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Anticipating God’s Best While You Wait

Exploring Faith, Family, and Community

Anticipating God’s Best While You Wait

Anticipating God

During a recent conversation with a friend, she compared my family’s season of waiting on God to someone waiting to board a plane.

Her analogy gave me a new perspective on our waiting.

Sometimes the waiting seems to take forever.

When Jay was ordained in 2014, we both felt our time at our current church was coming to an end. We had a youth that we knew needed our guidance until graduation, and we expected God to move us soon afterward.

God’s plans aren’t always what we think, and while we continued to minister during our wait, frustration got the better of us. By the fall of 2015, we were in a difficult place that it seemed we’d never get out of. It consumed too much of our thinking and the resulting fall out could have been devastating to our family.

Still, we waited.

Knowing there was something to be learned even in our struggles, we looked for God’s message. And we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

It’s nearly fall 2018, and in many ways, we are still waiting for God’s direction. While we’ve moved to a new season of ministry, there is still the element of waiting lingering and no clear direction on what we are waiting for.

What’s changed is how we view our wait!

Rather than feeling frustrated with what appears to be silence, we are eagerly waiting for God to reveal His plan. It’s like a child anticipating the gifts that come with Christmas!

Few parents would give their child a bad gift on Christmas. God our Father always has the best in store for us. Why wouldn’t we anticipate His will in our lives.

Matthew 7: 9 – 11 gives us an example of this. In these verses, Christ compares how we gift our children with how God will gift us. Verse 11 says, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!”

Finding peace while we wait.

In many ways, our wait continues. We still don’t fully understand the direction God has for us. While we continue to ask, He continues to grow us for whatever is next without revealing His plan. Still, there is peace in knowing God is in control of our lives and promises us He will give us the best.

Is there anything you’ve been waiting for from God? How have you found peace in the waiting?