God's Timing

Why is God's timing so difficult for us? I don't think that it's the timing itself that's difficult at all, actually. God's timing is always perfect. The difficulty comes in when we are afraid. We are afraid that God will not give us what we want in the end, so we are afraid to wait on His timing. We want an answer now so that we can start planning for how we are going to react and protect our hearts should some horrible thing happen. We have something - mind you, a very good something - that we want to happen. We hope for it, we pray for it, we dream about it, but we don't have assurance that it's going to happen. We think it will and we want it to, but we don't know. We want an answer. The tendency is to be afraid to hope for that thing, saying that God's timing is so hard! Let me back up a little bit.

God has really been teaching me about the perfection of His timing as of late. It is always something that I am going to be learning, but lately it's been at the forefront of my thoughts. There is something in my life that I am hoping happens very soon! Without getting into detail, it is something I hold very dear to my heart. It is something I have prayed about for a long time. It is something that looks like a real possibility; a situation that looks almost too perfect to even be possible. So I pray about it and agonize over it. In my agonizing, I had realized that I had turned a potential good gift from the Lord into an idol.

I began to fear that the Lord would present this wonderful and amazing opportunity and then take it away from me - as if our God were a cruel God. I know He's not cruel. He sent His Son to die for us and save us from eternal damnation. Instead of my desire being a good and godly one, it became a point of fear for me. I began to pray that the Lord would not only grant it to me, but that He would grant it to me ASAP. The reason I wanted an answer ASAP was so that I could plan accordingly and prepare my heart for whatever comes - joy or heartache.

This fear manifested itself in another situation as well - the situation with the arrival of my new sister. We knew the Lord had her for our family. We felt sure that she was going to be part of us. But things happened that pushed the adoption process out further. It looked as though the Lord might be presenting an amazing opportunity before us and then removing it. The fear crept in that if we didn't have an answer right away, we wouldn't know what to prepare for. We prayed and prayed that she would at least get to come home by Christmas. By the Lord's grace, she is coming home tomorrow - right before Christmas! But we didn't know that until yesterday.

My point is that God does not do things to tease us. Whatever the situation, the Lord is going to work it out in the end - and it's going to be perfect! What I really hate is not knowing the answer. I hate not having clarity. I hate not being able to prepare myself or brace myself for what is going to happen. But that's not a choice that I get to make. This particular situation that I am presented with right now has no answer for me yet. I probably won't know anything until at least the beginning of the semester - a month from now. That is killing me as I lay here in bed, day after day, recovering from surgery with nothing to do. But it is teaching me something. It is teaching me to rest in the Lord's timing, in His promises, and in His faithfulness. It is teaching me that He is always good and that my purpose in life is to glorify Him. I already knew it in theory. Knowing it in reality is a different story and I'm so thankful for His patience with me. My prayer is still the same. I pray daily that the Lord will grant me my request, but I want Him to grant it to me for His glory. If it does not glorify Him, then I want to submit to that with a glad heart.