I’ll be honest… I spent probably the majority of my prayer time asking God ‘why’ questions instead of asking Him to bring His heaven / glory to Swaziland the last couple of weeks. My priorities shifted. I got focused on my questions rather than trying to be an answer. But God wasn’t answering my questions, He was silent when I got to that part of my time with Him.
Then we all headed down for the World Racers debrief in South Africa. And God began to speak … it wasn’t an audible voice or anything like that, it was more being challenged by my own thoughts… you see when I left home I was excited about having any place to stay, and now I was complaining about having to live in community. I came knowing only the Black family and now I was beginning to feel lonely. I arrived having no idea what I would be doing, and now I was getting frustrated that it wasn’t on paper yet … nothing had changed in my circumstances and yet now I was getting angry, frustrated and confused.
I had trusted God before, so I need to trust Him now. I told God He could send me anywhere; so I shouldn’t complain for where I am. I told God I would do anything for Him; so I must be content, no I must be filled with joy and peace even if it means doing nothing or having only a moments notice before heading out the door. I told God He could have everything; so I shouldn’t complain when He takes things away.
You see I realized that God wasn’t changing. I was allowing my attitude to take control of my prayers, conversations and thoughts when that time should have been spent with the Lord. I was the one who had made all those silly prayers, sang all those words during worship (‘Lord I give you my life’, ‘I’ll be a living sacrifice,’ ‘Let my life be changed, renewed’), and now I was the one breaking those promises that I had made.
So now my prayer is that the next time life gets hard and I begin to question with ‘why…’ I’ll be reminded of what I had said in the past before God has to remind me. And I pray that the Lord will remind you of the words that you’ve spoken to Him. That you’ll remember that He always keeps His promises… we are the ones who forget about them.
