372 Dare to Wait Well

I know for myself, when I am in moments of waiting has a very unique way of kind of exposing what's inside of me.

It pulls to the surface every fear, every insecurity, every area of unbelief, every area where I don't trust.

All of those things start coming to the surface.

When you started this journey and you noticed that it wasn't this prayer wasn't getting answered quickly.

What were some of the things internally that you started being revealed about yourself? How did Holy Spirit start revealing places for him to touch in your own heart, in your own life during the waiting process?

Absolutely.

I think that's such a good question because one of the things we, one of the Christian cliches we tend to hear that's so true, but sometimes it's, okay, what does that mean is God works in our waiting? And that's encouraging to hear when you're waiting, but you're like, okay, what does he do practically? Give me some tangible things.

examples of what that can look like.

And so I actually have a companion Bible study to the book and we unpack six key ways that God works in the waiting.

And one of those ways is healing.

I think that exactly like you said, oftentimes God uses the waiting when we're not seeing the external movement in our circumstances to bring about change in us, to change us into his image.

And so he starts to surfaced things in our heart, in our lives, in our past that he wants to heal, whether that is an area of sin or whether that's something that was done to us or some way that we were hurt or an identity that's not rooted in his character.

And one of the things I always like to really remember about that, because I think we hear the word expose and it feels really scary.

But when we think about how in scripture in first John, we're told that God is light and in him is no darkness.

And one of the things light does by its very nature is it exposes.

But again, when we think about how God is light, he's not this light where we're standing on a stage and there's this spotlight cast on us to air all of our dirty laundry and expose us.

Rather, he's a searchlight that is seeking out the deepest corners of our heart of our lives.

to draw us closer to him because those things that are, you know, keeping us in shame or keeping us in fear, ultimately he wants to free us of those things and feel us of those things.

And so there was a lot that God really unearthed.

This story covers the span of 10 years, but just to briefly name a few, as I mentioned, I had grown up in a Christian home and known all the right Jesus Sunday school answers, but it really wasn't until life stopped, stopped working the way that I wanted it to and things stopped going the way that I wanted I had planned, that God really started to bring me into a deeper relationship with himself.

And a lot of that was understanding my own brokenness and sinfulness, which sounds heavy, but it was actually so beautiful because the gospel is that Jesus died for our sins so that we can be restored to relationship with him.

But until we have an understanding of our sin and our brokenness, we can't fully appreciate what he actually did for us and the new life that he came to bring us.

And so a lot of it was moving from this, like, I'm this good Christian girl.

And yes, I know Jesus died for my sin, but really exposing some of those sins in my heart, pride and identity that thought that being married young and having kids young was going to give me a sense of purpose give me a sense of identity and first and foremost drawing me into deeper relationship with him where I've heard the quote said that anything that keeps us from our bible is our enemy as harmless it may be as it may appear but I think what I really found to be true is the opposite of that is also true that the things that push us into our bible even when they're painful even when it is the waiting season that lasted far longer than we imagined that keeps us crying out to God, that's a blessing, even when it doesn't feel like it.

And that's the place where intimacy with Jesus is often found.