God’s Answers Take Time

By Joy A. Mead

“There are no ‘ifs’ in God’s kingdom. I could hear her soft voice saying it. His timing is perfect. His will is our hiding place. Lord Jesus, keep me in Your will!”

—Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

God’s Answers Take Time

by Joy A. Mead

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way!” I said aloud to God as I drove home from doing the school run.

Deflated, annoyed, and disappointed—like steam wafting from a boiled kettle–I was pouring out my heart to God as I released the emotional pressure that had been building up within me.

When I arrived home, I nestled my exhausted body into the sofa and allowed my gaze to turn toward the tips of the trees in our garden and then beyond into the blue sky. There, I watched these strong trees gently sway as fluffy billows of white clouds passed by. Unlike me, the nature around seemed completely at ease with the rhythm of patience needed between seasons.

“Did I just hear you wrong, God? I mean, I really thought that your beautiful message from so many years ago to me about the future plans would have all unfolded in my life by now.”

We had been exploring the possibility of moving our family from the United Kingdom to the United States. Throughout our thirteen years of marriage, both countries have always been close to our hearts and options for us to live, with my British husband and me, a native Californian, and our two dual citizen children.

When we seriously started to explore the idea of living stateside, God gave me a clear message of encouragement with regard to our potential move.

One day, while looking out into our English garden, the Holy Spirit stirred my heart as I felt God say, “Enjoy this home, this garden, this place while it is yours—it won’t always be, so make the most of each day here.” Alongside our exploration toward a move, these words felt like a strong, intentional command over my life.

However, I had naively assumed such specific plans were going to happen “just around the corner.”

I expected that we would be doing life differently already and getting plugged into a new city, school, church, and community.

A new life.

I got so carried away preparing myself for the future that I forgot to be thankful for today. I didn’t consider that God’s plans aren’t revealed on my ideal timeline.

…

Days, weeks, months, and years have passed by since God’s direct message to me. In all of my future planning, choosing to just sit still for a few moments helped me to realize how selfish I had become in the waiting. My impatience had lately been distracting me from fully enjoying the moments right before me.

Wrestling with my own thoughts, I remembered Moses and his encounter with God at the burning bush. God called him to something great—leading the Israelites out of slavery. However, it all took time to prepare him for such a complex task.

In Acts 7:26-34, it tells of Moses spending forty years away in Midian before God had fully prepared him for his bravest act of confrontation with the Egyptian pharaoh. Forty years before the burning bush encounter! I’d been struggling with impatience in my waiting season for just over five years!

So often we want our lives and dream plans to be revealed swiftly and with enough spark to dazzle those around us with amazing tales of God’s goodness in our lives.

But what if instead, God wants us to be humble?

I mean humble, like only the sphere of influence that we have with the ones directly around us. And that maybe the “greatness” we dream of won’t be a part of our outcome at all.

So many of us live ordinary lives, yet there is so much goodness that God wants to accomplish through us “everyday” people.

Humble is holy. Ordinary is holy. Everyday is holy.

God doesn’t just use the popular Christian influencers or clergy to help spread his Gospel message. Each and every one of us has been created to carry out beautiful plans that all connect to the greater mosaic of God’s kingdom. And when our specific future ideas and plans take longer than expected, we can rest assured that God is still doing a good work within our hearts during the waiting.

Whatever answers you are waiting on God for, may I encourage you (and myself) that God is worth waiting on? He knows what he’s doing, and we don’t need to bother our hearts, minds, and souls with doubt, which is exactly what the enemy desperately tries to throw our way.

God’s answers take time—sometimes a really long amount of time! But keep going on your journey with Jesus anyway. Press in close and include Him in your season of waiting and wondering. With your eyes and heart open to God, trust that answers to your prayers do indeed come—not always in your own way or timing, but always revealed in a way that God deems best for you.

Waiting may feel like being left to wander in the wilderness. Yet, along the way we often realize that God has a mighty purpose even in our necessary season of patience: to journey deeper with Him and others along life’s journey toward our eternal home.

…

I want to leave you with a few verses to ponder:

When you struggle to make sense of your current situation, remember Ephesians 2:10:

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

If your whole being feels overwhelmed, recall Isaiah 40:30-31:

“Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

And if you have moments of wondering how your future will unfold, be encouraged from Isaiah 55:9-13:

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lord’s renown, for an everlasting sign which will not be destroyed.”

Purpose. Hope. Joy.

My friends, let us remember that God has good works for us to do toward His greater purpose.

He fills us with hope as we lean on him through the challenging and victorious times. And despite our changeable circumstances, God’s joy is there–in our ordinary lives–waiting to be found.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

ECCLESIASTES 3:11

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