God’s timing. When did anything in the Bible ever happen in anything else but God’s timing? When Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, it wasn’t in his timing that the situation changed, it was at the very last second…God’s timing. Going back even further, when Abraham and Sarah conceived Isaac…it wasn’t in their timing! Sarah was 90 years old and in her husbands words, beyond her prime. It was God’s timing though. It didn’t make sense to the humans in the story, but it made every bit of sense to God. What about Rebecca, praying for a child while she watched her sister, Leah, have son after son after son…She must have questioned God’s timing continuously. What about Hannah praying for children or the Israelites and the Egyptians, or Joseph, or Saul on the Damascus Road…

In each story, and the list could be as long as my arm, God’s timing turned out to be the best timing. It rarely made sense as the individuals were going through their lives, but when it all panned out, it turned out that God knew what he was doing and his timing was best.

After I left my husband I know that people were praying for my return. I’ve had people tell me that they were praying for my eyes to be opened, for me to be able to see what I was doing. In their opinion, their prayers should have applied to me two years ago, as soon as I left my husband. God should have listened to them as they were praying for me and, at that moment, zapped me with those blessings. But it didn’t happen that way. It took two years for me to go through my trials and to run away from God and my marriage, in order for me to be blessed (finally!) with seeing eyes and hearing ears. This was highly inconvenient for the people praying for me, it made no sense, and it likely still doesn’t make any sense to them. Why did it have to take two years? But does this mean that it wasn’t in God’s timing? Does this mean that their prayers weren’t answered?

No. Far from it.

It means that God’s timing isn’t our timing. It means that God heard their prayers and their prayers were answered.

Someone once told me that prayers are like drops of water going up to heaven. They’re kept in a bowl and once they fill that bowl, the answered prayers overflow and pour out. I love that visual. Prayer is about continually trusting that God has perfect timing and will apply your prayers when he sees fit. You only need to keep on praying. Just because our prayers aren’t answered at the exact right time, in our opinion, doesn’t mean that God isn’t hearing them or that he isn’t planning on answering them. It just means that his timing is his timing. He will answer your prayers in his way and his time. And it. will. be. perfect.

There is a reason that God chooses not to answer prayer at specific times. His eyes are always on you, his ears always hear your voice, but sometimes it feels as though he’s just not there. He is! He wants to hear your concerns, your praise, your requests, your worship. But he may choose not to answer your prayers in your timing. He only asks that we have the perseverance to push forward and ignore our feelings about his presence. We need to ignore what our human emotions are telling us and have faith that he is beside us continuously and answering our prayers in his time and his way. And it. will. be. perfect.

Our God is a God of healing. A God of miracles. A God of the impossible. A God of restoration. He loves us with a love we can’t even fathom. He chases us with a fervor we couldn’t attempt. He will never leave us and his plans are only for the best for us. If we allow ourselves to surrender to him and allow him to take over our lives, we will be amazed at the fulfillment we feel. Not only that, but we will be amazed at the simplicity life takes. It’s hard to trust an unseen God to take control of our lives, but it’s even harder to continually push forward through life against the current. When we learn to release control to God, the God that knows you better than anyone else and only wants the best for you, we will begin to see miracles in our lives. And it. will. be. perfect.

 

I think about the amount of excuses I make in order to avoid taking the steps of obedience that God is asking of me, and it blows me away. When God told me to return to my commitment of marriage to my husband, there were SO many excuses. But he doesn’t love me. But he lives so far away. But he’ll never give me another chance. But he’s dating someone else. But my friends will think I’m crazy. When God told me to move back to my hometown, there was another handful of excuses. But I don’t want to live in a small town. But it will cost so much money to move. But my friends will think I’m insane. But I have no money. But I won’t have a job. But I’ll have to live with my parents again….

There are SO many human excuses we can make to avoid doing what God has told us to do!

God has told me to take certain steps in my life. Before I left my husband, he told me to keep trying. He told me not to move. He told me to keep reading my bible. He told me to keep going to church. But with my human eyes, these didn’t seem like good options. I couldn’t see how doing these things would change anything.

Obedience to God isn’t about making sense. It’s not about doing what makes sense to us! It’s about being obedient to our GOD and trusting that whatever he’s asking of us is in his plan for our lives. It’s about just doing it! Just taking those steps to shut our mouths and obey him.

God doesn’t care about our excuses, our excuses don’t make sense to him. He has infinite power over our lives, our excuses are just empty words to him. He can see the whole picture, he knows that if we just listen to him and take the steps to do what he’s telling us to do, everything will make sense to us eventually.

Looking back at the excuses I made to avoid returning to my marriage and my hometown, I see that none of them were valid. I moved back to my hometown and somehow the money wasn’t an issue. I moved back in with my parents and don’t mind it a bit. I am loving my life in a small town and the quietness and peacefulness it’s bringing. And I had a job within a week of moving back. My friends, the ones that thought I was crazy for taking both the step to return to my commitment to my marriage and to return to my hometown, have faded away. It turns out we weren’t as close as I thought we were and their opinions aren’t important to me anymore.

God has taken care of all of my concerns and shown me that I needed to just take that leap of faith…he’s shown me that it wasn’t really that big of a leap, the ground was closer than I thought, and that cliff I thought I was jumping off was just a tiny hill. God has shown me that even when something seems impossible to me, I need to obey him and he will prove to me that nothing is impossible for him. God has shown me that I only need to be obedient, even when it doesn’t make sense at all, and he will provide all of my needs. God has shown me the power of prayer.

God doesn’t want to hear our excuses. To him, our opinion of his commands are laughable. He chuckles when we try to tell him that our situations are impossible to fix or that his requests can’t be accomplished…All God asks is that we obey him. And when we do obey him, when we shut up and do what he says, we will see just how big our God is. He will bless us in our obedience! And the biggest blessing we could ever ask for is to see the power that our God is capable of!