I've been joggling in my mind this theme of waiting on God's Perfect Timing for the past one week. It started off with my quiet time topic on John 11, talking about Jesus' withdrawal to a place a few miles from Jerusalem, with the possible interpretation of Jesus focusing on his father's timing to be the passover lamb. This topic just echos my current season of waiting: waiting for job advancement, waiting for the studies to finish, waiting for a relationship, waiting for people to change their hearts and so on.
"Everything has it's own timing; when it's time, it will happen." A well-known cliche, even in non-biblical context. But until this perfect timing comes, one just has to wait. Waiting is just a terrible thing, as miserable as receiving a bad outcome or sometimes even worse. Even though I perfectly appreciate, understand and am convinced that God's plans for me are in God's time domain, everything has it's divine order and I am to enjoy every season that God has given , I just find it hard to sail through this period patiently. I am just not the type of person who likes to remain inactive and wait patiently for something to happen. It gives me the feeling that I am really powerless (even though I really am) and I am at the mercy of external forces.
After some time, some research and some experience, I'm convinced that in order to complement this passivity with my restlessness, I can only actively trust, resist and pray. The three elements actually complement and work hand in hand. "Trust in Him at all times, O people." (Psalm 62:8) "I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.' (Psalm 130:5)
Trusting, because that's the basics of the whole beliefs. If He is not answering my prayers, it's not because He can't hear or He ignores me, but because He has a grand plan, in His time frame and in His way of answering my prayers. By trusting, it pacifies the restless heart.
Resisting, because there is always the temptation of taking things into my own hands. I want to expertise the whole thing, in the end I just show that I don't trust God and I don't listen to God. Pacifying my heart with the trust of my God will probably help me to be filled with patience and rest in God.
Praying, because that's the way to let out all the anxieties and let God handles the whole matter. Very often, when I am troubled, or sad, I (well at least for girls) tend to look for someone to talk to, just someone to listen to my problems will lighten my burden. I don't even intend to seek their advice most of the time. Talking to God is probably the best source that I can ever find. For me, prayer is like a private conversation with God. It is very personal, very intimate and is also the best way of seeking to listen to God's reply. Every time I pray, my focus will be realigned and tuned. The prayer on the matter is different every time, though similar. It's like the Newton-Raphson method of getting to the closest solution through some iterations. It's also like finding the best recipe for a dish. How much salt and sugar to put, how long it should be baked and so on have to be refined through some trials. For every prayer, I check my heart, listen to God's answer and next time when I pray on that same matter, I can refine the prayer and I believe this will eventually tune my heart and make me aware of what God's plan for me. is
God always allows us to have the freedom to choose, to decide and to contribute to our own lives. I believe we are also given the honour to be a co-author of our lives. Even this is part of His plan. Sometimes we can just be easily lost as we have absolutely no idea how to exercise this freedom. We have the freedom to hasten the matters, but if we want to conform to God's time, trusting, resisting and praying persistently are probably good procedures to adopt.
Anna
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