Wait...

Waiting can be the longest and hardest process of a person's life.  Christian or not, we spend much of our lives waiting.  We wait for high school...then we wait for college...then we wait for our career.  We wait for the bus, we wait at a red light, we wait in traffic.  We wait for the microwave, we wait for the coffee pot, we wait for water to boil.  We wait in line, we wait on hold, we wait for change.  We wait at the doctors office, we wait for results, we wait for a cure...  Waiting sometimes seems a chore...a necessary evil...a waste of time...above all, irritating and many times painful.  The Christian is told to wait on God.  Psalm 27:14 tells us to "Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord." Luke 12:35-37 urges us to be alert and keep our lamps lit as those waiting for their master to return.

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I had written out this beautiful 'message' last night....I was going to send and post on time this week...and in my haste, I lost the whole thing.  I had written about waiting...it was eloquent and lovely and expressed exactly what I wanted to say; the point being that we should wait IN God rather than wait ON Him, work WITH Him rather than Against Him...and perhaps this message is better suited to another time, because God stopped me.  I spent much of last night upset and frustrated at myself that I lost all my hard work and then sat down this afternoon to recreate the beauty of last night's Saturdays with Sara...and I realize as I sit here, that I have made this about me.  I have become the center goal rather than God.  I have turned this great blessing to encourage others through the wisdom God has given me into a vessel of praise for myself.  It may not look this way on the outside, in fact to you it may seem the same, as though nothing has changed.  But as I think over the past months and consider my heart, I see the truth is I have stopped consulting God and allowed myself to lose sight of the purpose.  So, lets revisit that purpose.  

I began Saturdays with Sara as a letter of encouragement to two of my dear friends which morphed at God's push into this blog.  God had prompted me to send you a weekly email encouraging you to persevere in your mission and run the race with strength and confidence in the Lord.  I woke up early every Saturday morning, I prayed, and I allowed God to lead.  Somewhere along the way, that purpose got lost.  At some point in the past few months, I have become the center of my life...and God has become all but forgotten...a memory...an afterthought...I'm not sure where to go from here other than to return in prayer to God.  I desire to be His hands and feet.  I desire to use the gift He has given me to encourage and uplift you, my dear friends and the people who read my blog.  This, I believe is still part of God's plan.

I need to begin again to wait in God for direction.  To rest in God's timing.  Ecclesiastes 3 reminds us that God makes all things beautiful in HIS time and has set eternity in the hearts of men, but we can not know the beginning from the end.  The point of my prior email (the one unsent) was that as we allow God's love to overflow in our hearts...as we allow His will to direct our paths...as we serve Him using the gifts He's blessed us with we lose sight of the wait and it becomes less difficult...waiting becomes more of a joy as we see and feel how God is changing and shaping us through our works and our wait.  (it made more sense before).

Now that I've reminded myself of why I'm doing this, maybe we can get back on track.  I am so thankful to God for the journey he has brought me on...the changes He has made in me.  Without God, I would not be who I am today and could not become the woman He created me to be.  He has a purpose for each of us, and as we WAIT in Him, we begin to see glimpses of His big picture.  We will never know the end as God does, but we can rest in the truth that He has only our good in mind and take comfort in the fact that God is continually changing us and transforming us through our trials and through our waiting.  SO, the encouragement for myself today, and I hope for you, is to serve God confidently, love God's creation with the same zeal that He does, and live our lives in a way that can point ONLY to God!  

I hope I've expressed my heart well today to the Glory of God...and I hope you have a great week!