Sustained by the King

God, You are doing a new thing. Your hands are discarding the excess clay and forming a masterpiece with the remnants of my life. You are in total control of my life, and I trust Your wisdom and perspective far more than my own. Even when my prayers seem unanswered, You always answer with renewed strength and peace. You restore the joy of my salvation every time I seek Your face. If this isn’t meant to be mine, prepare my heart for the loss. If it is, give me the strength to honor this as I would honor you, Lord.

Waiting is really, really humbling. It’s painful, infuriating, confusing. Sometimes, it’s awkward or straight up embarrassing. When you’re holding onto hope for something that seems hopeless, it’s easy to feel like the last kid in your grade who still believes in Santa.

“No, nothing’s changed. But I’m trusting God with it!”

“No updates yet, but I know God has a plan.”

“Nope, haven’t heard anything new yet. We’re still chugging along.”

Even the best-intentioned friends can make waiting worse. When being patient and having hope is so countercultural, even mature Christians can encourage you to move on or let go of a dream before the Spirit has released you from it. When you love someone, you don’t want to see them in pain, and waiting can be very painful. We rush to give advice or solutions to stop a wound from bleeding, but our “comforting” balm often feels like rubbing alcohol to the aching heart. As someone who’s been waiting on a big dream, I’ve had to remind myself that my friends aren’t sitting in hours of prayer, worship, and scripture over my circumstances. They hear a two-minute update and want to make me feel better. Holding space for the unknown is challenging, especially when that space seems to be hurting someone you care about. Holding that space takes a deep awareness of our incompetence and God’s perfect providence.

Our perspective, as humans, is limited. It’s distorted by our knowledge and experiences, which are restricted to our own vantage point. God, on the other hand, has an unlimited perspective. He made every facet of the universe, even galaxies we haven’t discovered yet. He knows every thought of every person who ever existed. We can’t begin to wrap our minds around everything God knows and sees. We can’t begin to fathom how much He saves us from that we’re completely unaware of. In this humility, this awareness of His great majesty and our sliver of reality, we have to accept that He knows best. If we believe He loves us and that His love can be trusted, then we have to accept that He wants what’s best for us and the people we love.

Getting this perspective when it comes to waiting is extremely unnatural.

Therefore, we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Throughout my waiting, the Lord has consistently brought a few images to mind. I’ve learned (the hard way) that when the Lord doesn’t seem to be moving, He’s often laying ground for the greatest harvest. Our human perspective is like a curtain obscuring our view of His heavenly fields. He’s constantly planting seeds, tilling our hearts, and pulling up weeds that would drown out our growth. We just can’t always see it. God works in the eternal, not the temporary. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “He has planted eternity in the human heart, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” I think sometimes that curtain of our understanding is drawn shut, on purpose, to encourage and deepen our faith. As we walk through the momentary light afflictions – worry, impatience, fear, embarrassment – of our wait, we have the opportunity to shift our focus from the mess on Earth to the promises of Heaven. Instead of focusing on what we don’t have yet – the house, the job, the money, the spouse – we can tilt our gaze up to look above and beyond our circumstances. If we don’t have what we’re praying for yet, there must be more work to be done in the fields of our hearts.

I won’t let my circumstances or reality cloud my hope in Your Word, Your promises. I know You and I trust You. Through heartbreak and longing, Your sweet presence shelters my soul. You bind me in joy.

My wait is nowhere near over. My timeline draws out longer and longer with every new development. I’m learning to trust that God has a plan in every setback or pause. Just because I didn’t get my miracle now doesn’t mean He’s stopped working. Every false start is an opportunity for me to consecrate my dreams to His will and keep my heart open to more refining. The human heart is fickle and flighty, and the work of faith is never fully done. If I want His best, I have to put my future in His hands—day after day after day, hour after hour. I know my heart’s desire is good and pure, and I know I would use it to further God’s kingdom. But there is a chance that it’s not His very best for me.

You fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow—you are not sowing the body that will be, but only a seed, perhaps of wheat or another grain. But God gives it a body as He wants, and to each of the seeds its own body. Not all flesh is the same flesh; there is one flesh for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is different than that of the earthly ones. There is a splendor of the sun, another of the moon, and another of the stars; in fact, one star differs from another star in splendor. So it is with the resurrection of the dead: Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption; sown in dishonor, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written, The first man Adam became a living being, the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual." 
1 Corinthians 15:36-44

When we’re operating in our own power, it’s easy to believe that our dreams are always 100% right, sacred, and good. Most dreams do sound lovely: to have a baby, to get married, to share our gifts with the world, to start something that makes a difference. There’s nothing wrong with any of those desires, but there may be something lacking in our mindset. We could long for something very good, but it may not be God’s very best.

Just as our broken, earthly bodies can’t inherit a heavenly kingdom, our distorted and earthly dreams can’t bring God’s will to earth as it is in heaven. When we lay our dreams down for God, sacrificing them on the altar, we make room for Him to resurrect our dreams as something holy and life-giving. What you give to God in prayer will be resurrected in His hands. Just as Hannah consecrated Samuel to God’s service and Abraham built an altar for Isaac, we’re invited to give our dreams to God as an offering, a sacrifice.

Anyone who claims to know all the answers doesn’t really know very much. But the person who loves God is the one whom God recognizes.
1 Corinthians 8:2-3

We can rest knowing that the work God is doing in our lives is for eternity. Our plans are focused on the here and now, the temporary. His plans are drafted with an eternal perspective. We may not have all the answers – for our questions or others – but we do know that the Lord’s plans are fuller and sweeter. His ways are higher than ours, and He is working for our eternal good.