God doesn’t operate on our time clock.
Today is my 2-year anniversary. We downloaded our adoption application to Three Angel’s Children’s Relief orphanage in Haiti exactly two years ago. At the time, we were told to expect our adoption to take approximately 18 months. Well, eighteen months has come and gone, with some days barely creeping by. The most frequent question I get asked from family and friends is “How much longer?” To tell you the truth—I have absolutely no idea! I’ve given up on trying to figure it out. It is WAY outside my control!
We don’t always see immediate results.
We certainly can’t always tell what God is up to. I heard Priscilla Shirer recently put it this way, “Yield to the wilderness in your life.” In other words, allow God to complete a work in you. God’s timing is always perfect. Your situation, the lesson He is working in you, may not be ripe yet. But we can trust that God sufficiently and abundantly loves us to only allow into our lives those things necessary to position us for an experiential and abundant relationship with Him. Let’s face it: if we always had everything figured out, we would have no need for God. God allows us to experience pain and suffering and wandering and disappointments so that we can see our need for Him.
He desires to be our EVERYTHING.
“You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.” Revelation 4:11
Wandering in the wilderness was not a bed of roses for the Israelites, but God showed up and parted the Red Sea and made the bitter waters of Marah sweet. Giving up his long awaited son, Isaac, was heart-wrenching for Abraham, but God provided a substitute sacrifice that was a picture of the perfect one to come. Rejection by his 4 closest friends and losing everything he had was excruciating for Job, but then God restored him and multiplied his blessing. Waiting for God to do something was trying for Joseph, but God used him to save his family and the Jewish race. Losing her parents and surrendering to a narcissistic king was confusing to Esther, but God prepared her for “such a time as this.” Becoming a widow and living in a foreign land was a curious journey for Ruth, but God led her to her kinsman redeemer, Boaz, and she went on to be a part of the line of Christ. Being thrown into the lion’s den seemed like the end to Daniel, and God spared him, and revealed himself to a king. Jesus taking on the very nature of man, leaving heaven, being forsaken by His very own Father, was not easy, but it was God’s plan to share with us eternal life.
These roads were difficult…so were they worth it? YES, absolutely YES! Why are you fighting against God? Is there something in your life that you need to surrender? At the end of Job’s trials, he penned these words in Job 42:5,
“My ears had heard of you…but now my eyes have seen you.”