Whatcha Workin' On?

Waiting Is a Trial Too

If God's work isn't on pause even when it feels like something in my life is forever in a holding pattern, then what is He working on?

For a long time, I have known that God works on me during trials. However, I never quite thought of delay or waiting as one of those trials. It makes sense. Waiting can be one of the hardest things I do.

Waiting for more patience to develop in me.

Waiting to see the fruit of sowing hundreds of seeds.

I did that this month: phacelia, sunflowers, kale, carrots, peppers, poppies, a bunch of wildflowers, a few pounds of buckwheat, peas, black beans, white beans, and red beans. Tomato starts, tree transplants, and shrub transplants.

Lord, help it all grow.

Sowing and Waiting

One of my favorite children's stories, simply titled The Farmer, is about a humble widower who plants and prays.

Each year he experiences loss. Neighbor boys start a fire. A storm damages his farm. He has to sell his prized animals just to keep going.

Then, one year, when a thunderstorm starts a fire at the neighbors' place, he helps put it out. He shares some of his harvest with them, and that harvest turns out to be surprisingly abundant.

The neighbor who bought his cow and pig returns the kindness by giving his cherished animals back.

We sow and we wait, sometimes through very tough seasons that don't seem to have any visible harvest. Then suddenly there is abundance.

What's true about that story is not that God will eventually make your efforts successful.

It's that He is working out things through you and in you that you don't see yet.

The beautiful relationship with the neighbor who nearly destroyed your life.

You don't get that without a few storms, walking through some fire, and waiting on God's promises.

Nothing Coming From Me

There are things I'm just waiting on because I know they're impossible for me.

There are other things that I'm learning I need to surrender and wait on. Even though I thought God was assisting me, it turns out it's more of a "nothing coming from me; everything coming from God" situation (2 Corinthians 3:4-6; John 1:3).

For example, I used to think I was exemplary for my humility and kindness. After seventeen years of marriage and eighteen years in church ministry, I am realizing something:

Left to myself, I am far more selfish than I realized.

Secondly, I have thought too highly of myself.

I confess: "I am an unworthy servant; I have only done my duty" (Luke 17:10).

Now, I know what some of you are thinking.

"Sam, that's not the whole story. You are a son of the Heavenly Father."

That is true in the Spirit and in the heavenly realm.

But when I am striving to be significant out of my flesh, I am not acting like a son.

Even sons benefit from lowering themselves to serve.

So What Am I Waiting On?

That's a story for another day.

But I do think there will be some things worth celebrating soon. Maybe we'll kill the fatted calf—or more likely a pig. Definitely not a goat. The kids wouldn't allow it.

Not only will this current trial pass, but God is working on relationships, internal fortitude, vision that looks beyond today's battles, and heart humility.

When I consider my current waiting, the trials that come with it, and all the surrendering that has happened—and still needs to happen—I come to this conclusion:

God, You must be working on something interesting here.

Something good.

Something I cannot see yet.