Have you ever cried out to God for answers, forgiveness or justice, and instead of God’s immediate response you are given words of comfort and reassurance of God’s presence and involvement in your life? Oftentimes when you are hurting, perplexed and very tired of going through it, God may not give you any immediate answers, or perform any amazing miracles, instead He may speak to you in difference ways to comfort you and reassure you of His control and involvement in your life. When God does this, He is essentially letting you know that He has heard your heartfelt prayers, He’s seen your frustrations and He knows your pain. He is working and He will make all things work together for your good in His perfect timing. However as you may have figured out, God’s perfect timing can take a while to manifest, so when God doesn’t act, respond or change things immediately, expect and welcome His comfort and reassurance in your life of His workings to “Fix” all that ails you!

After you receives God’s comfort and reassurance comes the waiting on God.  The waiting that fills the space between our crying out for help, answers, mercy, or justice and the time those very things are made manifest in God’s timing can oftentimes seems like some of the longest and most painful days of your life. Can you relate to that?

Waiting can be hard and it can feel the worst.

For example…

We have decided to put our house on the market.  After years and years of talking about someday moving to a place with more land, we’ve decided to take the plunge and make “someday” a fixed point in the foreseeable future, rather than simply the subject of late night pillow talk.  All that stands between us and our future home is the staging and selling of our current one.

If you’ve never had the singular thrill of selling a house when said house is populated with small children, then allow me to tell you that it is decidedly unpleasant.  Before we can even put the house on the market, everything has to be repainted; all the handprints covered over with a coat of nondescript, soulless taupe.  Each broken doorknob, scuffed up stairwell, and cluttered bookcase has to be mended, cleaned, and thinned out.  It is long, dreary work, made soul-crushing by the fact that for every one grubby surface you clean and paint, two others spring up in their wake.

The thing is, I’ve been through this before.  This will be the fourth move my husband and I have undertaken since getting married–the third time since having children.  You would think I’d be able to take a deep breath and just trust that God will see us through the messy process.  But I never do. What about you? When God comforts and reassures you of His working and involvement in your life when you are going through what seems to be “Hell” do you take a deep breath and trust God or are you like me, constantly pacing the floor and worrying about things I can’t change or control?

Most of us know that God wants our trust in Him, His timing, His intentions and His abilities, so why then is it so hard for us all to do this? I’ve been thinking about this and I think it may be because we were all created with the sin nature and because of the sin nature, daily we have to fight the old corrupt sin nature that was in us before Christ intervened and changed us and gave us a new nature. So because we’re fighting the old nature daily but living in the new nature that Christ has provided for us, we sometimes get off track, and doubt, complain and question God.

Since we may all struggle with resting in the comfort and trust that God offers, I’d like to offer you an easy challenge this Holiday season to better help you trust God as you wait on Him. Are you ready for the challenge? The challenge is, “Let’s all try to complain less and trust God more” as we wait on Him. Let’s trust that God really is in control and He really does have our best interests at heart and He is working as fast as He can to create “right”solutions and “right” outcomes for each of us as we walk closer to him to try to get to the destiny that He has for us!

Where is the waiting space in your life?  Is it a promotion that hasn’t appeared yet?  A spouse you’re still waiting to meet? A pregnancy that seems cruel in its refusal to come about?  Find that transitional area in your life, and during this Holiday season, ask Christ to come into that raw, unsettled space, and fill it with His love, His peace and His abundance as you wait on God.

Shared with you by Carrie Donaldson with the team effort of “The WIN International Ministries Team”