I had just gotten back to my house and was ready to get some food in me and take a good long nap. I had just gotten back from a really long week at camp and was exhausted from everything. I was boiling water over the stove and had poured the noodles in the water to begin cooking. I walked to my bedroom to grab some clothes to put into the laundry. It had only been about a minute since the noodles had been cooking. As I entered the kitchen I picked up the seasoning for the soup and began opening up the package to pour it in (yes, I was making Ramen...) when the thought, “If you’re patient it will be better,” popped into my head. The noodles weren’t ready yet, and sometimes when I get impatient waiting, I’ll pour the seasoning in too early and then the soup doesn’t taste very good and I’ll regret it later.
I love how God uses the smallest things to get my attention. On the way home from getting my car, I drove around for a bit to just wind down from the week. I enjoy spending time in the car sometimes with worship music on and other times just enjoying the silence. It’s one of the few precious moments I can be in solitude. I tend to cry a lot during these times, not necessarily because I’m sad, but most of the time just because God shows me so much of who He is. It’s almost as if I’ll go my whole day forgetting that He’s been waiting on me, and the moment I get into my car, He’s there and I remember that I can just hand Him everything I’ve been trying to juggle myself and He takes it away from me in an instance. The burden is lifted from me and onto Him. I’m mesmerized at His love for us. I was thinking about the blog and what I might write today. I thought, “I write a lot on suffering, and feel like I might have said everything I know about it for it right now.” Just as I was thinking about this, I passed a church and read their sign. It read, Romans 8:14-17. For those of you who know my story, this is the exact passage I enclosed in the letter Billy and I sent out when we decided to call off the wedding. The scripture challenges us that as heirs of Christ, IF we indeed suffer with Christ, we also will be gloried together with Christ. It’s the scripture I have clung to during this season. It’s been a huge encouragement to me.
Before I had started the soup, I was having a hard moment thinking about everything and had allowed my mind to have control over my emotions. What I love so much about God is that He knows our hearts inside and out. He also knows the plans we have yet to be able to see through our hurts. It was so simple, but as I heard the words, “If you’re patient, it will be better,” I couldn’t help but smile. I truly did have my mind on the soup, but God used that to quickly change the thought to Him as a reminder to wait on Him.
I know when you’re going through a difficult time people tend to say, “be patient and wait on the Lord. His plans are so much bigger and better than anything you can imagine. You’re time will come.” Well, all I can say to you, is listen. They’re right. It’s so hard, but He is so good and He really does love us!
Billy wrote my mom a letter and she received it while I was at camp. She let me read the letter, and although it was hard to read, it brought me so much joy to see how God really is working in him and he’s recognizing it. He mentioned the lesson I always share with people in my testimony that I believe the greatest sufferings bring our greatest blessings. I praised the Father, because although we don’t know where we will be in the years to come, if the past two years were only to do what He’s doing in Billy right now, it was worth it. God is glorified in those words and it is already a blessing to me to be able to see that.
Remember Job in his time of trials. The Lord says in Job 2:6, as He speaks with Satan, “Behold he is in your hand, but spare his life.” What a remarkable mark in time. God claims Job as a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil. Job 2:9, “Then his wife said to him, ‘Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!’” Job 2:12-13, speaking of Job’s friends says, “..they lifted their voices and wept; and each one tore his robe and sprinkled dust on his head towards heaven. So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.” Although Job’s wife and friends loved Job very much, and they meant well, we see Job keep His eyes on God. He knows that even in His trials, God is bigger than whatever adversities he’s facing. He asks his wife in vs. 10, “Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall not accept adversity?”
He says it perfectly in 1:21, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Flip to the end of Job and you’ll read Job’s response to the Lord, “I know that you can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Listen, please, and let me speak; You said, ‘I will question you, and you shall answer Me.’ I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear. But now my eye sees You.”
vs. 12 “Now the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than the beginning.”
Continue to walk in this way, and you too shall be blessed.
Endure, Be Patient and Praise Him above All Things.
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