So, I left you off last time saying: “sometimes it’s not our choices that lands us in the fires of life…sometimes they just happen, but it is our choice whether we will allow God to do what He wants to do and how He wants to do it in our lives…” Let me share with you how I’ve come to this revelation and how God showed it to me…
It all came about while I was looking for some scriptures that God had given me recently. I just wanted to write down the encouragement I had found in them. One of the scriptures involved the story of Abram and Sarai (Abraham and Sarah) in Genesis 16. It’s the story of how Abram and Sarai had been promised a child and decedents as numerous as the stars in the sky. Of course they were old so they had a hard time believing this promise, I am sure. Add on top of that God’s timing is not our timing. So, after a while of waiting for this promise to happen, Sarai did something we have all done…she got tired of waiting! So, she told Abram to sleep with her maid because she thought that maybe she could have children that way. She did something we are all guilty of, right? Trying to help God out! There have been too many times I have tried to do that myself, so I honestly get where Sarai was coming from. I mean she was like 90 years old when God gave Abram this promise…not only did it seem absolutely impossible to her that she could even physically have a child at her age, but God also didn’t seem to be in a hurry to actually make it happen! So, here she was carrying the “weight of the wait” and she was just plain tired! She was tired of waiting and wanted to just give God a little help…but oh, how that “help” actually hurt!
Once Sarai saw that Hagar was pregnant she actually became jealous and was mean to Hagar (who eventually fled into the desert). She got mad when her plan actually happened because it didn’t look or feel like she thought it would. How many times have we all found ourselves in the same boat as Sarai? Too many, if I am honest with myself!! And definitely more than I wish! As I was reading this story in my Bible I saw a devotional about it. My Bible is called The Everyday Life Bible and Joyce Meyer has put these devotionals throughout it. One of those devotionals caught my eye and I began to read it. Something Joyce Meyer said just really spoke to me. She wrote: “…Abram heeded her advice and Hagar conceived. The child, named Ishamael, was indeed a son, as God had spoken, but he was not the child of the promise. Abram and Sarai waited another fourteen years before Isaac, the true promised son, arrived.”
So, Sarai tried to take control and make her miracle happen, but what happened? Not only did it not really work, but then she had to wait another fourteen years before her true miracle took place! The Bible doesn’t say this, but it makes me think, maybe they had to wait another fourteen years because they tried to control things. Maybe, just maybe, their wait wouldn’t have been so long if they wouldn’t have fought for control….if they wouldn’t have tried to “help God out.”
Then that revelation made me think, how many times have I delayed my victory…my miracle because I wouldn’t surrender? Because I tried to help God out? How many times have I become weary in the wait and did just what Sarai did and then had to suffer the consequences of it? I’m not saying this is true of every situation we face, sometimes we have to wait a while because it takes God time to work out all that He has planned…but has some of my miracles been delayed because I responded as Sarai responded? Oh, I am sure of it!
As I read through this story and devotional…and as I meditated on it throughout the day, I felt like God was saying: “don’t give birth to the Ishmael’s. Don’t rush ahead of Me. Don’t try to work it out.” Over the course of our walk through this intense fire in our lives God has been reminding me over and over that He sees the end from the very beginning! He does have a plan and He has a purpose for all the pain we’ve experienced! He will work out every single detail that needs to be worked out. He won’t leave our story half written…He will finish it! And He will finish your story, too!
So, what is my job in all of this? I believe God has told me that my job is to surrender everything to Him and let Him do the work. Before we walked through this fire…before it was ever on my radar, I was at the altar at my church praying one Sunday and someone came up and prayed for me. They spoke a word to me that at the time I thought was for a current situation I was facing, but now walking through what we have had to walk through…I know it was meant for this season of our lives. The word was this: “Haley, it’s not your work and it’s not your provision…it’s Mine!” I have hung on to that word because even though everything we have walked through wasn’t on my radar, God knew it would take place and He knew I would need this encouragement! He knew I would need this reminder!
I believe that not only is surrender my responsibility, but so is speaking life and declaring victory even when the situation is screaming there is nothing but death and darkness! I can’t go around speaking the death that I feel and see or I won’t ever experience the life that God has planned and promised me! The Bible says that, “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” (Proverbs 18:21 NLT) We truly will eat the fruit of what we speak. And what we speak often starts in our minds because eventually, whatever we think will come out of our mouths. So, we have to fill our minds with truth…and truth is found in the very Word of God! We have to fill our minds with His Word so that when we are tempted to speak what we feel, we can instead speak what we know is truth!
A scripture that I have loved since I was a teenager comes to mind. Most of the people who have grown up with me or watched me grow up, know the story of how Jonathan and I ended up together. It truly was a “God thing.” Our paths wouldn’t have crossed if God hadn’t lined it up for us to meet. But before I met him, God gave me this scripture and it’s still one of my all time favorites. It’s Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself also in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” The part of this scripture our human selves want to gravitate to and cling to is “He will give you the desires of your hearts.” A lot of times we totally miss the very first part of this scripture…and I believe it’s the most crucial. It says to first “delight yourself in the Lord.” When we’re walking through the fires of life it’s so easy to get caught up in trying to pray ourselves through it as quickly as possible…pray our miracle into fruition as quickly as possible. It’s so easy to get caught up in trying to get our “gift” that we miss the most important part in our fight…the giver of every single gift we have or ever will have. We miss God. We miss those intimate moments with Him. We miss the lessons He wants us to learn. We miss the encouragement we could have simply because we can’t shift our focus to Him instead of our situation. I don’t say these things as if I have it all together and have walked through the fires of my life perfectly, because I definitely haven’t. But one of the things He has taught me in this particular season of my life is that He is my sufficiency, not anyone or anything else. Everything we “have” could be stripped from us in a moment! The one constant we have…the one assurance we always have is Jesus Christ! He is the one who will truly never leave us or forsake us!
None of these are easy to do. Surrender is hard! Changing our talk and thoughts is very hard! Making sure our hearts seek after God and not just what we want, is a struggle with our very human nature…but, I believe by God’s grace we can do it! Will we be perfect? Nope! But thankfully, God doesn’t require perfection, He just wants willing hearts! I encourage you guys (and myself), let’s not try to rush ahead of God and “help” him out…because if we do we just end up giving birth to Ishmael’s. We end up just giving ourselves headaches and heartaches and it causes our miracles…our “child of the promise” to be delayed. Waiting on God isn’t always easy, but it is so worth it!!
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