Lately I have been reading in Jeremiah, and sometimes I feel a lot like Jeremiah. I feel like I ask God a lot of questions. For example: Before I went to training camp, I was walking in a season of doubt, and it was really hard. I didn’t understand why it was happening and I felt like Jeremiah, asking ‘Why God?’ During this time, I had someone tell me “What you are going through is preparing you for where you are going.” Not what I wanted to hear, but totally from God, and that comment helped me through that time. At training camp, I felt all the doubt get blown away. God just came in and rocked me. It was great.
Now, here I am in Honduras and I am sitting on a wall, praying. While praying, I feel that doubt come back. Immediately, I rebuke it, and pick up my bible open to Jeremiah chapter 12. In chapter 12, Jeremiah is basically asking God ‘Why do you let the wicked prosper, and the righteous fall on hard times?’ In verse 5, God answers: ‘If you have raced with men on foot, and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?’ In other words: ‘I am sending you out to bigger things, and before you go, I have to use this circumstance to grow you.’
Wow. It totally spoke to that season I had been through and at exactly the right time.
I continued reading, flipping to Luke. Luke chapter 22, to be exact. In chapter 22, Jesus is preparing the disciples for his sacrifice, and as we know, after Jesus was taken away Peter denies him. In verses 31-32, Jesus is explaining to Peter that, ‘Satan has asked to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail. When you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.’
In that moment, I felt Jesus say ‘I have prayed for you’. Jesus himself prays for us in times of trial. He prays for our faith, and he knows that trials strengthen us. Yes, Satan is asking to sift us as wheat, but Jesus himself is praying that in that sifting we are strengthened rather than weakened.
Wow.
‘What you are going through is preparing you for where you are going’. I don’t know what you are going through in this time, but know, you are being prepared for bigger things. When you turn back, strengthen others.
