9/29/2015
So this past month was interesting. Like I said in my previous blog, we were living on a compound, and didn’t really get to know or even see our host very often. Each day would be a surprise in what we would do for ministry. We painted, tore down houses, pulled nails out of boards, taught English, organized things, cleaned buildings, taught craft classes, and hoed and machete the lawn. We were right next to volcano Fuego, which is an active volcano, and gunshots at night were our lullabies. Interesting month, but also a good practice in how to serve when you have no idea why you are doing things.
Our team was asked to share something with some of the women of the community. I volunteered. This month God had put a short sermon I spoke in Lesotho back in my heart. Its about feeling like you are in a waiting room. I told the women that it was as much for me as it was for them. Here it is:
“Give me blizzards and frozen pipes. Give me storms, but not this…nothingness. Not this, waiting room of the world.” C.S Lewis
There are certain times in life that it can feel like we are in a waiting room. Waiting for change, healing, a job, love, an answer from God, or just waiting for this moment to pass. It’s easy in this place to feel abandoned and unseen.
So, in these times when can’t see what is going on, and hours just seem to stretch forever, we must remember three things:
1) God is not the distant doctor whom we wait in agony for. He is the friend, the physician right next to us who never leaves our side. Genesis 16:13 says that “He is the God who sees me.” Jesus is “God with us.” He doesn’t change. His love for us doesn’t change. All moments will pass away, even if it is in death. All moments will end, but CHRIST will not. He is the rock that won’t move, the steadfast love that will never tire.
I met a friend in Antigua who said that she found that “The enemy will try to pervert convictions about our character, into condemnations about our identity.” But our identity was rooted even before we were conceived. Our identities are rooted in Christ who doesn’t change, so neither do our identities.
So if the waiting room is also a place where you feel frustrated that you are still living with this certain sin, struggle or addiction, know that those things don’t define you, and to not let the enemy put that on you. But that our character is always being refined, molded, and being tested to be stronger.
2) God is always working on us and on behalf of us. Even when we don’t see that anything is changing, God is working. Philippians 1:6 6 “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” So, the waiting room is only what we perceive in our mind, with our eyes, and not what in reality is actually happening.
Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold unswerving to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.
3) When we don’t know of anything else we can do,
Focus our eyes on Him.
O soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s light for a look at the Savior,
And life more abundant and free!
Refrain:
Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.
On one of my prayer walks here, I was looking around me at the beautiful lush green hills, and volcanoes. I told God, “Wow, this is beautiful.” Then I looked up and above the mountain I saw a giant cloud in the shape of a mountain top.
It reminded me of a part in the Chronicles of Narnia, the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The crew gets to see a glimpse into Aslans’s country (Heaven); one mountain is so huge that they can’t see the top of it’s peak, and the green is so lush and the colors are so vivid…and there is a sweet sound that they hear for a moment and “it is a sound that would break your heart…but not from sadness.”
The hope of Heaven. The the reason why we love anything here, or enjoy any beauty around us is because it reminds us just a little of what it will be like in eternity. This life is the dream. Heaven is the reality.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
When we can see no way out, we can turn our eyes upon Jesus, remember and gaze at His beauty, and remember that we have heaven after the moments of this life end.
So, this was a lesson that I had to remember for this month and I hope that it encourages you when you feel like you are in a waiting room or about to step into one.
God bless!
