Over the course of the past few weeks, the Lord has begun to bring together pieces of a puzzle that have been scattered about in my mind.
In order to make this make sense, I need to go back a bit to the time when the Lord called me into a speaking and writing ministry. At that point, I had resisted His call for several months because I was terrified that I would allow the ministry to become all about ‘Leah’, rather than being all about Jesus. Finally, He got my attention and said, “We are going to do this.” I said, “Yes, sir”. I moved forward in fear and trembling, daily praying that He would help me to never let myself become the focus of the ministry that He was entrusting to me.
The year 2008 was a wonderful year of ministry for me with multiple speaking opportunities. I assumed that 2009 would be just as exciting, yet what I had not factored in was God’s waiting room. You know about it, don’t you? It is where God allows us to live for a season of time to accomplish a purpose often known only to Him for much of that time. Often the main purpose of God’s waiting room is to draw our focus away from something that has consumed us and back onto Him.
So it is with me. As the ministry flourished in 2008 and 2009 was on the horizon, without even being aware that I was doing it, I began to rely on things other than the Lord to grow the ministry. Things like posting on my blog, the number of people who visited my blog each day, developing contacts with others, my brochure, as well as many other things. Please understand, none of those are bad things. They just are not the main thing.
The Lord put me in His waiting room near the end of 2008 and has pretty much kept me there to this point. Yes, I am a slow learner but I think I am finally getting the message. This ministry was His to begin with; he simply entrusted it to me. It is all about Him and the responsibility for and timing of its growth rests with Him.
He has used several Scriptures and quotes to change my heart and remind me to wait on Him and rely on Him as He and I do this thing called ministry. Here are a few:
Romans 12: 1-2 (NLT) “And so dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”
Psalm 130: 5 (NIV) – “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.
Isaiah 26: 8 (NIV) – “Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts.”
Lamentations 3: 24 (NIV) – “I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”
This quote is from Charles Spurgeon and it reminds me of Who is esponsible for the ministry that has been entrusted to me.
“If I go upon the LORD’s errand with a simple reliance upon His power nd a single eye to His glory, it is certain that He will be with me. His ending me binds Him to back me up. Is not this enough? What more an I want? If all the angels and arch-angels were with me, I might fail; ut if He is with me, I must succeed. Only let me take care that I act worthily toward this promise. Let me not go timidly, halfheartedly, carelessly, presumptuously. What manner of person ought he to be who has God with him!
God may have you in His waiting room for an entirely different reason than He has me there. Regardless of why we are there, we must learn this lesson: He directs our paths and waiting on His timing for everything in our lives is truly the only way we will ever bring glory to Him.
