Driving to work recently I heard this song and really listened to the words for the first time.
This part brought me to tears...
When my faith gets tired
And my hope seems lost
You spin me round and round
And remind me of that song
The one You wrote for me
And we dance
I hate to admit it but the truth is my faith has been tired before.
Like.....I'm done God, tired and DONE.
Have you ever prayed for something over and over and over again
with what seems like no answer?
When you feel like God is not hearing you or ignoring you or
must have better things to do than answer?
I have.
For almost 10 years straight I prayed the same prayer.
In the beginning I prayed it every day.
But as the years passed, I grew weary.
Like tuckered out (that's a Texas word y'all), exhausted, dragging WEARY.
And to be honest, I'd get a little ticked off at waiting.
I'd get kinda irked at God.
So for a time I would stew about it and fuss at God
regarding it and stop praying for it.
I'd kinda temporarily give up.
But then my heart would be reminded that God
sometimes answers with WAIT instead of yes or no.
And I'd start praying again.
For TEN long YEARS I repeated this cycle.
{That's a long time to pray for something.}
God has lots to say in His word about faith and growing tired.
One of my favorite verse about faith is:
He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
Matthew 17:20
During that LONG season of waiting, I often felt like this verse in Psalm 22:
"Oh my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest" .
Psalm 22:2
Thankfully I was over and over again reminded that God is GOD, not me.
And that his plans are always best and better than mine.
This too is mentioned over and over and over again in His Word:
“Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.”
1 Corinthians 13:12 NLT
Don’t be weary in prayer; keep at it; watch for God’s answers, and remember to be thankful when they come. Don’t forget to pray for us too, that God will give us many chances to preach the Good News of Christ for which I am here in jail. Pray that I will be bold enough to tell it freely and fully and make it plain, as, of course, I should.
Colossians 4: 2-4
“ ‘My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the LORD.
‘And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways,
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.’”
Isaiah 55:8-9 NLT
“Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.”
James 1:2-4 MSG
Over those 10 years I finally realized is that sometimes....
1. God uses those struggles to get our attention. To draw us TO Him.
2. It is through our weakness that He can show His strength in our lives. HE IS OUR STRENGTH.
3. The answer is yes, no (I have something better for you), or wait/not now. {I don't know about you but that Wait one is hard for me!}
So the hard part is....I don't get to decide the order in which
what promises are given to me.
It's not up to me, it's up to Him.
God's promises for us are bigger than the promises we think He has for us.
His promises are greater than we could ever imagine.
My prayer was answered- after 10 long years-but not in a way
I would ever have guessed or imagined.
But it WAS answered. In God's time, not Shannon's time.
