“The Lord went ahead of them, He guided them during the day with a pillar of cloud and He provided light at night with a pillar of fire. This allowed them to travel by day or by night.” (Exodus 13:21 NLT)
At the prompting of a scripture in Exodus last February, I resigned as co-pastor from our church of nearly four years. It was a heart-wrenching surrender, yet one I’m still confident was the Lord’s leading. Five months have passed and I haven’t ‘heard’ anything from Exodus. The pillar of cloud/fire has not moved further than the two blocks from the church to my house. We’ve been sitting here, praying and waiting, wading through the hurt that comes when pastors leave churches.
This morning I opened up my Restoration Year devotional and today’s reading began with this scripture. My heart was pricked. Maybe the Lord is fixin’ to move.
(Side Note: fixin’ to is a perfectly wonderfully southern phrase for which the north has no counterpart. It doesn’t mean actually doing, it’s more like we’re working up to doing; getting our head game ready for the actual effort of doing.)
It’s interesting to me that this text would come to me today. Yesterday we had a hint of movement. One, maybe two of the many things that have to happen for our family to pull up tent stakes and follow the Lord have happened. But this morning, I am not jumping the gun. I’m still waiting, thankful for any morsel of hope that the tiniest forward movement has provided. I’m still praising God for His faithfulness for a full five months of food on the table and enough cashflow for the monthly mortgage.
I don’t want to get ahead of God and neither should you. We need to stay under His cloud and safe by His fire. Whatever needs to happen will happen at just the right time because God is sovereign. Our singular role is still that of obedience; holding still or following closely.
John Eldredge writes about praying for guidance. In today’s reading, he provides four instructions for prayer in the wait zone.
Reduce the pressure. I know exactly what he means by that. The longer we wait, the more the pressure builds. Our mind becomes a mental instapot with a broken command center. We want to know what’s next and the not-knowing builds up in our blood and our brain. Prayer alone turns the knob and releases the steam that clogs up our spiritual senses. Just as we can’t hardly hear when we step off a plane with clogged ears, we can’t hardly hear God when the pressure of not-knowing has grown out of proportion.
Be open to what God has to say. If God is, say, calling you to Africa and you are adamantly opposed to going to Africa, then you likely won’t hear Him when He says “Africa.” The silence will be deafening. But if you are open to anything, God is free to say everything. In our story, I’ve reached a place of utter surrender. I actually said that to my husband yesterday; “I’m so ready for God’s will that where is of little consequence. I just want to be obedient to my calling and close to God.”
Don’t fill in the blanks. Oh, this is tempting for us test-racers. You know what I’m talking about; the kids who put their pencils down as though the grades go up according to turn-in time. We are the overachievers love to guess what goes in the next blank before the teacher gets to share the material. This gets us nowhere with God. Actually, it might stall us out altogether. Only God fills in the blanks, because He’s the Author of the story. If we start filling in the blanks on our own, it might look more like a mad-lib than the masterful novel it’s intended to be. Surrender frees us up to watch in awe as God painstakingly pencils His intentions in the blank spaces of our story. His ways are always higher than ours.
Give it some time. This might be the piece we hate the most. As finite humans we are perpetually worried about running out of time. We forget we serve an infinite God and He has opened up eternity to us. We think we need to do all the things here and now, in this life. This kind of thinking makes us race against an imaginary clock. We lose sight of the truth that this life is only briefest preparation for the next life. When we remember we have all eternity, we can slow down and appreciate the pace of today.
God will move at just the right time; it’s what He does best. All our worry will not hurry Him along in the least. Months ago, someone I love dearly said to my frantic soul: “Anna, perhaps it just isn’t time to know.” I didn’t like it then, but today I am learning that just as much as there is a wrong time, there’s also a right time. The Lord determines it all.
“At the right time, I, the Lord, will make it happen.” (Isaiah 60:22 NLT)
Dear Lord, today I’m going to trust You. Today I’m going to do only the things that today requires. I’m going to believe that the whole matter will move forward without my worry, as You ordain it. I’m going to pray and release the pressure in my heart and mind. I’m going to stay open to whatever You might say. I’m going to resist the urge to fill in the blanks and I’m going to give it time. Amen.