God's Cultivating Hand
To my friends who are waiting for jobs/ministries/desires that are not presently available: Our current season is not wasted time. In this season of waiting, perhaps God is cultivating a well that you will draw from for the next 50 years of your life.
The thing about a well is it must be dug out. They aren't just there. They are made by digging, drilling, and driving the tools into the ground. Once established though, they provide nutrients and water that are needed for many around them. Perhaps the only way God could dig that well deep enough and fill it with hope, grace, love, patience, wisdom, and love for Him... is by a painful season of waiting?
Don't rush His timeline friends. I know the pain of a good desire going unmet. But I also know that He is wise and loving, aware of what He is doing. Your time is not wasted. This season of your life is producing something in you. Keep being faithful to God with what He gives you. Be a servant to your friends, church, business, and family. And in the process, the well will be dug. The Lord is at work.
Lamentations 3:25
The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks Him.
In 15, 20, 35, 50 years when you stand where you long to be now. I wonder who you will be. I wonder what parts of you will be refined and better able to love, create, heal, lift up, sing, and sacrifice because of this season. You will need a deep well for that kind of life. The kind of life that lives for another world. The kind of life that invites others in. That seeks to heal and lift up the broken. That seeks to give. Don’t rush God’s timeline and process. For those who want to live a meaningful life, meaning is not only found in the grandiose moments of sacrificial giving. But also, sacrificial preparation.
Your faithfulness in this season is just as powerful, meaningful, and precious to the Lord as what you do with the dreams, gifts, and platforms He gives you later.
This current season is producing things in you that will help you be a better, more gracious mother. A more caring boss. A more patient father. You are being trained to trust in the Lord. You will be a better minister because you learned to suffer well. Pain makes one sensitive to others. There’s no shortcut to the beautiful gift of sensitivity in love.
And somewhere along that journey you will find that what is most important is not the job, ministry, or desire being fulfilled, but that you were with Jesus. He holds you, walks with you, and never lets you go. Keep waiting on Him, trusting that He works in the waiting. The well is being dug. The roots are being sent deep, of which will keep you secure when the storms of ministry swell.
Trusting his wise, sovereign, loving Hand with you,
Josh.
