Recognizing Weakness in the Waiting

So here we are... where we've been for the past few quiet months... waiting. Not looking for signs or wonders or writing in the clouds. Just reading and praying and living this life for Jesus day by day. Knowing that all He wants from us is fellowship. Just to walk with us. That's really all we want from Him too. When He is ready to redirect this route somewhere else, we're ready to follow. 

Tyler and I are learning a great deal in this waiting time. The humbling truth that we can do nothing for the Lord, and He does everything for us is freeing, and only brings us to worship Him more.

In a few days, we will welcome a new addition to our family. This sweet new addition will undoubtedly need a whole lot of attention. He or she will be frail, completely dependent upon us to sustain his or her life, demanding, ungrateful, but loved like crazy. Sacrifices will be made for this child that he or she will not be able to even comprehend. The cries will be answered, the chills will be warmed, the hunger pangs will be satisfied, the discomfort will be coddled. Because of the love that a parent has for a child.

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? Matthew 7:11

Now, compared to other people, Tyler and I are not evil. But when we are compared to the TRUE AND LIVING GOD, and his holiness, we are desperately wicked. This is how our Father in heaven relates to us... magnified by eternity. We can do nothing. We cry and flail and hunger for more than this world can offer us. And whether we realize it or not, He satisfies our every need. By His grace, He includes us in His plans to reveal His great power and glory to this desperate people.

In His timing, we're not going to Africa to feed hungry bellies or to clothe naked bodies or to free hell-bound souls. We're going to Africa because God told us that's where He wants to walk with us. Whatever He wants to do there in Africa while we walk with Him is His business.

We can do nothing for the Kingdom of God, but by God's empowering and grace all over us, He will do the work through us. What God requires of us in order to be used by Him: truly recognize our own desperately sinful state, accept the forgiveness He offered on the cross, and just walk with Him day by day.

What this looks like in my own personal life: Hold my tongue when I think I deserve more, or when I know I am right, because it pleases the Lord to have a humble heart. And repent when I don't. Recognize I deserve hell, and no more. Guard my eyes and ears against the wicked things that may not offend the world, but I know they offend my Holy God. And repent when I don't. Cook meals, do the dishes, change the diapers, wash a mountain of laundry every day, wipe the runny noses, and all the rest that may go unnoticed... with a happy heart... because it glorifies God to take on the role of a servant. And repent when I don't. The God of the Universe chose to do much more for us.

I suppose this is what waiting on the Lord is. Just living for Him where we are. Expecting change, but not striving with the unknowns. Allowing the Lord to renew our strength, just as He promised to do in Isaiah 40:31. "Renew" is like an exchange. In the waiting, we are exchanging our own strength for that of the Lord's. And that is how we shall mount up with wings as eagles; we shall run, and not be weary; and we shall walk, and not faint. Because it's the Lord doing it in these desperate sinners in Port Gibson, and in all of us who choose to walk this Way.