they shall walk and not faint.
  • Lamentations 3:25-26 ESV
    The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
        to the soul who seeks him.
    26 It is good that one should wait quietly
        for the salvation of the Lord.
  • Habakkuk 2:3 ESV
    For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
        it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
    If it seems slow, wait for it;
        it will surely come; it will not delay.
  • Acts 1:7 ESV
    He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.
  • Romans 5:6 ESV
    For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
  • Galatians 4:4 ESV
    But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,
  • Galatians 6:9 ESV
    And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.
  • 2 Peter 3:8 ESV
    But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Are We There Yet?

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psalm 130“Are we there yet?”

Twelve+ hours in the car with four kids means you’re bound to hear that question a time or two or a hundred.

Really, though, my kids did pretty well on our journey to Disney and back.  We had one outright, “Are we there yet?” yelled up from the backseat.

And one time my baby girl tried to pull one over on us:  “How many miles is it to Florida and how long does it take us to drive one mile?”

She figured her math skills would come in handy. She didn’t really have to ask us for an arrival time estimate; she could just gather some info, answer on her own, and we’d be none the wiser.

We didn’t fall for her tricky ways.

But this is the question I find myself asking at times, too.

Are we there yet, Lord?

And it’s wrapped up in childlike fears and wants.

It’s my own impatience, the wanting to be done already, the desire to wrap up the story I’m in with a fairy tale sort of sweet, happy ending.

It’s having a goal in mind, a picture and vision of what’s to come.   We’ll know when the journey is over when we get that job or that promotion, when the prodigal comes home, when the relationship heals or the body heals or the heart heals.

For my kids, they knew their story end was Disney World one way and Home on the trip back.

Then, when you pull into the driveway and park your minivan, you’re done.  The End.  Finished.

You have arrived at your destination.

That’s not always so easy to discern in life, though.  When I ask God, “are we there yet?” it’s not just childish impatience because I want the journey to be over already.  Sometimes I’m just wondering “Is this IT?”

Is this the end, the destination?  Is this where the journey stops and the story finishes?  Is this the completed work?

Or is there more?  Is the story ongoing?  Do I keep praying through these circumstances and trust that we’re not at the end; we’re just somewhere in the middle?

In the silence and in the waiting and in the lull of visible God-activity, I’m tempted to settle into a “new normal.”

This must be “it.”  So, I settle down into complacency and resolution.

I don’t love this ending.  It’s not what I hoped for.  I don’t see God glorified.  The story feels unfinished; the promises unfulfilled.

So, “are we there yet, God?”

Because here is where I am.

The Psalmist said:

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
    and in his word I hope;
6 my soul waits for the Lord
    more than watchmen for the morning,
    more than watchmen for the morning (Psalm 130:5-6 ESV).

Philip Yancey writes,

The picture comes to mind of a watchman counting the minutes for his shift to be over.

The watchmen have this advantage over me, though.  They know when morning has come.  All through the night, they count down those minutes with anticipation and hope:  1 a.m.,  3 a.m. 4:30 a.m.

Then the moment arrives. Dawn.  Morning is here and their shift is over.  Finished.  Completed.  The end.

What to do, though, when The End isn’t so clear?

Maybe the problem is the question I’ve been asking.

Maybe it shouldn’t be, “Are we there, yet?”

Maybe I should be asking, “Am I with you, Lord?”

After all, family time on vacation didn’t begin at Disney.  Family time didn’t end when we pulled into our driveway at home.  We choose to be together throughout the journey.

The Psalmist said he waits for the Lord.  He hopes in His Word.

Not he waits for deliverance and he hopes in his army or his friends or allies.

And that time with the Lord doesn’t begin with the answered prayer.  It doesn’t end with promises fulfilled.

It’s here and now, it’s past and it’s future.

This very moment, the one right here where we feel stalled and uncertain about the future, the season of waiting and in the hours when we wonder if God has finished with us and we didn’t even know it…this is all the opportunity to choose hope.

Not hope for an outcome: Hope for Him and hope for His presence.

And so we don’t wait with impatience.

We wait with anticipation of what He’s doing in this grand story, knowing that “The End” doesn’t come until we’re with Jesus, face to face, in the fullness of His glory, worshiping at His throne.

Why Can’t I Go to the Carnival Now?

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psalm 62-1 MSG

There were tears.

Lots of them.

We’re fully immersed in end-of-the-year testing for my school-age kids, which in Virginia means taking the SOL’s (Standards of Learning).

Maybe you think that means we’re stressed or anxious.

Actually, we’re doing a lot of celebrating.

The girls get more than cereal or toast for breakfast on SOL days, and it’s not often they wake up to a hot breakfast on a Monday morning.

I leave them extra notes of love and encouragement in their lunch bags and slip in treats as well.

They don’t have their regular homework load (hurray!) and we can spend the afternoons playing, relaxing and occasionally running out for ice cream to reward them for their labors.

We celebrate every day they finish a test because we’re one step closer to summer.

So for my first grader—who is too young to take the SOLs (they start in third grade)—all this celebrating seems suspiciously unfair.

Even if she also gets hot breakfasts, ice cream treats, and fun nights just like her older sisters, she’s pretty sure she’s missing out.

That’s why she was bawling at bedtime last week, because her older sisters get to go to the SOL carnival and she can’t.

This carnival is for all the kids at school who take the SOL’s, which means third graders and up.

My first grader has a problem with that.

No water slide?  No games with prizes?  No cotton candy?  No face painting?  No popcorn?

She’s pretty sure she can’t wait until she’s in third grade to experience the joys of the SOL carnival.  Why should she wait, after all, when the older girls are having all the fun now?

We try to reason with her.

How the SOLs are hard work and this is their reward.  Would she want to take those tests now when she hasn’t learned what she needs to know?

We explain how her sisters didn’t get to go to the carnival in first grade either.  They also were first graders who didn’t get to go once upon a time.

Why rush these things?  Sure, there are incentives to growing up.  But there are responsibilities, too.  There are drawbacks and hard jobs and lots of work.

We want her to enjoy now.

She wants to rush on to what she imagines is the glorious future.  She overlooks the hard and longs for the ultimate reward.

We’re asking her to wait.

And waiting is tough.  Waiting requires trusting God’s timing.  Waiting demands patience.  Waiting wearies us because even though we’re moving forward on this journey, sometimes we just feel stuck.

Waiting means lingering with God in the here and now instead of wanting the end already, can we just skip to the end?!

Waiting tugs at our faith and nudges us with doubts because we wonder if God has abandoned us and forgotten us along the way.

I wonder how much I’m like my little girl, so obsessed with future blessing that I want to skip to the end?

And what would that truly mean?  It would mean missing the journey.  It would mean receiving blessings I’m unprepared for and responsibilities I can’t carry.

In 1 Samuel 16, Samuel the prophet anointed the teenage shepherd boy, David, to be king of Israel after Saul.

But that doesn’t mean they held a coronation ceremony right away.

No, Saul was still the king at  the time, so David just went right back to the fields to tend sheep.

Then he defeated Goliath and went to live in Saul’s palace a while.

Then Saul’s jealousy became rage and David spent 13 years running for his life.

Then Saul died.

Even then, David didn’t rush to take the throne. Instead, he spent another 7-1/2 years reigning over Judah alone from a city called Hebron.

Sheila Walsh writes:

“David was content to stay where God told him to stay for as long as it took” (The Longing in Me, p. 93).

All those years of waiting (more than 20 !) between the moment that oil poured down on his head to anoint him as king and the moment when he settled into the Jerusalem palace, David didn’t seem to push ahead.

He didn’t kill Saul.  He didn’t start public opinion campaigns to sway the populace to his side.  He didn’t connive or contrive, plot or plan a way to skip to the end.

He trusted God “for as long as it took.”

Can we trust God like that?

What a day it must have been when David finally sat on that throne in Jerusalem.  King.  After all those years.

God had done the work.  David hadn’t pushed it along or made it happen.  God had done it.  All God and only God.

May that be our testimony too when God completes the work He’s doing in us.

 

The one thing I need to hear when I’m waiting

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psalm 27

I was five minutes early and already nervous.

A friend and I were meeting up so we could drive together to an event.

The plan was simple.  Meet in the parking lot at 5:00.

At 4:55, I started worrying.

Did we say 5:00 or 5:30?  Did I have the time right?  What if we had miscommunicated?  What if I told her the wrong day?  The wrong place?  The wrong time?

This could be a disaster.

By 4:57, I pulled out my phone to double-check our messages.

Okay, I’m safe.  This was the right day and time and place.

But what if she couldn’t see my car where I was parked?  What if she pulls in the other side of the parking lot and misses me completely?

I crane my neck around, glancing from side to side.  Then I actually drive through the parking lot to make sure she wasn’t already there waiting for me and I’m just being ridiculous.

It’s 4:59 now, and yes, I am absolutely being ridiculous, but it’s taken on a humongous snowball life of its own and I feel powerless to stop it.

I am worrying about being late and about traffic and maybe we should have said we should meet earlier.

I am worrying about miscommunication and how I should have called her that day to verify the details one last time.

Then I start worrying about my friend.  What if she is hurt and in a car accident somewhere and she can’t call to tell me because she’s in an ambulance on the way to the hospital?

And then, just as I’ve worked myself up into frantic worry….my friend pulls in.

It’s 5:01.

She’s fine.  I’m fine.  We’re completely on time.

I really am ridiculous.

Every single day, I tell my two-year-old son to ‘be patient’ about 20 times.  Maybe 50 times.

He wants juice.  He wants snack.  He wants Bob the Builder on the TV.  He wants his shoes on.  He wants his shoes off.  He needs help with a toy.  He wants me to read a book.

What do I say?

Okay, in just a moment.  Be patient.

And, I act like he should just accept that.  I act like it’s a perfectly reasonable request for a two-year-old to have patience.

But today, I’m recognizing that it’s hard.

I should teach him patience, of course.  I still need to keep asking him to wait sometimes.  This doesn’t mean I need to snap-to-it and answer his every whim and will immediately.

No, I teach him to ‘be patient,’ but I do it with some understanding that what I’m asking him to do takes oh such a long time to learn.

Some days he’ll get it just right.

And some days he’ll fall to pieces just like his crazy mom does when she’s waiting for a friend in a parking lot at 4:55 p.m. and they’re supposed to meet at 5:00.

There’s something more, too: All these years, I’ve recognized how waiting takes patience (and who likes learning about patience?) and it takes trust (and who finds trusting without controlling easy?).

But it also takes courage.

David wrote:

Wait for the Lord;
    be strong, and let your heart take courage;
    wait for the Lord! (Psalm 27:14 ESV).

and again:

Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
    all you who wait for the Lord! (Psalm 31:24 ESV).

I’ve missed it a million times.  I’ve read those Psalms and sang them and written them in my journal over and over again, but today it hits me in a new way.

God says that in the waiting, I need to take heart.

I need to be courageous.

I need to be strong.

And, that’s exactly what I need to hear in seasons of waiting because when I’m waiting, I’m full of doubt and questions and worry.

I think maybe I heard God wrong.  Maybe this is going to take forever and He’s never going to bring me through this situation.  Maybe the deliverance won’t come after all.  Maybe I’m in the wrong place.  Maybe there was miscommunication.  Maybe I missed God and He was already here and gone and now I’m outside of His will!  Maybe God is done with me and now He’s just left me here in this place.

I’m being ridiculous, I know it.

Yet, it’s in the moments of waiting that I feel most abandoned and most afraid.

And it’s in the moments of waiting that God says exactly what I need to hear the most:

Don’t believe the lies.  Don’t fret over the future.  Don’t question the calling.  Don’t doubt God’s ability or willingness to care for you.  Don’t think you’re alone.

Be strong, and let your heart take courage.

 

The Year of the Nintendo

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christmas4

That year, my brothers wanted a Nintendo for Christmas, that original Nintendo system with Mario and maybe Tetris.

They felt like they were the last kids in the neighborhood to finally get a video game system.

But, my parents delayed.  Should we have video games in the home?  Would it rot our brains and catapult us into a life of crime?

Finally my parents decided that owning a Nintendo could open up a whole new world of discipline opportunities.  When they misbehaved, my brothers could lose video game privileges.  That’d get their attention.

So, my parents bought that Nintendo for Christmas and hid it under their bed until the big day.

Only, my brothers peeked.

And they got busted.

For their punishment, on Christmas morning, they had to open up that coveted Nintendo and then put it aside.  They couldn’t play it yet.  Oh no, they had to wait several months before they could actually maneuver Mario and Luigi around drain pipes and clouds to save the princess.

My sisters and I could play the Nintendo.

My parents could play the Nintendo (if they so chose).

But my brothers had to wait, and the wait was excruciating: to be so close and yet oh so far away.

Of course, we think we know how painful waiting is.

We groan about waiting on God.

We commiserate with other Christians who complain that they are just ‘waiting.’

Oh, waiting.

I hate waiting.

Who doesn’t hate waiting?

If only God would step things up a little and get a move on.  If only He would come through for us on our own timetable.  If only He would cram Himself into our agenda.

We are anxious and hurried, demanding and impatient when God delays.

Waiting physically hurts.  It steals sleep and turns stomachs.  We pace.  We fret.  We take control.  We lose control.  We take control again.  We demand and whine, cry and manipulate.

Yet, still He lingers.

God is never rushed or harried, stressed or overcome by deadlines or the impetuousness of His own people.

He didn’t skip the 40 years of desert training for Moses and just give him a one-month crash course in leading a nation.

He didn’t speedwalk those Israelites through the wilderness.

He didn’t clear out the Promised Land in a day or build Solomon’s temple overnight.

And He did not send His Son to earth to save us one century too early.

Do we even know what that wait was like?  

How could we endure centuries of silence from heaven?

The Israelites came face to face with their desperate need for the Messiah constantly:

The sacrifices.  The bleating of the lambs.  The stench of the blood.

They couldn’t overlook or forget the deadly consequence of their sin-state.

They’d watch the slaughter today and know that they were only pure before God for one brief moment.

And then they’d sin again.

And the sacrifice would have to be made anew.

It was perpetual and constant.  Day after day, year after year of the law and rules and punishment and sin and sacrifice.

They were oppressed and persecuted.

Still, God asked them to wait.

 

At Advent, we remember the intensity of the longing for our Savior.  We recall how the world ached with its need for redemption.

And then Jesus came.

He came!

No more searching and longing, no more unfulfilled expectation, no more prophecies hanging unfulfilled.

No more need for sacrificial lambs because the Perfect Lamb had come.

No more imprisonment by sin and by the law.

No more waiting.

Simeon in the temple saw it.  He had been “waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him” (Luke 2:25 NIV).

And when he saw Jesus, he lifted that infant Lord into his own arms and praised God:

For my eyes have seen your salvation (Luke 2:30 NIV).

He saw the promise fulfilled.

Christmas reminds us that God is at work even in the waiting and the seeming silence.

Advent tells us that God fulfills and completes His work at the perfect time, but He is ever-present, even in the interludes of expectation.

We learn here from shepherds and wise men, from prophets and priests, not to give up on God.

We take this to heart.

Yes, as we wait for marriages, for jobs, for restoration, for healing, for deliverance, for provision, for peace.

We choose expectant hope over disappointment and despair.

More than that, we live ever-ready and ever-longing for Christ’s return.

As the apostle John wrote:

The one who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!  (Revelation 22:20 NET).

Come, Lord Jesus!

 

12 Bible Verses When You Need to Trust in God’s Timing

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verses-on-God's-timing

  • Psalm 31:15 ESV
    My times are in your hand;
        rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!
  • Ecclesiastes 3:1 ESV
    For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
  • Ecclesiastes 3:11 ESV
    He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
  • Ecclesiastes 8:6 ESV
    For there is a time and a way for everything, although man’s trouble[a] lies heavy on him.
  • Isaiah 40:31 ESV
    but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
        they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
    they shall run and not be weary;
        they shall walk and not faint.
  • Lamentations 3:25-26 ESV
    The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
        to the soul who seeks him.
    26 It is good that one should wait quietly
        for the salvation of the Lord.
  • Habakkuk 2:3 ESV
    For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
        it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
    If it seems slow, wait for it;
        it will surely come; it will not delay.
  • Acts 1:7 ESV
    He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.
  • Romans 5:6 ESV
    For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
  • Galatians 4:4 ESV
    But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,
  • Galatians 6:9 ESV
    And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.
  • 2 Peter 3:8 ESV
    But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

If I Put a Spoon Under My Pillow, Will It Snow?

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“This is it.”

My kids are desperate for snow.  More specifically, they are desperate for a snow day.

Apparently, so are their teachers.

In early January, the tiniest picture of a snowflake appeared on my weather forecast.  The details said wintry mix overnight, no accumulation, yada yada yada, blah blah blah.

My kindergartner arrived home from school that day with specific instructions from her teachers.

Place a spoon under your pillow.

Wear your pajamas inside out.

Flush an ice cube down the toilet.

Her older sister calls out, “And do a snow dance!  You have to do the snow dance.”

It was simple math to them.  Do this + this +this + this = guaranteed snow day.

It did not snow.

This week, snow was again in the forecast.  My Facebook filled with chatter and pictures of weather maps all foretelling the great snowstorm of 2015.

It snow-dusted, just enough to turn the world a little white.  Not enough to cover the grass even.  Not enough to delay anything, much less close it down.

I don’t mind really.  I enjoy snow well enough, but only when it’s outside and I’m inside with a book and a cup of cocoa.

But my kids mind.  A lot.  They are Virginia girls, desperate for at least a few sizable snowfalls a season.

Every single time there is a whisper of a snowflake or two falling in the night, our town is abuzz, the Wal-Mart shelves clear out of milk and bread, and my children brace themselves for a real and true snow day.

“This is it.”  That’s what they think.

Maybe Joseph felt the same way.

All those years, he waited and waited, holding on perhaps to a distant memory of those visions from God of his family bowing down to him.

He waited in a pit while his brothers plotted his death, and then settled for selling him into slavery.psalm 62-5

He waited as an Egyptian slave, working faithfully and with integrity for his master.

He waited when he was falsely accused and thrown into an Egyptian jail.

So many times, he might have thought, “This is it.  This is my big moment of rescue and redemption!!”

But it wasn’t.

There was the night in the Egyptian prison when Pharaoh’s cupbearer and baker came to Joseph with dreams they couldn’t understand.  Joseph interpreted the dreams, but then asked for help, saying to the cupbearer:

But when all goes well for you, remember that I was with you. Please show kindness to me by mentioning me to Pharaoh, and get me out of this prison. 15 For I was kidnapped from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing that they should put me in the dungeon (Genesis 40:14-15 HCSB).”

This is it.

That’s what Joseph thought.  “Here’s my chance!”

Then the cupbearer forgot about Joseph for another two years.

Waiting is hard enough.  But getting your hopes up and then discovering disappointment, is even harder.

Joseph could have given up. Maybe he did.

Years later, though, that cupbearer finally did remember Joseph.  And, perhaps when Joseph least expected it, God came through.

In God’s perfect timing.  In God’s perfect way.  God came through.

Had the cupbearer remembered Joseph years before like he had promised, Joseph might have made it out of prison.  Maybe.  Perhaps.  We’re not really sure.  Pharaoh could have just dismissed the cupbearer’s story as little more than a novelty.

But in this precise moment, the Pharaoh needed someone to interpret his dream, and Joseph was the one to do it.

Interpreting that cupbearer’s dream had seemed like a wasted opportunity, yet years later that is what God used to rescue Joseph from prison.

What we do today might not seem to matter, but God doesn’t waste our faithfulness.  

His timing is precise and perfect, even when it doesn’t feel like it in the moment, even when disappointment presses in, and even when the waiting feels like it can collapse your heart.

We can’t place our hope in circumstances or people like a forgetful cupbearer.

We can’t always decipher God’s plans and predict when “this” really is it.

We can’t make it snow despite all of our snow dances and inside-out-pajamas.

We can, however, live God-glorifying lives day-in and day-out, being faithful even to the most mundane tasks that earn us no worldly recognition or honor.

Our hope, after all, isn’t in circumstances or people or ‘connections’ or our own abilities.  They will take us on an endless emotional roller-coaster of misplaced expectations and inevitable disappointment.

Our hope, though, can be rock solid, unshakeable and steadfast when we place it in Him and Him alone.

 “Rest in God alone, my soul, for my hope comes from Him”  (Psalm 62:5 HCSB).

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2015 Heather King

Christmas devotions: How Many Days?

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“Mom, how many days until Victoria’s birthday?”
Nine.

“How many days until we go see The Nutcracker?”christmas14
Nine.

“Once we see The Nutcracker, how many more days will it be until Victoria’s birthday and then to Christmas?”
Zero and Four.

“How many days until the last day of school before Christmas break?”
Seven.

“How many days until our program?”
Two.

“How many days to Christmas?  Do you know how many hours that might be?”
Thirteen and go ask your dad.

This is my house.

Every day.  All day.  From three of my four children and I’m sure if the 14-month-old could count and talk, I’d be doing this for him, too.

Mom is the walking Advent calendar, the perpetual countdown machine.  Punch in the numbers and out spits the carefully calculated response.

Unless I’ve answered enough times that day, in which case I point mutely to the calendar on the wall and let them do the math.

We are living for the countdowns and loving the promise that on appointed days at specific times, we will celebrate.  The big day will arrive.  The anticipation will give way to fulfillment.

Yet, so much of life seems to hang on uncertain hooks with undefined strength.  The deadlines are hazy.  The promise is there, but not the timing.  We can’ t count down the days and know that on this date, at this time, the one we’ve circled in red on our calendar, God will come through for us.

The waiting will end.

The promise will come.

The deliverance is here.

The prayer will be answered.

The waiting eats away at our hope; it’s the corrosion of impatient despair.

What to do?   What to do when you read the words that God will work this out but each day you wake up thinking “Maybe this is the day” and each night you lie back down, “Maybe it’s tomorrow?”

For 400 years, Israel paused.  For 400 years, they waited for the Messiah and heard only silence between the Old Testament’s end and that first moment that John the Baptist stepped out of the wilderness and yelled out for the people to repent.

In the Gospel of Mark, the very first words we have recorded from Jesus are “The time has come.” (Mark 1:15).  How appropriate.

Maybe some had long since given up hope.  The anticipation perhaps gave way to cynical apathy.  Or frenzy—maybe the desperation spurred them on to follow any false teacher with any false message of hope.

Yet, just when the perfect time had come, Jesus was there.  He wasn’t late, not for a second.  And He wasn’t early.

Paul wrote in Galatians that:

“when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship (Galatians 4:4-5, NIV).

And later in Titus:

God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, and which now at his appointed season he has brought to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Savior (Titus 1:2-3).

The writer of Hebrews tells us:

But [that appointed time came] when Christ (the Messiah) appeared as a High Priest of the better things that have come and are to come (Hebrews 9:11 AMP).

The appointed time came and God answered.  He is faithful.

Those prophets said it centuries before:

 “For the vision is yet for the appointed time;
It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail.
Though it tarries, wait for it;
For it will certainly come, it will not delay (Habakkuk 2:3, NASB).

God’s promises are for the appointed time.

It feels like so much hesitation and delay, but “It will not fail….wait for it….it will certainly come.”

Christmas does this.  It gives us hope for the waiting room and the silent days because God did not fail His people.  He had not abandoned them.  He never let go of the promised salvation, never wavered or faltered.  Nothing interrupted His plans.  No one stood in His way.  He never for one single second lost sight of the perfect plan for the perfect time.

Christmas is God showing up in glory in the way and on the day they least expected His presence, but in the way and on the day God planned all along.

I don’t want to miss Him showing up in my life.  I don’t want the waiting to rile up doubts.  I don’t want to settle my heart into complacency so I stop even looking for the glory and just shift my eyes to the mundane.

In the waiting, let us keep hope.  In the waiting, let us keep watch.  In the waiting, let us busy ourselves with obedience for today, trusting tomorrow to Him.

Originally posted December 12, 2011

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.