Waiting is a Test

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Have you ever had an offhand comment buzz around in your head...trying to get you to see something, understand something, put some pieces together...until you just have to sit down and figure out what is going on?

Last week, a post on facebook quoted my friend Melinda, who had been the featured speaker at the morning ladies' Bible study at church...that I don't attend, as I'm working away on the other end of the building.

But that quote got under my skin...and I finally had to spend 20 minutes scrolling through the past week's posts on Facebook until I found it again so I could record it.

'If you have an issue and you don't deal with it, it goes from being your shadow to being your introduction. ' 

 Last week, I read it, thought, 'Oh, that's good.'  and went on about the day's business.

But that thought kept nagging at me.

Your issue will become your introduction.  Your issue will become your introduction.  Your issue will become the first thing people notice about you and it will become your identity.  Do you want your issue to become your identity?

And so on.

Sunday morning, our worship set included the song 'Nothing Compares'...the bridge of which is a single lyric, repeated several times:

All my past is gone.

Of course, the context for that is all the yucky stuff, all the bad decisions and relationships and whatever that is in the past is covered by the blood once we come to Christ...we're new creatures, all things are new.

However, as I was singing that Sunday morning, I suddenly realized that also applied to past ministry positions, things I did for a season but are now in the past.  Good stuff, not yucky stuff.  But it's done now.

All my past is gone.

And I can carry that around...the 'I used to' , the 'I was' until the 'I used to' becomes my identity.  And if the 'I used  to' is my identity, how can I ever move into the new 'I am'?

Mix into that an epiphany yesterday morning...I have completed the course I felt I needed to take in the interim and, as is normal, I was chomping at the bit to get myself launched into the Next Thing.
Suddenly, I heard a question in my spirit...How many of those past ministry areas did you get involved with because that's what you wanted to do?

I pondered that.  And the only thing I could come up with was our attempts at being small group leaders.  Tried several kinds of small groups...and they just never got going.  There was a little good stuff from those efforts, but just a little, and then each fell apart in turn.  But all the other areas I've worked in...Sunday School teacher, youth group leader, Christian Women' Job Corps Bible teacher, Girls Ministry sponsor...came to me.  Some of them I even resisted doing for a bit.  None of them were positions I pursued at all.

And I got it.

I carried my Bible and journal to the sanctuary for lunch yesterday and had a contemplative quite time.  I ended up pulling all the mementos from the pocket on the back cover of my journal...my DIVE cards, plus a number of other odd notes and such.  One of them was from an exercise we did in the leader's session of the 2008 Women's conference...a prophetic writing that I wrote and then found I was writing for myself:

Blessed is the one who waits on Me, who doesn't run ahead.  
Waiting is a test.
I will take you all the way to the journey's end in an instant if you wait on Me before you start.
If you start without Me, you will be toiling when you could be resting and you will not get there any sooner.
So wait at the start -- rest and worship.  Deepen yourself in Me,  drink from the well there, and in due season I will come and take you Myself to the destiny you have before you.

Is. 46:4  - 'Even to your old age and gray hairs, I am he, I am he who will sustain you.  I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.'  

For the first time in quite a while, I suddenly had peace about the NOW.  Because I don't have to figure out what is next...it will come at the time it is supposed to come.  I don't have to go find it or create it or push my way into it.

What a relief. ;-)