“I am confident I will see the Lord’s goodness while I am here in the land of the living. Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord”
Psalm 27:13-14
For most of my christian walk I have struggled with two different concepts in scripture. I have never fully understood how to balance the command “Be still & know that I am God” and the idea that “faith without works is dead”. I am constantly flip flopping between doing nothing and waiting and relying on God to show up the way I want him to, or trying to work to make things happen. Yet the beauty is that faith without works is a BOTH/AND situation. I often leave out the faith part and focus on getting things done, or I leave out the works part and idly sit waiting for things to happen but not fully believing they will work out. When things don’t work out the way I want I have attributed it to be not believing hard enough or having enough faith, or even worse, I assume God doesn’t really love me enough to make it happen. It’s not that I don’t believe God CAN do things, it’s that I believe the lies that he chooses not to.
Oh, how misguided I have been.
Traveling on a 24 hour bus to our next country the Lord spoke so simply into the lies I had chosen to accept as truth. As we sat on our second bus (waiting for our third in less than 12 hours) I decided to ask Meagan to pray with me for a sleepover bus for last 12 hours overnight. (There is an ongoing joke to have Meagan pray for things because she has a lot of favor.) However, the truth is I think I truly believed that God might hear her prayer over mine. When we got on the sleeper we realized there wasn’t a bathroom. That made me incredibly nervous, especially when I was awake at 1 am thinking my bladder was going to explode.
I was never 100% conscious but I was so uncomfortable I never truly fell asleep and I was certain we had made no stops. Staring out the window we were in the middle of nowhere. I laid in bed asking the Lord what to do. Should I wake up Amy Ba sleeping next to me and ask her to come hold a blanket to cover me up so I could pee on the side of the road? What if the drivers don’t speak english and stop the bus? I prayed and prayed and prayed we would pull over soon. All the while I was stressing I kept thinking in the back of my head “there has to be a bathroom on this stupid bus”. I sat there debating on how I was gonna climb through the tiny tiny little bus. I still had to lower my head while I walked on my knees down the aisles to get on and they were now filled with our 50 lb bags. I finally got the courage to make it to the front and ask and all they heard was “toliet” and pointed me to a hidden door under the stairs.
When I was back in bed having avoided the exploding organs I realized how ridiculous my prayers must’ve seemed. I sat there uncomfortable and miserable wondering why the Lord wouldn’t answer my prayer when in reality he already made a way. He wasn’t planning on stopping the bus because there was a bathroom! He didn’t not hear me and as ridiculous as it sounds he just wanted me to step out in faith and brave the tiny aisle of the bus to find his provision.
I was then reminded of a disagreement I had with a friend years ago. My friend was obsessed with being in a relationship. He would pursue every woman in his way. I made the argument that he wasn’t fully trusting that Jesus had plans for his future wife. He kept making comments about having to make it happen for himself. I made the point that even if he was in a solitary cave God could make a way for his wife to find him even in a seemingly impossible situation. I will never forget his response. He replied “I don’t agree. That’s like a man praying and praying and praying to win the lottery and when he meets with Jesus and asks why he didn’t answer his prayer Jesus responds ‘You never bought a ticket.’” I didn’t know how to respond to that because its true. However, what I have come to realize is BOTH arguments are true. He needed to trust that God wanted to take care of the situation and not keep making things happen in his own strength. But he also needed to step out in faith and pursue women as the Lord was leading him.
A lot of people don’t believe God is a supernatural God. They don’t fully believe he can make things happen in a ridiculously impossible situation. Through different walks in my life I have come to know God as the supernatural God he is. I know and truly believe that in the lottery ticket scenario that if he wanted to he could make a gust of wind fly the winning lottery ticket right into my lap. More often though, you have to take the steps to buy the ticket. However, where my issue resides is that I don’t know if he wants to. When God doesn’t respond in the way that I think he should I often believe it’s because he chooses not to. I fully believe that he has the ability to, but I choose the lie that it’s out lack of love for me. Or sometimes maybe I don’t believe entirely and in turn accept things don’t happen cause I don’t have enough faith/trust. I have turned this whole situation to be about myself.
Back to the bus issue…Truth: Jesus could’ve stopped the bus. He could’ve caused the engine to fail or put it on the heart of the bus driver to pull over, but why would he? He didn’t need to. It wasn’t about me at all. I was getting myself all worked up over nothing. Just like this whole fundraising processes I’ve been on for the past 14 months. I needed to trust that Jesus was going to provide $17,361 for this trip. That required a lot of work. I sent out letters, I had many coffee dates with partners. I called, emailed, Facebook stalked dozens of people all to share with them the vision I had for this trip and the calling God placed on my life for these 11 months.
However, it also required a lot of times of sitting and waiting on the Lord. When all my efforts fell through I saw God show up there were months that I had thousands of dollars appear without me saying a word. When I am still fund raising month and months after other squad members have been fully funded it’s not because he forgot about me. It’s because he still has opportunities in place for new people to partner with me and more lessons to teach me as I continue to trust and rely on him.
The two concepts in scripture are not contradictory, they are situational. The key is listening. When I sit and listen to the voice of the Lord he never fails to show up. The problem is I can’t always hear right when I filter things through my insecurities. I am trying to have faith while holding onto doubt. But when I read scripture and I let his words sink deep into my heart and remind myself of his promises I can see his faithfulness even when it looks different than what I thought.
The truth is nothing I do changes how much God loves me. Most people know that back home I nanny 3 kids and just like at home, when I choose not to give them what they want it’s not because I don’t love them. When things go different than planned it’s because I can see the bigger picture. Toddlers don’t often have an ability to understand all the things that are happening around them and the complications of change of plans or what goes into making things happen. As cliché as it is, God’s answer to prayers are either yes, no or not yet. The “no” we receive is generally because he has something better in mind for us. As grown ups we think we know what’s best for us but in reality we are still God’s children. We won’t ever fully see the big picture of what God is up to. Answered or unanswered prayers are never correlated to how much God loves us, its entirely based on what’s best for us. When things don’t go my way it’s because it’s what’s best for me, not because he doesn’t want to bless me. Obviously these concerns are not all about my bladder issues on a bus, it applies to all my prayers.
Life is so often frustrating because we can’t see the bigger picture. We want to believe God has big things for us but our circumstances seem too daunting. More often than not God’s promises can take years to come through and it seems hard to continue to believe. Lynette Lewis says “When one promise is on hold, pursue another.” When all the worries about my future come to haunt me, I want to remember that. I don’t have a career or a husband or even a permanent address or health insurance when I get back in 6 months but I can trust that God is going to take care of me. I want to learn to pray specific audacious prayers and trust that God is good no matter the outcome. I can actively pursue God through works here on the field and be still and know my future is in his hands.
Moving forward my goal for 2017 is to trust in God and release my own expectations of how my answered prayers will look. People constantly remind me that I need to not hold onto God’s promises so tight in what I think it’s supposed to look like that I miss it entirely. I want to learn to actively trust in the Lord whatever that looks like in my life, all the while trusting in his truly unconditional love for me.
Psalm 18:30 says “God’s way is perfect. All the Lord’s promises prove true”.
God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.
