Patience.
The definition of this word is “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting upset or angry.”
Ever since I got accepted to the World Race, my mind has been all over the place. I worry about how much of an impact to the people of Thailand and Cambodia, or if I’ll be an impact at all. I worry about how God will use me for His Kingdom because, if I’m honest, I can’t see a way He can. I understand that He is the God of the impossible, but when I think of how I can change someone’s life, I get stuck. This place of being stuck leads me to questioning, and this questioning leads to doubts. Doubting is something that I have lived with for far too long. Doubting has made me not take the opportunities that God placed before me because I was too scared or believed I wasn’t good enough.
Whenever I don’t know the answer to something, I get scared. Why do I have to go through trials and temptations? Why do the people I value and are close to have to go through things that hurt them? Why is this world so broken to the point where people hate each other?
I want answers, y’all. We all do. I want to know why I was accepted to go to two foreign countries on the opposite side of the world to minister to people I’ve never heard, seen, or spoken to about a guy, who’s shaped me into who I am today, who I’ve never seen and have only heard His voice inside my head. This is all crazy to me. I wanna know what I’m doing so I can plan how I’m going to do said things.
At the beginning of this year, I went to a conference specifically for college aged students called Passion. While there, I got the call that I got accepted to the World Race. That same day, I was overwhelmed with stress because, even though I applied for this trip with no problems, my mind was filled with thoughts that were saying I was not and could not be good enough to change lives on this trip. These voices inside my head led me to not pay attention to one of the last services at Passion and were breaking me when my group was having our debriefing time. Later on that night, I absolutely had to go talk to two people who I considered “influences in my life.” To say this straight up, the conversation that the three of us had changed my point of view on a lot of things.
The biggest thing I took away and still remind myself of to this day, is that IT IS OKAY TO NOT KNOW!!!!!!!!!! It’s okay to not have every single answer about every little thing. I still remember back when I was in 9th or 10th grade when my youth pastor told me that if we didn’t go though what we do or if we know all the answers about everything, then what need is there for God? The enemy is throwing everything they have at me to make me not give everything I have on this trip, and they know that for me to not know the answers effects me in so many ways. One of my friends this week pointed me to a song called “Belong to You,” and it has been on repeat for me these past few days. The main chorus of the song goes like this:
“The enemy can’t take what I have,
Or change who I am.
I belong to You.”
The enemy may be giving their best shots at me, but I serve a God who has so much power that He hasn’t even used yet. He can and will silence these voices of doubts in my head. He will send me to Thailand and Cambodia to change that part of the world for His glory and His kingdom. He will tell me what to do when His timing is right.
So patience…
Waiting has never come easy to me, but waiting is something that comes with trusting God. And, ya know, I may never know why I was accepted to go on this two month long journey, and that’s okay. God is good. God is gracious. God is all knowing and all powerful. He knows. He knows why I’m going halfway across the world, and He knows what I will do and who I will impact. He knows it all.
So the only question I have left is: If I know God is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, faithful, just, gracious, merciful, loving, and good, what in this world do I have to fear? Yeah, there’s gonna be some waiting I will have to go through in order to fulfill God’s will for my life. Good things come to those who wait, and if God has the best things in store for me. . . Yeah, I can wait for that.
