 
### WAITING

### (between the amen and the answer)

### By Lynn Jaguar

### Copyright 2016 Lynn Jaguar

### Smashwords Edition

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

**Preface**

Chapter 1: Why not me?

Chapter 2: Why Me?

Chapter 3: Eyes on the promise

Chapter 4: Passing or failing the test

Chapter 5: The devil we know

Chapter 6: Exploring the promise

Chapter 7: Transforming the shepherd into a king

Chapter 8: The bigger picture

Chapter 9: In the opposite direction

Chapter 10: The pot and the potter

Chapter 11: Against the Current

Chapter 12: Remaining Faithful

Chapter 13: Get over yourself

Chapter 14: A step of faith

About the author

## Preface

Anyone who has ever made a prayer, anyone who has ever wanted something from God, and anyone who has ever needed help from the Lord, knows something about waiting. Whether we are waiting for a baby, a marriage partner, a job, finances, healing, favor, a home, reconciliation with a loved one or anything else, waiting is not easy, and it was never meant to be. But why does the Lord make us wait, and sometimes for so long? This short book looks at the people in the bible who had to wait on the Lord, and the lessons we can learn from their stories.

When I look at my own life, and the life of those close to me who have also trusted the Lord for something at one point in their lives, then I know for sure that waiting for an answer to prayer is not easy. It's a journey filled with faith and fear, hope and doubt. Sometimes the Lord answers us instantly, or within a short period of time, but other times we can wait for months or even years. Without patience and perseverance, we can't make it to the end of this journey. We constantly feel that if the Lord was to fill us in on when he plans to answer us, or at least let us know what's going on behind the scenes- keep us informed, then it can be easier to wait. But the Lord rarely gives us the details, all that's required of us is to ask, and then- wait.

What sometimes hurts the most when we have to wait is that some of those things that we ask of the Lord seem so readily available to the others who do not even need to pray for them. The only other way that we can get some of these could involve a compromise to our faith and character. There are women who've prayed and fasted for babies, when at the same time there are those who can count the number of times they've had an abortion, for them conceiving and carrying a pregnancy is as easy as eating candy. Then there are those who dump their babies in all sorts of places and walk away. What would be a miracle to you is a nuisance to them.

This is definitely not fair. All God has to do, if He is short of power, is to simply take what someone else has no need for and give it to the one who's earnestly praying for it. Right? Why does the Lord have to make it so hard for some of us, when others seem to have it so easy?

I grew up desiring to be a flight attendant. I love traveling, I love living in big cities and I love the lifestyle that comes with the job. Over the years, I applied to several airlines and got invited for several interviews, but I failed each of them. I prayed, trusted the Lord and even had the faith (at least the one as small as a mustard seed). But it never worked for me and it's a dream I've had to painfully let go of because I'm past the desired age. One friend of mine, who cared nothing about being a flight attendant, threw in an application one day, got the interview and passed- all in one try. It took me almost a year to get over my bitterness with the Lord.

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## 

## PART ONE: IT'S ALL ABOUT ME

## Chapter 1: Why not me?

It is very rare to meet someone who is truly content with what they have - whether in riches or in poverty, whether in health or in sickness. We will occasionally meet people who seem to be at the peak of their lives and are excited and grateful. But this is usually a season that only lasts for so long. We are constantly in need of something throughout our life's journey. The content of the majority of our prayers are personal requests for the betterment of our lives or for the lives of our loved ones. The magnitude and urgency of each need varies with every person.

Even when our prayers are answered, it will only be a matter of time before other needs come up. Take the example of a woman deeply desiring to get married, and she has prayed and fasted for quite a period of time for a mate. Then the Lord answers her prayers. Her only prayer now is for good weather and for everything to go as planned on the wedding day. The Lord answers that too. Several months down the line, there is trouble with conception, and a new prayer item comes up. This becomes another season of desperate prayer, and the woman is willing to go to any depths in order for the Lord to answer her.

A few years pass and there's a testimony. The woman is amazed at the faithfulness of God, and is ready to encourage people that indeed the Lord answers prayers. In the process of the child growing up, many other incidences that call for prayers arise. Other children come up as well, each with their own set of challenges. Probably the marriage has come to a thorny point and needs divine intervention. Health issues, family issues and financial challenges develop- the list is endless.

From the point of our birth to the point of death, there will always be something to pray about. We, as Christians, can never be without need of something from the Lord. Our issue with God is not that He is not able to give us what we desire (we know He can), but that he seems to delay intentionally and we cannot understand why.

I do not know about you, but there are many times I've looked around and wondered why the Lord seems to answer other people's prayers with greater speed and ease, when I am left trying to correctly mix the formulae to have my prayers answered. When we look at things on a comparison basis, we are bound to feel bitter and desperate.

When we are in need of something, and especially if we have been praying about it for a while, it's very easy to fall into the temptation of looking around and comparing ourselves with others. We wonder what they did to for the Lord to answer their prayers so that we can also do the same things. Other times we feel that they don't deserve those things, at least not as much as we do. What probably hurts us the most is when we hear unbelievers praising the Lord for His kindness toward them. The prophet Jeremiah also found himself in the same dilemma _(Jer.12:1-2)._

I have seen unbelievers, or those who are not too committed to Christ (in my opinion), praising and thanking the Lord for answered prayers. It's not like they fasted and prayed, and if they did pray, it must have been one of those quick by-the-way prayers; most likely not as intense as our own. It leaves us wondering what exactly goes on in heaven.

Forget unbelievers. Some believe that the reason the Lord keeps us waiting is that we may know Him more, or that we may learn a particular lesson. This rarely makes sense to us because we wonder why it is us who have to learn the lessons. Other times we are told it could be that if the Lord were to answer our prayers, it would not be best for us. How come that the same God seems to answer someone else's similar prayer? Why is it best for them but not for us?

Earlier in my walk of faith, when going through seasons of discouragement, I would think of the Lord as a father who favors some of his children over others. It may reach a time when we start to think that we must not be praying right or long enough; that we are not fasting enough. Other times we start to wonder if possibly we are cursed, or if there are wicked alters and evil covenants in our life or in our family.

One thing I have come to realize is that the Lord deals with us individually, depending on His particular plans and unique purposes for our lives. He also deals with us according to our personal backgrounds, and according to our state of being. For instance, let's say two women are praying for life partners. One woman has been raised in a caring, functional family and doesn't have issues with men. The other one has probably been brought up by a single mum who passionately hated men, or possibly she was sexually abused at some point. The Lord will deal with these two women very differently. The second woman will probably need to go through healing before she can become the wife that the Lord would want her to be. Therefore it might take longer for her prayer to be answered.

It is so with every area of our lives, whether healing, provision, protection, financial, emotional, spiritual or otherwise. That is why we can't afford to compare ourselves with others. The Lord deals with us individually according to our circumstances, our personal experiences, our spiritual maturity and our personal relationship with Him. God also deals with us according to His ordained purpose for our lives.

From time to time, we find strength in the testimony of others. We feel immensely encouraged when we hear of the trials that someone else has experienced, and how the Lord has come through for them, and how they've emerged victorious in the end. We become inspired by their faith and their hope, and it somehow gives us the strength to keep believing; to keep holding on.

Many other times, we battle to keep our faith. Since Jesus said that without faith it would be impossible to please God, we assume that it is the lack of it that must be keeping us from answered prayers. So we fight to believe; and to prove to ourselves that indeed we have the faith, we start to thank the Lord for the answered prayers in advance. We furiously wrestle with the ever creeping doubt and fear; maybe if we manage to fool ourselves, we might also manage to fool the Lord.

Time passes and there is still no end of the wilderness in sight, absolutely no light at the end of the tunnel. One night we feel sure that 'we have touched the hem of his garment', then morning comes and we are afraid that our prayers must have been 'returned to sender'.

The thanking ends and the requesting begins again, rising to helpless begging. It could be that if we begged the Lord enough, He could have mercy on us, and He could give us the answer that we so desire. Sometimes our own prayers leave a foul aftertaste in our mouths, almost as if they have passed the 'use by' date.

Every now and then, we feel that if we changed the words of our prayers, then they would become more acceptable; that if we used deeper, heavier words, we would grab the Lord's attention; that if our prayers would last a little bit longer; or if we quoted scripture within our prayers, then for sure the Lord would hear.

Just what did this other person do to get an answer to their prayer? What did they say exactly to make God listen and respond? Did they pray at a particular hour? Some Christians believe that praying at a certain time of night is more effective ( _maybe the Lord is busy the other times_ ). Others believe that praying using a certain procedure, or in a certain position is the only way for the Lord to listen. We take almost every advice into consideration, but they all fail the test of time.

We read all sorts of books about prayer and about what we are going through. We come across insights on family background, bondages, curses, hidden sin and spiritual strongholds, and bingo! That must be it. Or it could be something that lies deep in our family root that is a hindrance to our prayers! We spend the next several weeks or months repenting every known and unknown sin that might have or might not have been committed by those before us. But our prayers still remain unanswered.

What about praying in the will of the Lord? This is something that makes many of us uncomfortable because first, we don't know what that means and we don't know how to find out, and second, what if the Lord's will conflicts with our own will. So we push it aside gently, or mutter it quickly and hope that the Lord does not take it into account.

It then gets to a point when we feel that the Lord is intentionally silent. It's not that He can't answer us, but it's that He doesn't want to. At what point do we give up? At what point do we know that the Lord has turned down our prayer, so that we can move on?

Others will not always relate with our story, or with what we are going through. They may pray for us and with us for a while, but it can get to a time when they give up and turn against us. They'll tell us that there's hidden sin in our life, they'll discourage us and tell us that probably whatever we are praying for is not the Lord's will for us, and that we need to look at other options. Many times we get tempted to believe them.

Occasionally, we start to think that problem probably lie with the church that we attend. It could be that there is too much sin in the church or in the leaders that is causing the prayers of the congregants not to be heard, so we change churches. We go to this church where there are testimonies of miracles and deliverance. Unfortunately, that too doesn't seem to do the trick.

I don't mean to dismiss any of these ideas. I don't believe that there is a 'most effective' hour to pray, or the best position in which to pray, or a certain words to use in prayer. I do, however, believe that there is witchcraft and curses and family/ancestral roots and bondages and spiritual strongholds. But I also believe that ' _greater is He who is in us than He who is in the world' (1John 4:4)._ Jesus said that some of these (demons and strongholds) do not go unless through prayer and fasting ( _Matt. 17:21_ ).

I also believe that sometimes God says no to our requests because He could have something better in store for us, or because whatever we are asking for is not good for us. The Lord sees the bigger picture- the complete picture, while we are only limited to the finer lines and colors.

All this time of wandering in the wilderness, others seem to be moving on effortlessly. They don't seem to pray as hard, or wait as long as we do. Others have had to compromise their faith along the way, bend a few rules here and there, yet they are thanking the Lord for their victory.

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## Chapter 2: Why Me?

In the book of Genesis, we read the story of Joseph. Joseph was the youngest son in his family. When he was around 17 years old, he had a couple of dreams which he shared with his family. These dreams were about Joseph's promotion over them. He may not have understood their context at the time, but his father Jacob seemed to get a little grasp of them, ' _Do you mean that even your mother and I will also bow down to you?...But, he considered Joseph's dream' (Gen 37:11)._

Joseph's dreams upset his brothers, but I wonder what he thought of them, especially as the years came and went. Joseph had never asked to dream, and I'm sure it would not even have crossed his mind for him to rule over his brothers. He was not aware of the purpose that the Lord had ordained for him. I'm sure he was happy just to live his life.

There are many times that the Lord has predestined great things for us that have never even crossed our minds. As we go about living our lives and praying and hoping for the things that would make our lives happier and more comfortable, we rarely stop to imagine that God could have a greater purpose for our lives. Many of us are content with our limited hopes and dreams, but we never imagine, let alone ask, that we could become the saviors of our families, communities or nations.

Occasionally, like Joseph, we may have a dream, or we may receive a word of prophesy, but after the excitement has faded, we quickly go back to our own reasonable hopes and dreams and plans. We may even give thought or consider that word of prophecy. We think to ourselves, 'Wouldn't it just be amazing if that dream came to pass?' The one problem is that the Lord often reveals things way before they are set to happen. For instance, it took 13 years for Joseph's dreams to materialize. As time passes, we start to doubt the relevance of our dreams; we start to question the truth of that word of prophecy we received some years back.

Whenever we receive a word from God through whichever means, we feel sure that the Lord has heard our prayers, or that He has decided to bless us. We are filled with excitement and start to eagerly await the manifestation of this word. Yet much time might pass and unexpected events may take place before the word comes to pass.

God had already planned for Joseph's future, and He knew, most likely even preordained, all that Joseph would pass through before the fulfillment of this plan. Joseph's brothers were already jealous of him because of the favor that their father Jacob showed to their youngest brother. Josephs' dream only fuelled their envy further. One day, they plotted to kill him, but one of them, Reuben, interceded. Joseph was spared from death, and instead sold as a slave to some passers-by.

What about his dreams? Wasn't he supposed to rule over his brothers? How would he do that as he was condemned to be a slave for the rest of his life? There was almost no chance of escape or of rescue. His brothers had taken his jacket, torn it to pieces and taken it to their father to prove that Joseph had been torn to pieces by wild animals. What hope was there for Joseph? What hope was there for his father?

Maybe it was at this point of hopelessness that Jacob should have remembered the dream that Joseph had shared. Would it really have changed anything? Would it have given him even the slightest of hope? Maybe not. There are things that happen to us that cause us to abandon all hope. The prophecies and dreams that had at first excited us fade completely out of the picture. We dismiss them and assume that we must have been mistaken; that the Lord had not really spoken.

Did Joseph ever recollect his dreams? Did he harbor any slight hope of their fulfillment? Imagine you have had a dream, a word of prophesy, a promise; you have been praying for a while now, for a long while, and in one way or another, the Lord confirms to you about a promotion. You have worked hard; you have been a faithful steward, then your company decides to downsize and you are the first to receive notice! Or a promotion is due and it goes to someone else- again! You ask yourself questions and search within yourself for answers. You think that probably you must have been mistaken about that dream or that word of prophecy. Or it could be that it was true but you did something wrong. You should have had more faith, you should have shouted a louder amen during that sermon, you should have prayed and fasted for longer when you heard the Word of God. Maybe you should have spent more time in worship, or maybe you should have given a thanksgiving offering to seal that promise.

Then again, whatever happened to all the prayers you made? Was it all for nothing? There are times that you feel, and maybe rightly so, that those who get promoted over you do not deserve it at all, and others are not even Christians. To add insult to injury, you have to meet them every morning at the tea corner grinning. You hear them talk about how the Lord has been good to them, and how He has remembered them. Some of us are strong enough to let it go and try again, but there are those of us who can't help feeling bitter, even if just for a while. Is it okay to be angry with God, to feel betrayed by Him?

For a moment there, we sink into discouragement and anger. Our prayer life and our faith are affected. We feel as though the Lord does not love us as much as He says He does. We feel that he is not interested in our affairs and in our feelings. So we feel justified to be bitter with Him.

After his brothers sold Joseph to Midianites, the Midianites then sold him to a high ranking official in the land of Egypt. Joseph had the Lord's favor, and Potiphar put him in charge of his entire household. Did that make any difference in Joseph's heart? He was still a slave. He was still far from home, without the hope of ever seeing his family again. Was he homesick? Was he bitter? How long did it take him to get over the experience? What about his dreams - did he recall them? Did he give any thought to them?

If, as his father had asked, he was to rule over his brothers, how would he do that as a slave in a foreign land? How _will you_ become an influential businessman if you are battling with debt collectors and your little struggling business is near collapse? How _are you_ ever going to be a parent to several children if you are now in your late forties and there are no prospects? How did Abraham think he'd be a father of nations when he was approaching 100 years and his own wife Sarah was well past the age of child bearing?

Most of us believe that there's actually nothing impossible with the Lord. However, we feel that the circumstances have to be right in order to make it easier for Him to perform miracles. Some of us believe that we have to meet the Lord half way by doing our part. It is probably this attitude that led Sarah in the book of Genesis to give her maid Haggai to her husband Abraham in order to have a child. It is also probably for this same reason that Abraham readily accepted.

We fear that we could be waiting for God to come while He, on the other end, is waiting for us to go. It just doesn't feel right to us to sit back and expect God to do all the work. Single women are busy running all over the place serving in every ministry and going for every mission in order to be 'seen' by a potential mate. After all, how else do they expect to be noticed? We are told to pray but keep one eye open so that we do not miss out on any opportunities. We therefore get the blame when things don't happen for us, or when our prayers seem to go unanswered. Since it cannot be the Lord, it must be us who haven't played our part.

It is better to take ten years to make just one step in the direction of the Lord's will, than to take a thousand steps in the wrong direction within a short period. Often, especially in the Bible, we find that whenever the Lord wanted to elevate somebody, He first put them in trying circumstances. In the book of Daniel, the Lord would have saved Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego from being thrown into the fiery furnace; He would have come at the eleventh hour if had He wanted to, just a few seconds before they were thrown in. Probably he would have come with thunder and bolts of lightning, and a voice saying, ' **Behold! This are mine servants, you shall do them no harm**.' It would have been great, wouldn't it have? Just because the three men went all the way to actually being thrown into the furnace did not mean that the Lord was not watching. It did not mean that He was not hearing their silent prayer for salvation. But God loves to show Himself mighty, and in an undisputed way in this case.

In the book of John, Jesus would have stopped Lazarus from dying. Some of the Jews even asked, _"Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" (John 11:37)._ After all, Jesus had raised others from the dead before; Jairus' Daughter, the Centurions servant, and others. He had also done many other great miracles. So why did He let Lazarus die?

Jesus made it clear to His disciples that the death of Lazarus was for one- the glory of the Lord, and two- that they may believe that God had sent Him ( _John 11:4,14,42)._ When Jesus first heard that Lazarus was ill, He stayed where He was for two more days _(John 11:1-6)_. Jesus knew for sure that Lazarus would die _(vs. 11)_ , although He had told His disciples that the illness would not result in death ( _vs. 4)._

Lazarus did die. And for his sisters Martha and Mary, and many other Jews, that was the end. Death was irreversible. Their faith could only have taken them so far;

" _Lord," Martha said to Jesus, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died... (vs. 2)_

Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." (vs. 23)

Martha answered, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day." (vs. 2)

Mary reiterated in (vs. 32), "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

For most of us, this is as far as our faith goes. ' _If you had been here_...' If only Jesus would have been there with me in the interview... if only Jesus had been there during the operation... if only He had been there when...

When our circumstances go beyond our ability, we assume that the Lord wasn't there, or that He simply wasn't interested in coming through for us. We assume that His answer was no.

We are prone to limitations, but the Lord isn't. Women have been told about their ticking biological clock, which makes them think that God can only bless them with children within a given time frame. They believe that if it goes beyond a certain time, then it will be too late for Him to do anything about it, as much as He'd want to. Our eyes can only see so far, and there are only so many limits and barriers we have to work with. So our expectations from the Lord are fashioned along those barriers.

We try to fit the Lord in our little box and make Him to see what we see. We want Him to feel our needs and desires from our perspective. We want Him to understand why our fears are justified. God, on the other side, wants you to focus on Him. ' _Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledges Him, and He will direct your paths (Prov 3:5-6. His ways are beyond our ways and His thoughts beyond ours' (Isa 55:8-9)._ If this is truly so, then we should extend our faith to beyond what we believe.

Lazarus had been dead and buried four days when Jesus finally decided to go. They took Him to the tomb, and when He asked them to open it, they hesitated, _'Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days' (John 11: 39)._ When they opened the tomb, Jesus called out, ' _Lazarus, come out!_ ' _(Vs. 43)._ And out came the dead man, wrapped up in burial clothes! The result of this- Many turned and believed in Jesus. In Genesis as well, the result of Joseph eventually becoming a prince was that many people, including his own family, were saved from famine and death in Egypt and in surrounding countries!

It therefore goes without saying that there would not have been such wonderful results had Jesus saved Lazarus from death, or had He been there as Martha and Mary wanted. Had Lazarus been healed before dying, not as many people would have believed in the Lord. Had God allowed Reuben's plan to save Joseph and take him back to his father to succeed, Joseph would not have risen to greatness in a foreign land several years down the line, and many would not have been saved from famine because of him!

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## Chapter 3: Eyes on the promise

It's in our nature to look for a way of escape when we are hard pressed. The temptation to deny our faith or to break a promise is always there when things get tough. Our faithfulness can easily shake under challenging circumstances.

In the book of Exodus, we read about how the Israelites had been in slavery in Egypt for over 400 years. God decided that it was about time that He took them out of slavery and give them their own land- the land that He had promised their ancestor Abraham _(Gen 17:8)_. The story of between Egypt and the Promised Land wasn't a smooth one. The relationship between God and the children of Israel was so difficult that in the end, an entire generation, including Moses himself, missed out on entering the Promised Land. Only the children less that 20 years old at the time, together with Joshua and Caleb, got to the Canaan.

When you read the books of Exodus through to Joshua, it's so easy to shake your head and point a finger at the Israelites. Their rigidity, their unfaithfulness, their unbelief and their hardness of heart is just astonishing. Yet if we closely and honestly examined ourselves, we would realize that we are of the same spirit. What was wrong with them back then is exactly what is wrong with us today. Hardly anything has changed, at least not for the better.

Whenever the Lord promises us something, we imagine, and even desire, to get it without too much struggle. Throughout the Bible, most, if not all of the men and women who had a promise, or whose petition the Lord heard, did not receive the answer automatically. They had to go through a time of testing before receiving.

We can say the same of us today. Rarely do you meet a man with a vision that was fulfilled on a silver platter. If they were to be honest, they'd tell you that they've had their share of trouble; and the greater the testimony, the greater the trouble seems.

#

# It gets worse

Trouble began for the Israelites when the Lord told Moses to prepare the people to leave Egypt for the Promised Land. Moses was a bit hesitant. When he first approached pharaoh and asked him to let the Israelites leave, pharaoh instead increased their workload. _The same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people. 'You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw. But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; do not reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, 'Let us go and sacrifice to our God.' Make the work harder for the men so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies (Ex 5:6-9).'_ In pain, Moses asked the Lord, " _Why have you brought trouble to this people (Ex. 5:22)?"_

Earlier, when Moses and Aaron had gathered the Israelites together and told them of God's plan to free them from slavery and give them their own land, the people had been excited! _(Ex.4:29-31)._ The thought that God was concerned about them brought them down in worship. Whenever we become aware of God's concern for us in our circumstances, we feel excited. Praying and worshiping becomes easier and sweeter for a moment, our cup overflows with joy!

As soon as their labor became harder, the Israelites quickly forgot the excitement they had first felt when they heard that God was concerned for them. They even forgot the miracles that Moses had performed in front of them. Sounds familiar? You just had an exciting word of prophecy that told of your victory, promotion, blessing and promises. It could be that you have been childless for so long and word comes that you will be a mother, then a visit to the doctor soon after tells you that it is not possible for you to conceive. Or maybe you were pregnant and a miscarriage occurred. Maybe you had a very vivid dream about a promotion, probably the Lord confirmed it in one way or another, and then two weeks down the line you receive a notice of termination.

It is said that it is darkest just before dawn. Things can sometimes take a turn for worse just before a breakthrough. Nevertheless, we are required to hold on; we are required to continue looking to Him who has promised. Our circumstances may change, but the Lord doesn't. God foresaw the over 400 years of slavery that the Israelites were to endure _(Gen. 15:13)_. And He, in His sovereignty, had predestined their rescue at a specific time. It is the same way He knows our situation, and He has predestined our breakthrough at a particular time. We need to pray for grace to hold on; we need to pray for the renewal of our inner strength. We need to pray for the Lord to open our eyes to see what He is doing in our lives; we need to trust in His purposes.

When things take a turn for the worse, God's promises seem to fade into a fog of doubt. In exodus 6, the Lord reassured Moses of His intention to take the Israelites out of the land of slavery into their own land flowing with milk and honey. However, when Moses reported the same to the people, it is written that, ' _they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage (Ex. 6:9).'_

There are times when we can get so discouraged that a word of encouragement sounds like a mockery. If the Lord has really heard us, if He really wants to bless us, why not just do it? Why keep saying something that does not seem true? Is it that He is leading us on, or just playing games with us for His own delight? Sometimes it even reaches a point when we start to doubt if God had ever spoken at all.

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# Don't stop now

Waiting can be exhausting, especially for a Christian who is unwilling to compromise. Every so often we get tempted to let go of the dream, to abort the vision or to abandon the promise. We feel, (backed by other people's encouragement) that it is better to pursue the little that is perceptible than to wait for the great that is unseen.

One thing that we must understand is that the devil doesn't give up as easily as we do. Ten plagues had to happen in Egypt before pharaoh let the Israelites leave, and even then, he changed his mind and had them followed. Though the Egyptians suffered terribly under each plague, pharaoh himself included, he was still not willing to let go. Your prayers will injure the enemy horde to some extent, but he will still not give up. If you allow discouragement to overtake you, the enemy will only dust himself off and try again. Woe unto you when he finds you surrendered and without armor!

You will not break the chains of addiction with just one prayer. You will not be released from bondage with just one round of a fast. In the book of Matthew, Jesus told his disciples that 'these kinds' do not leave except by prayer and fasting. The scriptures also say that the fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much (Jas 5:16). The 30-second daily prayer said hurriedly and absent-mindedly in the morning before you leave the house might not be enough to break the yoke of the enemy.

A breakthrough can occasionally seem eminent, but the enemy recovers from the blow of a prayer and changes his mind. Whenever Pharaoh had relief from the plagues, he hardened his heart again. Once in a while you begin to see some light at the end of the tunnel, and before you finish saying 'praise the Lord', something grips your foot and threatens your progress. A struggle ensues and you manage to shake your foot loose, but before you begin to worship the Lord for His faithfulness, something else hooks your clothes and pulls you to a halt. When you manage to finally pay your loan, someone loots your shop. When the insurance finally agree to cover half the damage, unexpected heavy rains pound and you are out of business for weeks on end.

Eventually, pharaoh was willing to concede, but only with conditions. He allowed the men to go, but women, children and livestock to be left behind. Pharaoh knew if the women and children and property were left behind, the men would have to return. The devil can only give you freedom within his leash; he is not willing to let you go beyond the point where he's unable to get you back into bondage again.

Moses stood his ground; it was all or nothing. So the plagues continued. When pharaoh saw that Moses was adamant, he let loose a little more and allowed the women and children to join them too, but the flocks and herd were to be left behind. Moses refused to bend, and pharaoh became angry and rebuked him from his very sight _(Ex. 10:28)._

It's very tempting to settle for something less when you have been waiting for so long. Moses would have jumped at the chance of the men, women and children leaving without their flocks and herds. After all, they were going to a land flowing with milk and honey, and they could always start afresh.

A bird in hand is worth two in the bush, so the saying goes. Whenever some of us get what looks like the slight breakthrough, we are quick to go for it. We are afraid of asking for more or waiting for the full package because we fear that we might lose it all. There are women who've been waiting for spouses for so long, that they are willing to take the first man who gives them the slightest attention. His character and his faith don't matter anymore, and they make do with his unpleasant habits because they fear that if they say no to him, no one else might come along.

Some women end up getting married to men who they would never have dreamt of - not in terms of looks or finances, but men who don't share their Christian faith, men who beat them up, or look down on them, or cheat on them, because they are the only ones who were available. Others end up with men who are more than twenty years older simply because they are the only ones who wrote back to them on the dating sites. A lot of devout Christian women feel that being compelled to marry only men who are also devout Christians is too restrictive; that they are further limiting their chances.

Waiting for a complete answer to prayer, or the complete fulfillment of a promise takes real faith. Faith is not for cowards because it takes courage to believe. It takes a lot of courage to turn down half the offer when you have been waiting for a long time. Many of us will jump at just half the opportunity available, because we fear it might be all we ever get. After all, they say that opportunity comes once in a lifetime.

A testimony is told of a man who had been praying for a scholarship outside the country for quite some time. His prayer was for a scholarship that would allow him to travel with his wife and his child. A scholarship opportunity finally came, but it did not facilitate him to travel with his family. He did not want to leave his family behind, so he turned it down and continued to pray. It took two more years before what he really wanted came about. He finally got a scholarship that allowed him to travel with his family.

His faith is simply impressive. Not many people would have turned down the first scholarship. They would have thought that it was the God's answer to their prayer and they wouldn't have minded or questioned why the Lord did not take the other details into consideration. They would have been thankful that at least part of their prayer was answered.

We pray for specific things, yet we end up settling for so much less because we fear that if we turn down whatever avails, then we might not get another answer. An answer to prayer, particularly that which fulfills a long-standing desire, does not come too easily; at least not to most of us. It often takes years of toiling in prayer. It takes a journey of battling with the Lord, questioning His love, questioning His willingness, and doubting His promises. It can therefore be very tempting to take the first offer that comes our way as long as it fulfills even the slightest part of our desire.

Of course, there are those times when the Lord desires something different for us. However, He gives us the grace to accept, and we end up happier than we would have expected. I've heard of women who got married to men they would never have imagined - perhaps of an ethnicity, race or denomination they never have thought of - and they ended up happy and completely satisfied. Some people have been led to take up certain job positions they never really wanted, only to realize after sometime that they wouldn't give up those jobs for anything else, not even for what they had previously thought would make them happy.

We are created in the image of God. Therefore having our own hearts' desires, plans and expectations is not wrong. Furthermore, God is sometimes responsible for putting those very desires in us for the accomplishment of a bigger purpose.

In the end, the Israelites finally left Egypt. But was all the drama and trouble necessary? Why couldn't God just have stricken pharaoh with some disease to make him afraid and let them go? Why did it have to take so long?

God loves to glorify Himself, and He has a right to, for He created everything for His own good pleasure _(Rev. 4:11)_. He told Moses that pharaoh would not listen to him so that His (God's) wonders would be multiplied _(Ex. 11:9)._ Pharaoh only conceded when the final plague (death of all Egyptian firstborns – including that of livestock) occurred. He allowed all of them, together with their herds, to leave. What more, the Israelites also plundered the Egyptians! The people of Egypt were so terrified of the Israelites that they gave them whatever they asked for- gold, silver and clothing.

God made the Israelites to find favor with the Egyptians _(Ex. 12:36),_ which shows that the Lord is in control of everything: only God can cause your enemy or cruel master/boss to favor you. There is nothing that happens without His knowledge and without His allowing it, even with our circumstances today. There's nothing that happens to us that surprises the Lord, and nothing would happen to us, whether good or bad, if the Lord did not allow it. Some things delay, not because we haven't prayed enough, but because He wants to do something in us and through us.

The story of the exodus from Egypt is one of the most known stories. Songs and poems have been written about it. Sermons have been preached about it. It can be interpreted in so many ways to minister to different situations in our lives as individual or as nations, and it covers all areas in life from spiritual to physical. Would it be such a powerful pointer if the Lord had allowed the Israelites to walk out of Egypt without any struggle?

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# Not just yet

The enemy is relentless; he hardly ever gives up completely. In spite of our progress or victory, he still comes after us. He knows that man is prone to loose guard at one point, or become weary at another.

Soon after releasing the Israelites, pharaoh regretted it _(Ex.14:5-10)_. He then gathered his entire army together with the best horses and chariots and went after the Israelites. When the Israelites, who had now reached the shores of the red sea, turned and saw Pharaoh and his army, they became terrified. They turned against Moses and asked him why he had seduced their hearts to dream of something that was unattainable. They told him that they could have stayed peacefully in Egypt. At least in Egypt they had life, even though in bondage, but now they faced the threat of death.

Sometimes we have victory within our grasp. We can see the answers to our prayers start to manifest, we can see our dreams start to manifest. Just when we are beginning to sing a new song; just when we are starting to give thanks, we look back only to see the enemy hot in pursuit! Just when we thought we've lost him, we realize he has risen, and this time with all his might. His intention is to take us back into bondage.

Just as the Israelites turned against Moses, we also look for someone to blame. We turn against our church, we turn against our pastor, we turn against our prayer partner, and sometimes we turn against the Lord. We accuse our church for not being spiritual enough, we accuse our pastor of sin, we accuse our prayer partners of praying against us, and we accuse God of not caring.

What would you have done had you been in the company of the Israelites? You have just fled from your oppressor after a series of dramatic negotiations, but now he is after you and your back is against the wall. You have nowhere to go. Would making one more prayer make a difference, or is it back to the drawing board again? What happens when our enemy catches up with us and takes as back in bondage? Back into that habit, back into loneliness, back into emptiness, back into debt, back into bondage?

"T _he Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still" (Ex. 14:14)_. Faith is a crazy call sometimes. How do you become still when the auctioneers are right outside your door? How do you become still when you've just had your sixth miscarriage? How do you become still when you're handed a layoff notice?

When the Israelites where in a state of panic at the shores of the red sea, the Lord intervened. At His command, Moses stretched out his staff toward the sea, and the waters parted. They crossed the red sea as though on dry ground. Can you imagine walking through a corridor whose walls are water? What the Lord can do! Whenever I'm faced by seemingly impossible situations, this is the one story that boosts my faith. That the Lord who made a way for the Israelites through the red sea, can also make a way through for me in my circumstances!

Not only will He make a way where there is no way, He will also overcome your enemy. Is it disease? Is it debt? Is it sinful habits? Is it rejection? Is it loneliness? Is it lack? Is it depression? Is it fear? Remember that when the Lord does it, He not only does it for you, but also for His glory. Your breakthrough will serve as a testimony to others; it will encourage those who are on a similar journey of waiting on God. They will know for sure that if the Lord remembered you, He will also remember them.

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## PART TWO: SEASONS IN THE WILDERNESS

## Chapter 4: Passing or failing the test

A wilderness period is the time between a promise and its fulfillment. It's the period between the amen and the answer; when God has clearly spoken, and has clearly promised, but you are yet to see the manifestation. He may have delivered you from some kind of bondage, but is yet to place you in a position of victory.

Before the Lord delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, He had promised them a land of their own. It took them forty years to come into this Promised Land. Some argue that it didn't have to take them that long to enter Canaan. It takes about ten hours to drive from Egypt to Israel, a journey that would have taken them just a few days of walking.

So why did it take them forty years? The book of Exodus reveals that, the Lord would have led them through a shorter route _,_ but He was concerned that they could face war and change their minds and go back to Egypt _(Ex. 13:17-18)_.

The Lord has the ability to give us anything at the blink of an eye. Yet more often than not, it takes a much longer time than we would have desired. Sometimes He allows particular interruptions to happen in our lives, or He may divert the course of our journey much to our displeasure. It might be the separation from a friendship or a relationship that may be a barrier from the accomplishment of the God's purpose in our lives. It could be the termination from a job or career that has been blinding us from the will of God. It could go to the extent of being grounded by an illness of some sort just to have us listen to what the Lord has to say to us.

The Lord usually has the end product in mind. The same way a designer first draws out in detail what he wants to create, the Lord too has a complete picture of our lives. Before we were even born, God had already ordained a purpose for each of us. In this fallen world, we are rarely brought up to understand and fulfill our purposes or live our lives for the glory of the Lord. Instead, we strive to achieve a name for ourselves. Until God intervenes somewhere in between, it's usually about us, about our career, about our goals, and about what we want to accomplish. It doesn't matter how unfulfilling the path we've chosen may be, as long as we have something tangible we can attach to our name.

To others, it's merely about existing. It's got nothing to do with career or achievement or fulfillment, but about paying the bills. Many people live short of the Lord's best because as long as they eat, sleep, have an occupation, are married, have a child and so on, they feel they have met the basics of existence.

If many of us were Moses, we would have been content to live in the palace with Pharaoh's daughter as our mother. All his needs were met beyond expectation. What would his business be dreaming of taking over two million ungrateful people from a land of slavery, into their own land? It's not even like he was a slave himself, so why bother?

The Lord had to shake him out of his comfort zone _(Ex. 2:11-15)_ , and had him flee to Midian where he was to stay a good 40 years before his return. He was a foolhardy man who thought he could do anything his way and get away with it. He was a self-confident prince living in a palace. In the desert, far from his own people, Moses underwent a long period of being humbled. He returned many years later, not as the arrogant prince, but as an ordinary man having nothing more than a walking stick and a donkey.

But it was in this season in the wilderness that Moses met with God, not in the lavish palace and its privileges. It was in the alien land that the Lord spoke to him, and in spite of his fears and his flaws, he became one of history's most decisive and powerful leaders.

The Lord has to pull some of us out of our comfort zones. It is not in our high-flying careers that we will meet with Him; it will not be in our crowds of friends and weekend plans and parties that we will encounter Him; it's not likely that we will hear His voice when everything is going well for us. Our character will almost certainly not be molded in the place of plenty, but in the wilderness where it is only us and God. The wilderness is also a place of testing. The question is, will we pass or fail the test?

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# Strength for the journey

The exit from Egypt followed a season of jubilation. When the entire army of pharaoh perished in the red sea, the Israelites celebrated. God had made sure to destroy the army in its entirety, together with their weapons. It would take several years before Egypt formed another strong army. They had to first train other men. They had to gather other weaponries and get more horses and chariots. The Lord knew what He was doing when He allowed pharaoh to change his mind and pursue the Israelites with his entire army. _Pharaoh had his chariots made ready, and took his army with him. He took six hundred of the best chariots, along with all the other chariots of Egypt, with officers over all of them (Ex. 14:6-7)._

God, in His wisdom, will sometimes allow your enemy to come after you with all his might, so that He may be destroyed in totality. Will you start grumbling and complaining when you raise your eyes and see pharaoh and his army behind you? Don't forget the sea is in front of you, and you have absolutely nowhere to go! Talk about being between a rock and a hard place!

What do we do when the only hope for deliverance is a miracle? When we cannot turn to our education, when our friends and relatives cannot help us, when our youth or beauty cannot get us through? None of us is invincible, regardless of who we are or where we come from. Some of us are fortunate enough to be brought up in wealthy families, to get good education. Others are born naturally beautiful, with great personalities. Others come from well up families or live in rich countries where their governments take good care of them. But life, no matter how privileged you may seem to be, has a way of getting you. No one, regardless of who they are or where they come from, has a guarantee against the storms of life.

Disaster knows no economy, depression knows no class, disease knows no education and death spares no race. Darkness is inevitable and there comes a time where you have nowhere to run. This is when your banner of faith stands its test. Sure you have faith, in all the daily little things and the flash triumphs of life. But will you still trust the Lord when He doesn't seem to be in sight? Will you still believe when everything else proves otherwise, when everyone else is convinced otherwise? The bible asks, ' _when the son of man (Jesus) comes, will he find faith on earth' (Lk. 18:8)?_

# Water

Every now and then, God does give us breakthroughs. They maybe not be as dramatic or as miraculous as the crossing of the red sea, but he does answer our prayers. As human beings, and especially as Christians, we'll never be fully safe as the storms of life do blow every now and then. We are ever in need of God, whether we acknowledge it or not.

What happens when another storm brews? What happens when we receive another bad report? When the Lord delivers us from one storm and another, does it become easier to believe in Him, or do we go right back to the beginning?

Once the songs and celebrations were over, the Israelites traveled in the desert for three days without finding water, and when they finally found some, they could not drink it because it was bitter. They grumbled and complained against Moses, wanting to know what they were to drink. Moses in turn cried to the Lord, and yet another miracle happened. He threw a piece of wood into the water, and the water became sweet, and their thirst was quenched.

Why is it difficult to trust God even after all He's done for us? We can always look back and remember the prayers that He has answered, the difficult situations that He has gotten us out of, the shackles He has loosened in our lives. Yet, that is not what always comes first to mind in the face of despair. Why couldn't the Israelites recall the Red Sea miracle and trust that the same God could give them water?

The Lord desires that we believe in Him, regardless of our circumstances. In _Hebrew 11 vs. 6_ , we are told that without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith is one of the attributes that God desires to see most in us. It is by faith that we are saved, it is by faith that we are delivered, it is by faith that we are healed, and it is by faith that we receive the Lord's promises. Basically, faith is the language of the kingdom of God in relation to man.

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# Manna

_The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, "if only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted,_ _but you have_ _brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death" (Exodus 16:1-3)._

You'd think that after the Lord takes you out from bondage in a dramatic way, makes you pass in between a wall of sea and turns bitter water into sweet water, you'd have a little more faith in Him. However, are we really any different from the Israelites of that day?

One weakness that plaques us is that we forget too easily. The miracles and favors that shape our lives fade into the distance of time and many times we feel that we cannot really compare those happenings with our current situations. If we trusted God a few years ago for a business breakthrough and it came, we can't refer to that as a sign that the Lord who answered it back then will take care of this new challenge. This one is different, maybe even more complex.

Then, with time, we also tend to start reasoning. It could be that after the Israelites took the fresh water, they started talking amongst themselves, _"maybe that water had not been bitter after all, maybe the one who first tasted it had eaten something sour that made the water seem bitter."_ We do that, don't we? I remember many years ago when I was about six or seven years old, I had lost my fountain pen in school. I was a particularly careless child and my parents had already bought me far too many pens. I didn't want to go home and ask for another pen much to my parents' disappointment. So I remember innocently walking into the school's chapel every afternoon after school for the next few days and pray that I would get my pen back. I didn't care how God would do it, I didn't even know the Lord too well, all my young heart wanted is to find my pen before my parents found out I had lost it, and the only help I could think of was prayer.

That Saturday at home, while going through a stack of old books packed in a carton, a pen fell out. I don't know whether it was the same fountain pen or not, but it was the same make and the same color. I remember acknowledging that it was God who had answered my prayers; my childish, innocent faith had borne fruit! After that, I always felt confident to go before the Lord in prayer. Time passed however, and took the innocence of my faith with it. I remember (now a lot older), wondering if my pen had after all not fallen in those books somehow, that I hadn't lost it at all, and God, and my prayers, had nothing to do with me finding it; that it must have been all a coincidence.

I've come to realize that this attitude is common. Many times we pray passionately for something, and when we receive the answer, we start to question whether it was the Lord who answered. Probably it's a particular job you've been praying about for a while. Once you get the job, you forget the prayers and start to think that it must have been your education that impressed the boss, or that it was the way you dressed during the interview, or that it must have been your previous experience that made you stand out. You stock take, and start to see the reasons behind your success. It's almost as though God has to prove Himself to us over and over again.

We may think that it would become easier if God manifested Himself more strongly and more frequently in our lives. Just as He did with the Israelites in their journey with the ever present glory cloud by day and pillar of fire by night, the daily manna, even the fiery mountain when the Lord descended on Mount Sinai. Was that surely not enough for them to trust in the Lord in whichever circumstances that lay ahead?

How many times have we been blessed ourselves, yet we don't count the blessings, we fail to look back and feel that we can trust the God that made it happen for us back then? We instead focus on the challenges that face us to the extent that nothing the Lord has ever done for us seem to matter at that point. Other times it feels as though the Lord answers only our 'little' prayers, but ignores our most important issues.

The Lord desires to have a relationship with us. If He was to freely give us everything we ever wanted or needed, most of us would have no business with Him. How often do people get blessed and in a short time, they wander away from God; their relationship with Him fades? Until of course, the next time chaos or tragedy or threat strikes, and all over sudden they remember the Lord. Only to forget Him again once the storm is over. Unfortunately, this is our canal human nature. As we gain spiritual maturity spiritually, we learn to walk with the Lord, not because we want to benefit from Him, but out of pure reverence for Him.

In the desert, the Lord fed the Israelites with 'food of heaven', or manna. They didn't have to toil for it; they didn't have to plow the land, plant, harvest or cook. All they had to do was collect and eat, they were overjoyed. How this manna worked was quite interesting. The people could only collect in the morning what they needed for the day. They were not to collect anything that would last overnight as they would find it rotten in the morning. The only exception was on the sixth day where they would collect twice the amount to cover the Sabbath, as no manna came on the Sabbath day. Interestingly, this is the only time the manna would not rot when kept overnight.

Who are the Israelites to follow the instructions? Some did not pay attention to what Moses told them, they kept part of the manna till morning, and still others went out to gather on the seventh day. Exasperated, the Lord asked, " _How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions?" (Ex. 16:28)._

Whether it was lack of faith or lack of fear of God, we cannot be sure. What we know is that we are not much better than the Israelites back then. The Lord asks us to break certain relationships, but we still hold on to them, He asks us not to go to particular places, but we still do. How long we linger on in the wilderness is sometimes determined on how well obey God's the instructions and commands.

Sometimes the command is as simple as 'only believe'; stop being afraid and just believe. Yet, we feel it's too risky to 'only believe'. What if we believe and nothing happens?

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## Chapter 5: The devil we know

**(...and the angel that's taking forever to come)**

Three months after the Israelites left Egypt, they came to the desert of Sinai and to Mount Sinai. The Lord called Moses up the mountain where He would give him the Ten Commandments, or The Law, and where he would stay for a good forty days before coming down to the people.

When the people saw that Moses was taking too long to come down from the mountain, they turned to Aaron asked him to make them a god that would lead them the rest of the way. "C _ome, make us a god who will go before us. As for_ _this fellow Moses_ _who brought us up out of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him (Ex._ _32:1b)_."

They wanted a god they could see, a god they could touch, a god they could easily find. Aaron happily went to task, he asked them to take off their gold jewelry and out of it he made a golden idol in the form of a calf. The people went ahead and presented the idol with burnt offerings. They then celebrated and indulged in revelry.

Why in the world would they do this after all they had been through with the Lord? Walking with the Lord is a journey of faith, and believing may sound simple, but it is not easy. We have been brought up to believe that when we have goals and dreams and desires, it's up to us to know how to fulfill them. It's up to us to get the right education, knowledge, make the right connections, be introduced to the right people, and sweat it all out.

We've been made to think that our destiny lies in our own hands, that we become what we want to become. Little wonder that when things don't work out well despite our effort, we look for other means or shortcuts to reach our goals. These other means and shortcuts often involve breaking the Lord's law, and breaking the law of the land. It could involve giving a bribe in order to get a contract, it could involve sleeping with someone in order to get a job, and it could mean defrauding others in order to make money.

Problem is, if it's measurable effort that will shape our destiny or determine where we go, what happens if unseen circumstances stand in our way? If it is education that will determine our future, what happens to those of us who are not so smart, or can't afford the education? If networking and connections are what will take us far, what happens to those of us, who, like Gideon, come from the smallest clan, and are least in their father's household ( _Judg. 6:15_ )? There are millions of people around the world who aren't born into privileged families, don't have access to influential people, don't have great education and don't have the finances. Are their dreams and desires valid? Is there any hope for them?

Even for those who have the benefit and the advantages, what happens when tragedy strikes? Accidents happen, fatal diseases are diagnosed, and calamities do come. Will your circles of influence do anything to alter an unpleasant doctor's report? Will your great education stop protect your from disability when it happens? Will all the money in the world change anything when the inevitable come knocking on your door?

We feel much more secure when we have something tangible or measurable that we can rely on. When we have something we can see and touch, it becomes easier to believe. Most times unfortunately, we end up making these things our idols and our place our faith in them. The Israelites felt it was better for them to have a god they could see rather than wait for 'that fellow' Moses, and his strange God.

Trusting in an invisible power takes real faith. Waiting on the Lord is never easy, because unlike other sources, we are never sure of how long we have to wait. God rarely tells us when He will show up, or when that particular prayer will be answered. We just have to trust and wait. With the Lord, you are never sure from which way He'll come, you just have to wait.

Often times, the Lord can seemingly remain silent for such a long time that we start to wonder if something happened to Him. In the book of Genesis, the Lord had promised Abraham a son through Sarah. It took twenty five years for that promise to come to fruition. In the meantime, Sarah gave Abraham her maid Hagar to have a child with, a custom that was practiced in that day.

To a large extent, we can't blame Abraham and Sarah. They must have looked at themselves, saw that they were at the end of their lives, and felt that the Lord just didn't seem to get it. Much like ourselves today- we are not sure we will enjoy our dreams if they are not fulfilled soon. We want it now! We want the healing now! Deliverance now! A spouse now! Children now! Now is when we want it, now is when it is relevant to us, and we don't know why God doesn't seem to get it. So we go ahead and find our own way around the challenges, without caring about the compromises.

When the Israelites ran out of patience waiting for Moses, they did what they saw the Egyptians do back in Egypt. They had lived there for so long that they were accustomed to the Egyptian culture and to their way of worship. Maybe they had even practiced idol worship themselves since the Lord had not yet revealed himself to them. They found it easier to revert to what they were used to.

When we wait for long without signs from the Lord, we tend to take matters into our own hands. We prefer to turn back to what we know or to what others around us do. When we wait for too long for an answer and begin to get desperate, we turn to conventional means to meet our needs. There are a lot of Christians who have visited witchdoctors because, just like the Israelites felt, the _fellow Moses has taken too long and we do not know what has become of Him._ This fellow Jesus, well, we have called on Him, we have prayed in His name, we have tried, but we don't know what has become of Him.

We end up doing all kind of strange things. Several years ago when I was working in a foreign land, I lost my job was desperate to find another one. A friend, who was supposed to be a born-again Christian, introduced me to a 'prophetess' from back home. This woman gave me some weird instructions to follow in order for my endeavors to succeed. I was to mix salt and corn flour and bath with it for seven days. I was also to pray the Lord's prayer 25 times a day for about ten days. I was a young Christian, and even though the entire ritual sounded suspicious, I was too desperate to care. All I needed was a solution, something I could hold onto, hope in, something I could believe in; and as long as it worked, I didn't care. Unfortunately for me, it didn't work.

We could be getting involved in demonic rituals without our knowing it. Satan is cunning and knows how to fool us, especially in desperate circumstances. He knows that as long as there's a verse to quote or a word that can be vaguely traced back to the bible, he just might get us to believe in a lie. It could be that the Israelites back then did not know that what they were doing was wrong; they felt leaderless, the godless and abandoned. So they looked back to the gods they knew. They just needed something they could hold on to.

Before each of us came to salvation, there was a way of life that we were used to. There are a lot less barriers and limits in the secular world, and especially more today. What we refer to as compromise in Christianity is a way of life out in the world. When things become tough and we become restless, we are tempted to look to the worldly solutions. When heaven seems shut, when we are not sure if the Lord cares about our predicaments, it becomes so easy to slip back to what we can see and trust.

Sometimes it's the old habits that we fall back to in trying times. Whatever gave us rest back then, even though the relief is only temporary and fleeting, we seek its comfort again. When we've been praying for some time without breakthrough and we need a relief, just a break, if we are not sure that this prayer will ever be answered, we reach back and console ourselves with the gods we knew. The things that we could count on back then. Maybe it's an illicit relationship that we know quite clearly was wrong, maybe its music, or smoking, or drinking, or maybe its witchcraft and divination.

We may be conscious that it is wrong, but oh, how we need those arms to comfort us now! We frantically need something we can see, something that we can hear, something that we can touch. As for this fellow God, we can't be sure what's going on in His mind, we can't be sure what became of our prayers. It could be that the Lord rejected them and that He won't tell us, it could be that they were not qualified to be answered, but oh well; we need something we can take comfort in.

A lot of young Christian women get tired of waiting for the right man, and by right I mean a God-fearing, non-attached man. As the years pass, and there's no one in church to say hello, hence they turn their eyes to the men of the world. Waiting for the right man, especially as a born-again Christian woman, is really a challenge. The gender ratio in many churches is totally imbalanced, with women being so much more. The few men who are there are either married, ugly, clueless or too young. So when their prayers seem to take too long to be answered, they look toward the world. The church and its overrated ideals is just like 'that fellow Moses.'

# Who is for the Lord?

Anyone who's going to embark on this journey of waiting and trusting had better be fully committed to it. Jesus said that ' _No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the_ _kingdom of God_ _(Luke 9:62)._ Jesus was telling us that if we wanted to follow Him, we would have to be ready to do so without looking back. As believers, following Christ encompasses everything, including waiting for the answers to our prayers. Our faith is not just on Jesus as our savior and redeemer, but also on Him as our healer, deliverer... etc.

If God sent his Son Jesus to die on a cross for the salvation of our souls, what else can't He do for us? To believe that Jesus has saved us from eternal damnation, but doubt that He is unable to do something about our other needs and struggles paints a bad picture of the Lord. For some of us, our problem is not in His inability as it is in His unwillingness. We know for sure that nothing is impossible with God, but we are not sure of His eagerness to help us.

We feel trapped when we are led to believe that the promises of God in His word are ours- healing, provision, protection, redemption... only to realize that they are not as easily accessible as we think. So we get stuck somewhere in the middle, not really sure whether to hold on or let go. The Israelites had embarked on this journey of faith, with Moses leading them all the way from Egypt toward the Promised Land that they had not even asked for, only for him to vanish somewhere in the middle of it, leaving the people stuck, unsure of how to proceed.

What were they supposed to do? Stay in the merciless desert? Go back to the land of their slavery? Or look for another way to get into this Promised Land that their hearts had already been seduced to desire? The chose to proceed, but they had one dilemma- they could not do it by themselves. They needed someone who could pave the way for them. Moses was good, his God was great, but where were they? So they remembered the gods of Egypt, the gods that they were used to, the gods that they could manage. Even though these gods were mere delusions, at least they gave them the motivation; they offered them hope.

Times come when we get so desperate for a whisper of hope, that we are willing to listen to a lie just to make us feel good. Even though the golden calf did not have any powers, it was a source of encouragement for the Israelites. Its presence gave them the motivation to keep moving. God became angry with the Israelites for this distrust and impatience.

When Moses came back from Mount Sinai to the camp and saw what had transpired, he was utterly dismayed. He made a call for those who were on the Lord's side to join him, and all the Levites answered the call. The instruction that followed was something else- " _this is what the Lord says: Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor." the Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, "You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day" (Ex. 32:27-29)._

If you'd been there, what would you have done? Would you have killed your own people - your son, your brother, your mother - for the Lord? Today, God will not ask us to take a sword or a gun and kill people, but He will ask us to break our bond with them. Are you willing to forsake those questionable meetings that connect you in the business circles? Are you willing to quit that job that is basically build on compromise, no matter how well paying it is? Are you willing to break a relationship with your best friend of over ten years? Are you willing to let go of that married man you've been dating for the Last five years? Are you willing to forsake your own children or parents or brothers if the Lord asks you to?

Jesus said that ' _if anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters- yes, even his own life- he cannot be my disciple'_ ( _Lk. 14:26_ ) _._ And that ' _anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me'_ _(Matt. 10:37)._

Why would Jesus say something like that? Are we not supposed to love our own? Definitely! But if we love them more than the Lord, if we put them first, then that's the problem. As born-again Christians, the deeper we get into Christ, the more alone we find ourselves. If we are committed on waiting on the Lord for anything, we can expect resistance from those around us. They become a snare to our faith. The devil uses them to persuade us out of our belief and into compromise.

You'll find that a Christian who goes to a seer or a diviner will have most likely been led there by someone else, mostly a non-believer or a spiritually immature believer. That's why Jesus tells us that we have to either follow them, or follow Him. If we decide to follow Christ, then we should be prepared to forsake our family or friends if ever they lead us astray. The idea is, if we decide to believe, we should then be prepared to stand by that choice, be willing to reject anything and anyone who wants to distract us from that faith.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen. Nobody hopes for what he already has, no one expects what is already in his hands. In the world out there, seeing is equated to believing, but in the kingdom of faith, we see what we believe; because the issue is not seeing to believe but believing to see.

Most times, faith will call you to believe through contrary evidence. When the Lord says that He will change your son and he only seems to get worse, you still need to believe. When the Lord promises healing and the doctors' report say that it's getting worse, you still need to believe. When the Lord promises to bless your business and the economy reports otherwise, you still need to believe. If the Lord promises you a harvest and the weather forecast predicts drought season ahead, you still need to believe.

The physical world operates through tangibility, through evidence and facts. The spiritual world operates through faith. For instance, our salvation is strictly through faith, faith in Jesus as the Christ, the son of God and in His redemption. We believe strongly in something we have never seen, and yet it is impossible to convince us otherwise, no matter how much science and reason wants to prove us wrong.

Faith changes us from the inside, it transforms our character and shifts our way of thinking. What starts in faith can eventually be seen and felt. Faith, consistent and persistent, based on the right source, is a powerful tool. It is possible to change the physical world by faith. Faith and confession are closely related as our faith is often evidenced by our confession.

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## Chapter 6: Exploring the promise

Let's learn a few lessons from chapter thirteen and fourteen in the book of Numbers regarding the Israelites journey to the Promised Land. God instructed Moses to send out some spies to explore the land that He was bringing them into - one spy from each of the twelve tribes.

After forty days of exploring the Promised Land, the spies returned to the people carrying with them some of the fruits of the land. Giving the report to Moses and Aaron their leaders, they all seemed to agree on one thing, that the land indeed was good and flowing with milk and honey! Two of the men, Joshua and Caleb wanted to go for it; they were excited by this land and its prospects. If that was the land that the Lord was giving them, it was a good land and they wanted to have it.

The other ten spies had seen something different. Yes, the land was flowing with milk and honey, but there was no way they could have it. There were giants there, powerful and strong giants, and the men had felt like grasshoppers in their own eyes. They had also observed the cities- they were large and had high walls that seemed impenetrable. These spies must have looked back at themselves and seen that as a people, they had no trained army, no chariots, and no weapons. They were just runaway slaves. There was no way they would be able to conquer that land, good as may be.

The ten spies saw the physical world and its realities and its facts, which spelled impossibility for them. They became afraid and cynical. They rebelled. Joshua and Caleb on the other hand, had seen the promise by faith, and the possibilities. They knew that the Lord who got them out of Egypt, made a way for them through the Red Sea, and fed them with the bread of heaven, would also find a way to give them this land. They believed.

What do you see? Do you see the declining numbers? Do you hear the sounds of war? Do you see the report against you? Do you see the doctor's report? Do you see the weather forecast? Do you hear what is being said? Can you see how many businesses are closing shops all around you? Can you hear that companies are downsizing? Have you heard that women will no longer be ordained?

If you have seen and heard the negative and have believed, if you have feared, then what purpose does the promise serve to you? Of what use is it? We feel it could be easier to get to a place if we know the entire road that leads us there. Furthermore, we want to be sure that there are no barriers or challenges we cannot overcome. The Lord doesn't reveal His entire plan to us, instead, He lead us one step at a time, manifesting Himself in one way and in another. Sometimes He'll speak in the thunder, sometimes He'll work in the stillness. Sometimes He'll use someone close, sometimes He'll use a stranger. You are to " _trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths' (Prov. 3:5-6)._

Most of us would rather not have God direct us; we'd rather direct Him on what to do with us. We want to tell Him which way to pass, and when, and how. We only see each moment of our lives as it happens, God sees our entire lives in one moment. How then, can we direct Him? When the Lord promises, or when He tells us to 'just believe', we must trust that He will make it happen His own way and in His own time. After all, _He watches over His word to perform it (Jer. 1:12)._

Despite the enormous proof of the Lord's power and abilities, the Israelites still shook with fear at the spies' report. This fear led to rebellion to the extent that they even plotted against Moses, and sought to find another leader who would take them back to Egypt. They could not be still and wait on God even at the very border of the Promised Land. It must have been frustrating for the Lord to have brought them this far, with miracles and all, to see their blatant lack of faith.

Do you frustrate the Lord with your constant unbelief? Do you look around at the prevailing circumstances and lose faith? Do you give in to fear and doubt at the first sign of trouble? Women have been mocked by their family and friends about their age. They've been told that they ought to have children because 'they're not getting any younger' and some have eventually conceded. Could this be the reason why there're so many children born out of wedlock today?

The Lord asked Moses, " _How long will these people treat me with contempt, how long will they refuse to believe in me in spite of all the miraculous signs I have performed among them?"_ _(Num. 14:11)_ There are a lot of people who go around seeking miracles, thinking that if only the Lord was to do this or that for them, then they would have more faith in Him. Are there really any greater miracles that the Lord could have done for the children of Israel that could have made them believe Him more?

Signs and Miracles won't make us believe in God, at least not in the long run. As soon as we encounter another challenge, we find ourselves murmuring again, falling into fear and doubt again. Furthermore, we cannot say that there has never been a miracle in our lives that could help us have faith in God. As Christians, we believe that the Bible is the word of God, and if we believe that, then we believe the power of the Lord by the things He has done throughout the same Bible. We don't have any excuse as to not knowing the power of God.

That leaves us with the question - have we rebelled against the Lord by not believing? The answer is - most likely. We, like the Israelites in the Bible, have constantly believed the negative report. We have shrunk in fear at the mention of the giants; we have trembled at the thought of the fortified cities. Some men have looked at themselves and wondered: _what good woman will agree to marry me, I have no money; I have a disability; I have no education; am neither too smart nor too influential..._ Some women look at themselves and think: _where will I ever get a man to marry me? I am now in my mid-thirties and all men around my age are either married or looking for younger women. I am not that beautiful, I don't have the perfect body..._

New artists constantly wonder how they are ever going to make a breakthrough. In the entertainment industry where everyone seems to be perfectly beautiful and young, how will a plain-looking, middle-aged woman ever make it through? How will a new, unknown author, with little or no credentials, ever get published? With the job market overcrowded with overqualified hopefuls, how will a simple diploma holder with little experience get to prove their worth?

With God, having faith means believing despite the prevailing circumstances. It means giving yourself totally in the hands of the Lord. As we trust in the Lord, He guides our steps; as we lean on Him, He directs our paths. The world looks at facts, at realities and reason. The world believes that we shape our own destinies by what we do and how well we do it. In the world, action precedes faith, and faith is the hope that your deeds will produce the desired effects. In the kingdom of God, faith comes first, then action. However, action is not independent effort, it is not a blind attempt to 'meet God halfway,' rather, it's a guided step in the will of God.

Often times, lack of faith leads to failure. Unbelief and murmuring are very unpleasant in the sight of God. As you go through the wilderness period, holding on tirelessly is a prerequisite, because you never know when the season is about to end. Remember, as with the Israelites of those days, unbelief can prolong the waiting period or altogether nullify the promise.

I know we are in the age of grace. But that only makes faith even more important. We are saved by faith; we get healed through faith; everything we get from the Lord we only get by faith. Without faith, it is impossible to please God ( _Heb.11:6_ ). It is faith that moves the mountains ( _Matt. 17:20_ ). Moreover, Jesus said that whoever asks anything from the Lord in His name and does not doubt in his heart will get what he asks for ( _Mk. 11:23-24_ ). There is no escaping this faith thing.

Imagine the shame, after all that God had done for them, that the Israelites lost out on the Promised Land. Well, not all of them. After the intervention of Moses, the Lord forgave them, but they would still not see Canaan. Only those who were 20 years and below, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua who had given a positive report, would make it to the Promised Land. All others would fall in the desert. The Lord did to them the very things they had foolishly uttered - _if only we had died in Egypt, or in this desert_! ( _Num. 14:2b_ )

God forgives us, and our names remain in the book of life, yet we may lose out on His blessings here on earth because of unbelief. The _Lord replied, "I have forgiven them, as you asked. Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the LORD fills the whole earth, not one of the men who saw my glory and the miraculous signs I performed in Egypt and in the desert but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times- not one of them will ever see the Land I promised on oath to their forefathers. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it"_ _(Numbers 14:20-23)_.

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## PART THREE: THE REASON FOR THE SEASON

## Chapter 7: Transforming the shepherd into a king

One of the main reasons that the Lord takes us through the wilderness period is to shape our character and bring us into maturity. In order to develop muscles during the process of weight lifting, the current muscles are first broken, which can be quite painful. If you have ever done any sort of exercise that you are not used to, you usually experience some pain or discomfort in the following few days. This is when the muscles in your body get broken before they start to heal. As the exercise continues, the muscles start to form a fresh, but this time bigger and stronger. There's no shortcut to body building, just as there's no shortcut to character building.

To develop character, the Lord places us in trying situations. For instance, patience can only be formed by being exposed to people or circumstances that test our endurance. This could be the reason why you cannot wish away certain people around you, until you outgrow their annoying personas.

The same thing goes for self-control. If you are given to greed, lust, gluttony, you will always find yourself encircled by luring circumstances until you overgrow the untamed desires.

Growing into spiritual maturity is not a smooth journey. A lot of painful pruning and grafting is done on the way. God can use whichever way He desires to bring you into maturity, because ultimately our relationship with Him matters more than those other things we eagerly desire. For after all, _what does it profit a man to gain the world and loose his own soul_ _(Mk. 8:36)?_

The Lord could be using your barrenness to get you closer to Him. He could be using your joblessness to make you seek Him more, or He could even use the challenge in your marriage or business to make you know Him more. Still, depending on God's purpose for your life, He could allow painful circumstances to mold you into that which will shape you to be who you were meant to be.

The best example of this is the story of David. David was a young shepherd boy tending his father's flock in the field. What he didn't know was the purpose the Lord had for his life. He wouldn't have guessed that he, a mere shepherd, would rise to be the greatest king in Israel, and a man after God's own heart. Some of us have no clue what the Lord intends with our lives. We may feel rejected, despised, ugly, uneducated, or worse, but God looks at us with the blueprint of our lives drawn in His hands.

For the objective of the Lord to be fulfilled in our lives, we have to go through several processes and circumstances in order to come to perfection or to maturity. This can take a long time like in the case of Moses- forty years. This means that even if our best years have passed doesn't mean that it's also too late for the Lord to use us. Moses was a good 80 years old when he led the Israelites from Egypt to The Promised Land. If he had been applying for a position in a company or running for office, his age wouldn't have got him past the front door.

Thank God that age, class, education, and such do not hinder His plans for our lives. It's so easy for us to feel that it's too late to do this or to try that. We feel that we should have done that when we were in our 20's or 30's or 40's. We feel that there's no point in bothering the Lord about this dream or this passion because we've already missed our opportunities. When we give ourselves into the hands of the Lord, He orders our steps, He directs our paths, He stirs our spirits, and He deposits the ideas in our hearts and causes us to meet the right people at the right time.

During those days of old when the Lord rejected Saul as king over Israel, He sent the Prophet Samuel to go and anoint another King. The Lord did not reveal to Samuel who that was, He only told him to go over to the house of Jesse and " _anoint the one I will tell you_ " _(1 Sam. 16:3)._ David, who was God's chosen, and Jesse's youngest, was in the field tending his father's flock. When Samuel reached Jesse's house and saw the first-born son Eliab, he instantly admired him assumed that he was the chosen one _(1 Sam 16:6)._ Immediately, God corrected him, telling Samuel that He, unlike man, _does not look at the outward appearance but looks at the heart (Vs. 7)._

When we are busy doing our usual work, going about our normal day to day lives, the Lord has sent out a prophet to anoint us as kings. The Lord has sent out an angel with an abundance of blessings and divine purpose in his hands. Just as David was going about his shepherding business unaware of God's plan for him, we should also go about our lives knowing and trusting that somewhere out there, there's a prophet that the Lord has sent our way with a destiny beyond our wildest imagination.

It's so easy for us to dismiss ourselves, just as it is so easy for others to quickly dismiss us too. Man looks at the outward appearance; people will judge us and rate us by what they can see. When you apply for a job, they will look at your qualifications; when you apply for a tender, they will look at your profile; when you apply for a mortgage, they will look at your income. Your case is only as good as the evidence you provide. To a large extent, we also judge ourselves by the same standards. We don't care what our hearts desire; we weigh ourselves only by what is tangible. Our faith goes only as far as our arms can reach.

In a world that is obsessed with beauty, youth, talent, association, education and money, it is so easy not only for others to write us off, but we ourselves can end up feeling as nothing. We can end up limiting our vision to only what we ourselves can manage. Stretching our faith to believe bigger things can seem not only ridiculous, but too painful even to begin to dream.

How in the world would a shepherd boy, the youngest in the family, dare to imagine that he would be king? Only the Lord can place some dreams in our hearts. And when He does, it's not our place to struggle on how the dream will be realized. We are not told anywhere in the Bible where Joseph drew a plan or strategy on how he would get his brothers to bow to him as he had dreamed. It's not wrong to have a goal or a plan or a strategy, but only the Lord can cut out a path for the realization of particular dreams.

After Samuel had gone through the sons of Jesse, each as worthy to be king in the eyes of the prophet as the next, God still wasn't satisfied. Samuel must have wondered, ' _what is God looking for really_?' But the Lord had long set His eyes on Jesse's youngest son, somewhere out there playing the harp, herding the sheep, unaware of His divine purpose, unaware of the creator's thoughts for him.

Some of us pray and wonder whether to continue praying or change our prayers altogether because they seem to be going nowhere. Some of us look at our education or age and don't even dare to dream big because it would be unrealistic. We won't even pray for some things because it is just absurd even to harbor the notion. Even the prophets of the Lord would tell us so. If a 60 year old woman approached a pastor and asked him for prayers so that she may conceive, I can imagine he would send her away with verses such as ' _my grace is sufficient for you', or 'all things work together for good._ Or perhaps he would advise her that the Lord says no for a reason, and she should submit to the will of God. That is if the woman would dare conceive such a thought in the first place.

What if it is the plan of God? What if it's the Lord who has promised? Will He be caught up in His own trap and not be able to free himself? Sarah conceived when she was 90, way past the child bearing age. If she had lived in our day, we would have told her that she is crazy to even ask the Lord for something like that! Critics will tell us that we can't, and they'll give us great reasons why we can't.

When we keep holding on to our faith, even those close to us dismiss us. They tell us to give up; they tell us that we'll miss out on opportunities when we are busy chasing impossible dreams. They'll ridicule us and insult us and call us crazy. They'll even tell us that we are guilty of testing the Lord.

Nevertheless, we should not listen to their reports and their research and their village wisdom. Our eyes should remain focused on Christ, who is able to do abundantly, exceedingly more than we can ever ask for or even imagine _(Eph. 3:20)._

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## Chapter 8: The bigger picture

Samuel left the house of Jesse immediately after anointing David. David went back to the field to continue looking after his father's sheep. Just as it took thirteen years for Joseph's vision to materialize, it took a good twenty years for David to become king after he was anointed.

David went back to the ordinary life, so did his brothers and his parents. The excitement and the surprise and the possible jealousies must have waned off after a while. Maybe even doubt might have set in, we are not told. But knowing the human predisposition, questions must have crossed their minds with the passing years.

Once the Lord promises or speaks to us, we become elated, but the initial excitement later fades. The Lord rarely tells us when the fulfillment of a promise, dream or prophesy will come to pass, or the challenges that we will encounter before that time.

It doesn't matter how long it takes or whatever events transpire, if the Lord spoke, He will fulfill. When the Lord speaks, He is usually well aware of the circumstances and challenges that lie ahead. He is not caught up in surprise like a man, wondering what to do with unforeseen circumstances. God doesn't need to change His mind when inevitability threatens to derail things.

We ought to constantly remind ourselves that the Lord is not shocked by any occurrence. The Lord is not astonished by the unexpected, or astounded by the unanticipated. He knows the beginning from its end; so when something out of the blue happed, don't think that the Lord is as startled as you are. It could even be that the Lord Himself has purposed it to happen for the fulfillment of His purposes.

In the book of Samuel, there was an evil spirit from the Lord that used to torment Saul _(1 Sam. 16:14),_ and one of Saul's attendants gave the king a solution- to have someone play the harp and the spirit would depart. Another servant apparently knew a good candidate for the position- a certain son of Jesse who spoke well, looked well, was brave and knew how to play the harp. One thing led to another and David found himself in the service of King Saul.

If David had lived in today's time, many would have been told that it was up to him to make things happen. The Lord has already spoken, he has already promised, it would now be up to David to take a step of faith. We would have thought him a fool to go back to tend the sheep after receiving the kingly anointing. We would have expected him to dump the sheep, join a political movement and start strategizing.

Some of us hear from God and forget that it can take years before the accomplishment of His word. We go ahead and quit our jobs to start ministries, businesses or something else. Only for us to fail miserably somewhere down the line, and end up feeling bitter, discouraged and frustrated. It is the Lord's jurisdiction to pave a path for the His word. Does He not watch over His word to fulfill it? How then do we run ahead of the Lord without further instructions?

The virtue of waiting - and particularly waiting to hear from the Lord for guidance and direction is not so common. In these times, we are led to believe that our lives and our fate are entirely our responsibility. To an extent, this is true in regards to the choices we make and the actions we take. Yet, we are all players that are somehow interconnected in a game. Other people's choices and actions also affect us. We can never truly be the sole determinants of our how our lives turn out because we are never sure what we will walk into the next moment.

Successful people will tell us how they made it and what they did. People have written books on steps to take to achieve what we want- things to do and things not to do. It all looks smart enough to work, but does it always? We can say for a fact that more are the people who end up frustrated as they try to follow the magic recipes of success.

How many of us pause long enough to get guidance from the Lord, and more so especially when He has spoken Himself. We go through a lot of stressful and unnecessary trial and error methods trying to figure out how we will realize the promise, or accomplish the purpose. Until finally, exhausted and discouraged, we start questioning the validity of God's promises.

This isn't to say that we sit pretty warming the couch, remote control in hand. No, we ought to continue in service wherever we find ourselves as we wait for the Lord's direction for the next step, just as David did went back to the field to tend to the sheep. Meanwhile, the Lord was looking for ways to upset King Saul's spirit. All things indeed work together for good because, somehow, it was David that was picked out to enter Saul's service, and comfort him with the harp whenever the evil spirit attacked _(1 Sam. 16:23)._

The Lord uses what we have, but the Lord is the one who also gives us what we have; for all good gifts come from God ( _Jas.1:17_ ). David played the harp and played it well, and this is what was used to console King Saul's affliction. What do you have? Can you sing, can you make others laugh, can you dance, can you reassure, can you cook, can you clean, can you draw, can you drive, can you...? Whatever you have is whatever the Lord has given you, and whatever the Lord has given you is whatever the Lord will use. The devil deceives us by making us believe that our gifts are not as good as, or as useful as, or as important as someone else's.

Joseph's gift was in interpreting dreams, Queen Esther's gift was her beauty, David's gift was playing the harp amongst others, Solomon's gift was wisdom, Nehemiah's gift was administration, Daniel's gift was being royalty, and Paul's gift was leadership. Each of them lived in unique times, each faced unique challenges, and each of their gifts had a role to play, even in the smallest of ways, to shape the destiny of their nation.

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## Chapter 9: In the opposite direction

Have you ever prayed for something, or had a dream that you believed was inspired by the Lord, or received a word of prophesy, but instead of things aligning themselves in order for the oracle to manifest, they instead seem to take a path in the very opposite direction?

Let's say that the Lord has promised you healing, but the next time you visit the doctor, he tells you that the infection has moved to another part of the body. The Lord promises you promotion, but instead of your boss warming toward you, you receive a termination letter. Or probably you have been fervently praying for a financial breakthrough, and you are sure the Lord has heard, and He has confirmed it in one way or another, only to get auctioned the very next day!

When David came into the palace to serve Saul, he must have thought that the Lord positioned him there to learn about the running of the kingdom from the king himself. That would have made sense. Saul warmed toward David and even sent word to the boy's father Jesse, requesting him to allow his son to remain in the King's service _(1sam. 16:21_ ).

It didn't take very long before Saul turned against David. When David killed Goliath, the people started praising him, much to Saul's displeasure. _"Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands" (1 Sam. 18:7)._ Saul was overwhelmed with envy that the people had credited David, his junior, with killing tens of thousands, and yet him, the king, with only thousands. This led the king to plot against David's life. But, when Saul realized that God was with David, he became very afraid of him.

Often, people will mistreat you, not because you deserve it, but because they are jealous of you. They may be on your side at first, but when they see the potential that you have, when they see God's favor upon your life, they become afraid of you and even start to avoid you.

Instead of running to your closet to cry, or feeling pity on yourself, go on your knees and pray for discernment. It could be that the 'little people', the ones God has rejected as He did Saul, are eluding you because they can almost sense the favor and the destiny that is within you. There are times when we ourselves avoid people because we feel intimidated by their confidence, their faith or their success. We want to slip away from them and first try to reach to a comparable level that would make us more comfortable in their presence. When we fail to measure up, we end up feeling inadequate, and it becomes easier to avoid those people completely.

If we are not careful, as Christians, we may end up losing our faith in the Lord if we compared ourselves to others. Sometimes we feel that no matter how much we pray, fast or worship, we just don't seem to get it as easily as certain others. As a result, we feel disappointed in God; we feel much like the child whose parents just can't love him, or the one who has to ask more to get less.

Is it that way with God? Remember when the Lord said that ' _Jacob I loved but Esau I hated' (Mal. 1:3)?_ God chose to bless Jacob and reject Esau before even they were born. What if the Lord has already decided to reject us? Could it be the reason why some of us have been praying for so long, with so little to show for it? We at times look at others around us and feel for sure they are favored, I mean, they have the brains, the talent, the Looks, the personality, the connections, the luck, the money, great family, great friends...

What hurts us more is that we feel we are 'better' than these favored people. We feel we do more for the Lord than they do. Therefore it's not fair that the Lord blesses them instead of us. We are the ones who give more to the church, we get up early to go serve in church while some of them come much later- when the service is halfway. We are the one who give our full tithe and offerings while they may even not pay their tithe in full, if at all. We are the ones attending every other prayer meeting and listening to every sermon on TV and radio. We are the ones who always listening to gospel music while they dance to secular music without a second thought. They date men and women who are not Christians, but we won't even come near to one who is not spirit-filled!

We try to please our earthly masters by doing things that we think they'll appreciate. Not so much because we like to do it for them, but so as to manipulate them to like us. We try to outshine our colleagues, our siblings, or others in order to find favor with those in authority. We try the same gimmicks with the Lord. We make our prayers longer, sing more songs and read more books. We get involved in all kinds of ministries, not out of a willing heart, not by the leading of the spirit, but because we think that the Lord will feel compelled to give us what we ask of Him.

Certain preachers lead some to believe than in order to 'reap' from the Lord, we have to sow, and the more we sow, the more we reap. A few preachers require that you accompany your prayer request with a 'monetary seed' in order to receive the answer.

The unfortunate thing is that many of us are desperate enough to fall for it. If our prayers aren't being answered when those of others are, then there must be something that we're not doing right. We think that if we plant these monetary seeds, the Lord will be obligated to answer our prayers. So many people do this and are still frustrated.

What then is the correct formula to follow for the Lord to answer our prayers and for Him to bless us? Let's consider some of the people in the scriptures who were blessed, healed, or whose prayers were answered, and exactly what they did.

The very first man in the bible who the Lord blessed was Abel. Genesis writes that the Lord looked with favor on Abel's offering, but did not look with favor on Cain's offering. Not much is said about why God favored Abel's offering and not Cain's; they both gave offerings, but the Lord received one well over the other. Could it have been the attitude? We know that the Lord looks at the heart above all else, so could it be that Abel gave his offering out of worship and Cain gave his out of obligation? Or could it be because Cain gave an offering from his own sweat?

Next, we come to Noah. When the Lord was grieved for creating man, and put it in His heart to wipe out all mankind, the bible says that, ' _But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord'_ ( _Gen. 6:8_ ). Why? Because, _-'Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God' (Gen. 6:9)._

We might say, a lot of 'righteous' people still do not seem to find this favor with the Lord. Well, that depends on what we understand as righteous. We may pray for hours on end, worship fervently, read through the bible several times a year, but at the end of it, you don't 'walk with the Lord.' You don't have a relationship with the Lord, only a series of religious acts that you do out of obligation and not out of a love for the Lord.

Walking with God goes beyond the daily devotion time, the weekly Sunday service and the quickie prayers here and there. It is more about searching Him out in His word, in our minds and hearts, seeking Him in worship, in the sermons that we hear. It's seeing through His eyes and hearing through His ears. It's so much more. It's about wanting the Lord for who He is, and not for what we want from Him. We find it hard to love or want someone without wanting them to want us back. So it's natural for us to expect that the Lord will do something for us in return for our seeking Him.

Abraham probably has the biggest blessing in the bible if we can say so. Imagine for the Lord to declare that all nations will be blessed through you? So what exactly did Abraham do to deserve such a blessing? God chose Abraham because of his character. _"For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which He has spoken of him" (Gen. 18:19_ ).

God knew that His Word was safe in Abraham's hands; He knew that Abraham would teach it to his children and grandchildren. He knew Abraham would pass His word on for generations. And for sure he did. The Israelites, during the days of their slavery in Egypt, may not have known the Lord personally, but they knew about Him, they knew their heritage. Moses, having been raised by his own mother- disguised as the nanny, must have taught Moses about His heritage. This is evident in that, even when he had grown up, he was aware that the Jewish slaves were his own people.

How safe is the word of God in your hands? Does the Lord know that His word will carry on through you? Or are you one of those people who get what they want and their commitment to the Lord ends, that is, until the next need? No wonder Jesus anointed Paul, with the fervency and passion that he had, Jesus knew that Paul's eyes only needed an opening to the truth, and he would run with the message to the ends of the earth. And for sure, Paul is the greatest apostle there has ever been, responsible for writing a good portion of the New Testament.

The problem is, of course, we can't fool God. He knows that our enthusiasm is only because of what we want. He is aware that we have only joined this church because of the testimonies we have heard about the blessings and healings and all. Since we have a burning need in our lives, this church is most likely where it will be met. The Lord knows that our service in certain ministries is not because of a genuine desire to serve, but because of the opportunities and connections we want for our own ambitions.

Sometimes it's not our character that is the problem, sometimes it's our spiritual maturity. That's why the Lord might delay the answer to our prayers because He knows that through our running after the answer, we will catch up with Him, and He will change us and shape us into what He wants us to be. So, as we pursue our needs in prayer, our question should not be whether the Lord can, but whether He will; and if He'll not, why He will not. There are some things we know for sure that the Lord desires for us, such as healing. Nonetheless, it is not always guaranteed, because we know many Christians who are not healed. Why then do the scriptures say that _"by His stripes we are healed (Isa. 53:5)?"_

The process of waiting on the Lord is supposed to transform us. It's meant to move us from the place of getting the Lord to do our will, to the place of getting us to do God's will.

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## Chapter 10: The pot and the potter

In the book of Jeremiah, the Lord asked the prophet to go to a potter and observe the process of making a pot. ' _Go down to the potter's house and there I will give you my message.' So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. (Jer. 18:2-4)_

Just as the potter molds the clay in his hands to soften it and smoothen it, then sets it upon the wheel in a vigorous process till it is shaped into the vessel of choice, and then set it to dry so that it can become usable, is almost similar to the process which the Lord uses to transform us.

At first, it might feel good to be in the hands of the Lord when He's molding us here and there to prepare us. This might be the season when He seems to answer all our prayers and requests. He gives us dreams and visions and words of knowledge, and we feel as though we have reached our spiritual destination. Then the next thing we know we are spinning around in circles, the feel of the wheel hard and cold on us. We cry out, but it seems as though the Lord is just there looking at us, doing absolutely nothing.

There are those times when we feel as though the Lord has taken a vacation. We go from one bad thing to another, one disappointment to another, or it could be just one thing that seems to get worse. We pray all the prayers we know, keep all the watches of the night, attend every other miracles service, but nothing will bulge. The wheel is busy working on the clay. After the clay is shaped into a desired vessel, it is then put out to dry.

Once in a while the potter will reach out to steady the wheel, or even stop it to check on the vessel's progress, and then the spinning continues. Every now and then when the potter stops to check the wheel, we think that our breakthrough has finally come, only for the challenges to pick up again. Something in us that has not yet been completely shaped. It could probably be in the area of giving. Maybe the Lord wants you to learn how to give in adversity so that in plenty you will also give. _'Those who are trusted with little will also be trusted in much' (Lk. 16:10)._ Or it could be in humility, or in forgiveness- that's why certain situations will prevail until you get it right. _"Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, character; and character, hope." (Rom. 5:4)_

The process at the wheel is not a dance of joy, but a refining by fire. Most, if not all the sufferings that we go through as Christians are not bad coincidences or misfortunes, but rather a means of shaping us into vessels of purpose. When we come to this understanding, then our attitude toward life's challenges will change. We may still hurt, but we will hurt with hope.

In the book of Samuel, when David's wilderness period finally came to an end, he became king over Israel. It didn't have to take a coup for him to overthrow Saul's government, but situations aligned themselves perfectly. David didn't have to struggle to get the kingdom that the Lord had promised him.

In the modern times, we are led to believe that we have to make things happen ourselves. Instead of leaning back and letting the Lord lead the way, we strive to lead the Lord. We go through unnecessary frustrations because we harbor a false believe that it is up to us to pursue our destiny. The Lord is the one who defines our purpose, long before we are conceived; He is the one who promised, and He is the one who knows when and how the fulfillment will happen. So, how can we get ahead of the Lord? Could it probably be because the Lord seems slow and quiet to us, so we feel we have to harness Him, or coax Him to act?

It is at such times when we start trusting more in our own strengths and talents; we begin to trust more in our prayers and our giving. No wonder we fall for the lie of sowing seed to unlock blessings. I can only imagine a modern day scenario of the Israelites waiting in the wilderness for the glory cloud to move in order for them to proceed. Sometimes the cloud could move after a few days, and sometimes it could take weeks or even months. The Lord didn't explain to them why He sometimes took longer to move. They were to simply obey.

It honestly feels awkward to just wait without knowing how long you have to wait. Doubt comes into play, 'what if am waiting for nothing?'

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## Chapter 11: Against the Current

As said before, faith is not for the faint at heart. Faith calls to stand when everyone else is seated, and to sit, when everyone else is running. Faith demands sight in the darkest of nights; it demands to see tomorrow clearly, even when today is not guaranteed. In other words, faith is not as simple as just believing.

Faith is only made possible, or simpler, if we shift our focus from the object of our hope to something else; to something, or someone else that can materialize our expectation, someone that can run with our dream. We find it easier to rest when we share our load with someone else, putting our trust in their power to handle it.

Some people then decide to put their trust in others; children put their trust in their parents, they reason that because their parents are older, and seemingly wiser, then they must be able to make things happen. Others put their trust in their spiritual/religious leaders; that because the leaders are 'closer to the Lord', they surely can successfully stand in the gap and make things happen. Some put their trust in people who are well placed in society, those who might be able to pull the right strings.

Where have you put your trust? The dreams you carry, the hopes you have, and the fears, with whom do you share them with in the hope of assistance? Where do you keep your broken pieces in the hope of restoration? Yes you may pray, but what is that other thing that you are banking on? You pray yes, but your faith is that your papers will get you through the interview. You pray yes, but your faith is that your talent will get you through to the next level; that your beauty, your family connections, your confidence, and the amount in your bank account will be a strong enough bridge to get you to the other side.

The Lord is a jealous God, or so the bible says. He does not like to share His glory with anyone, or anything for that matter. That's why sometimes He will destroy every other thing that we put our trust in, so that He may alone remain the source of our strength. He may altogether allow something else to come our way that we may lift our eyes from our own strengths and look to Him alone. That sounds so selfish of the Lord, doesn't it? But remember the pot and the potter; the potter has every right to shape his clay into a vessel of his choice. The difference with the Lord is that He does it out of love, though it may not always feel obvious.

As Christians, it doesn't matter what we have, our trust should be in the Lord alone. Paul asserted that ' _there is nothing that we have that has not been given to us' (1 Cor. 4:7)_. So, instead of trusting in our strength, why not trust Him who gives us the strength. Smart people believe too much in themselves. I remember a colleague who once told me that he could never pray to pass an exam, all he needed to do was put his smart brain to work. It felt offensive and arrogant because being smart, just like everything else, is a gift. Why not trust the giver more than the gift? For after all, his smart brain, no matter how smart, was not beyond destruction. And so many other things can as well get in the way of our efforts.

When we think about it, it's actually ridiculous to trust in that which we have been given, yet at the same time give little thought to the one who has given it. The Lord blesses us, but we end up making those blessings our Lord, and when the Lord takes them away, we become bitter with Him. One reason that we cannot afford to trust in our own strengths is because we will deceive ourselves. What will happen the day our strength fails us?

When we place our trust in the Lord, regardless of our abilities, then we can rest on one fact - that the Lord is not limited. Our strength only goes as far as its threshold, but the Lord goes farther. Our imagination can hardly be stretched beyond the constraints of what we know, but the Lord easily breaks through the boundaries. " _For He is able to give us abundantly, exceedingly, beyond what we can ever ask or even imagine" (Eph. 3:20)._

The other benefit of trusting in the Lord instead of trusting in our abilities is that, should our strength fail, we won't be too bitter because we won't have given much thought to it. Our source of trust won't shift even when everything gives way around us. When our trust is in the Lord alone, it won't matter how good we are or if our education is up to date, or if our age is within preference, or if our capital is within requirement. That burden is not ours to bear but the Lord's; it's up to Him to know how He'll work around our inadequacies.

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# What do you see?

This 'my trust is in the Lord' was David's attitude when he faced Goliath. The Philistine army had gathered in order to war against the Israelites. King Saul too, had gathered his army for defense. Goliath was literary a giant, measuring over nine feet in height. He knew for sure that no one would measure up to his strength. Taking advantage of this, he challenged the Israelites to get just one man who would face off with him in battle. Each of the men of Israel, including Saul the king, discerned that this was one fight that they could not win. If only there was one amongst the Israelites who could measure up in strength. If only there was a giant big enough to equal Goliath!

Just like their forefathers had once looked at themselves and despaired at the sight of the Canaanites, the king and his soldiers felt the same helplessness at the sight of Goliath. And they were dismayed ( _1 Sam. 17:11)_. The more they looked at themselves, the more pathetic they felt, and the more elated Goliath felt. The giant preyed on their fear, becoming even more confident of himself. The Philistine King and his army put their confidence in him as well.

David happened to hear Goliath speak, and was disgusted by the giant's arrogance. He believed that the Israelites were the people of God, and that her army was the army of the Lord; so he could not imagine anyone who would dare defy them. Where Saul and his men saw a giant in Goliath, David saw only an 'uncircumcised philistine'- _"Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God" (1 Sam. 17:26b)?_

How do you handle the challenges that you come across in your life? Do you see them as giants that you can't measure up to? From the bills that need to be paid, to the debts that need to be settled; from the doors that seem so tightly shut, to the paths that appear impassible. What is that giant that is shouting out to you, to come if you dare, because he has seen that you are nothing, because he has looked at you and disdained your strength?

Have you chosen to compare yourself to that taunting giant? You are convinced that you can't face him because you are feeble. You feel that you can't face that fear because you are not smart enough, and you can't harbor that dream because you feel there's not much to you. You look in the mirror and think you can't apply for that job.

Our fears are genuine to a certain extent. It is true that some of us are not that smart, some of us are not too strong, some of us do not have a lot of money, if any at all, some of us are not that beautiful, and some of us are past the best years. If we look to ourselves, we are bound to encounter inadequacies. If we rely on our abilities, it'll only be a matter of time before we run into a barrier that we can't cross.

If we, however, look to the Lord, our flaws vanish into thin air. David did not look to himself, he looked to the Lord. He would have credited himself with killing both bear and lion with bare hands in defense of his father's sheep, but instead, he attributed the power to God. _"_ _The Lord_ _who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine" (1 Sam. 17:37)._

Rarely do we give God the glory for our achievements. We figure that if we worked hard, it was our strength that got us the results. Even where we realize that it wasn't our own strength, we call it good luck. A lot of people bask in the glory that is supposed to be the Lord's. We praise people for doing well in exams, we say that – 'he's a very hardworking young man; he burned the midnight oil on many days.' We praise people for their great talents, we call them prodigies, we call them geniuses, and they warmly accept the praise and feel good about themselves.

This, of course, is not to discredit hard work. Hard work is a great character trait, and is highly commended in the proverbs over and over. But, can we recognize that it is God who gives us the grace to work hard? Can we also recognize that outcome from hard work is not always guaranteed, if not by God's grace? How many people all around us work so hard, maybe much harder than we ourselves, and yet don't even have half of what we have? Both the ability to work hard and the ability to achieve the desired results are both gifts from God. So, like David, why not give the glory to the Lord for both?

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# A stick and a stone

Upon seeing the confidence that the young David had in God, King Saul allowed David to face Goliath. He had David put on a battle suit which included a coat of armor, a bronze helmet and a sword. The problem was that David was not used to them, and to him, they were just an annoying distraction that made him uncomfortable. Saul was preparing David the way he knew how to, if he had more time, he'd probably had him through a few army lessons.

Saul was approaching the battle from a human perspective, but David wanted to go in ' _the name of the Lord.'_ He wanted to use what he knew and was comfortable with, because after all, it was not in the gear or in the weaponry that he would defeat Goliath; it was in ' _the name of the Lord.'_

True to his faith, David removed the battle attire, collected stones and took his sling and approached Goliath. The giant, on seeing David, despised him. " _Am I a dog that you come to me with sticks" (1 Sam. 17:43)?_ Goliath trusted in physical strength, in shield and spear and arrow. His confidence was in his own strength and ability. So, seeing ' _only a boy'_ standing before him was simply ridiculous, and he could not wait to ' _feed David's flesh to the birds and the beasts' (vs. 44)_ , and continue to intimidate the Israelite army.

Sometimes, if not most times, our faith is simply ridiculous in the eyes of the world. They laugh at our hopes and our dreams and wonder how we are ever going to beat the giants with only sticks and stones. They wonder how we can apply to that expensive college when we can't even afford the bus fare to get us there. They wonder how we can pursue that job when we obviously don't look the part. They wonder how we can hope to conceive when we are 'that old'. They wonder, and have good reason to.

They wonder because, like Goliath, they believe in man's ability. They believe in brain and in brawn; they believe in the effort of man. Like King Saul and his men, they believe that you have to measure up to the giant. You have to be as big as he is, as strong as he is, and as confident as he is; you have to be as arrogantly equal to him as possible. There are no exceptions, and no miracles.

When we keep insisting that we can face this giant 'by faith', or 'in the name of the Lord', the world reluctantly gives in to our demands. And just like Saul, they try to dress us up in tunic and helmet and sword. If the giant should slay us, and most likely he will, at least we die in battle armor, we die as soldiers. They tell us to wear a lot of things that are too heavy for us because we are not used to them; things that only make us feel uncomfortable.

David removed the uncomfortable battle armor and took what he knew, well aware that it must have been absurd to those that watched. But the reason for his confidence was not on what he had, or what he was, the reason for his confidence was God- the _Lord who had delivered him from the paw of the bear and the lion._ Isn't that incredible faith! To not be worried about what others think or how ludicrous our resolve is, but to hold on to our faith because we are confident in our Lord.

David said to the Philistine. "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of God Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied" (vs. 45)... "All those gathered here today will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give all of you into our hands" (vs. 47). As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. Reaching into his bag, and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground. So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him (vs. 48-50).

It is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves. It is not by our human effort or knowledge that the Lord delivers, it is not by our clever plans that the Lord blesses. There are a lot of people who have maneuvered themselves to stardom by their own strength, but what many will not tell you is the unsatisfactory emptiness that comes with it, they will not tell you of the pain that is slightly just below the surface of that success.

There are so many parents who have been deeply disappointed by their children, others have brought them great shame and misery. There are so many rich people who have been bound by life threatening addictions, so many famous people have committed suicide, and so many 'successful' people live empty, lonely lives.

On the other hand, when it is the Lord who has fought for you, when it is the Lord who has blessed you... _The blessings of the Lord maketh rich, and addeth no sorrow (Prov.10:22)._ When we approach life's challenges with the attitude that it is not by our own strength that we will conquer, but by the grace of God, then we can be assured of one thing- that pain won't share with our triumph.

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## PART FOUR: IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT ME

## Chapter 12: Remaining Faithful

You are a Christian, fully committed and fully trusting in the faithfulness of the Lord. You've been praying, you've been hoping, and you've been waiting. Yet the night persists; it continues for hours with no sign of dawn in sight. You begin to shift uncomfortably, afraid of losing the faith you've so delicately learned to tame. You feel as though you've been cornered to believe something that wasn't really meant to be, but you cannot give in to doubt after coming this far, you cannot imagine going through the journey again.

Probably you've already seen the faithfulness of the Lord, but something comes out of the blue that threatens to take away whatever you had trusted the Lord for in a long while. You start to feel as though the Lord has shortchanged you, but you are ashamed of what you feel and you don't want the Lord to 'find out'. So you show a brave face, positive confessions fill your lips to make up for the doubt within. You try to convince the Lord that you still have faith; it's just that - well - you apologize for the fears and pray for a renewal of hope.

What to do when such times confront us, and they are bound to? What do we do when we feel as though the Lord has said no to this particular request, but He is hesitating to tell us so? Sometimes we feel like asking God to tell us point blank if our prayers have any chance of being answered, so that at least, even though discouraged, we can go to plan B. But there are some prayers that just have to be answered, because we feel that they are what we live for, without them then there isn't much else.

What if the Lord doesn't answer them? What if He remains silent, unmoved by our most desperate cry? In our earthly relationships, it's easy to give ultimatums; it can sometimes be easy to make someone give us what we want. We can give threats, which might work because the other party stands a chance to lose out if the threat is carried out, or we can bribe to entice the other party to give in to our desire. We can manipulate them in one way or another. We cannot, however, threaten the Lord, neither can we bribe Him or manipulate Him, so we remain helpless and at His mercy.

It really can be discouraging knowing that there's nothing we can do to sway the Lord. We can even end up bitter with Him because He remains apathetic to our suffering. I mean, doesn't the Lord understand that this disease is life threatening? Does He not know that I could die, does He not get it? Is He not aware that this job is my livelihood, that I need it to pay the bills, the mortgage, the fees and food? Yet He sits quietly and watches as the boss puts my name in the list of those who will be sacked. Jesus may have known what it is like to be man, but does He really know what it feels like to be a woman who is turning 40 and is still single and childless, much to the mockery of her relatives? How can He allow me to go through this? Is it really true what we sing about Him in the songs?

There are many times when we have had to quote Paul in saying that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord ( _Rom.8:28_ ). We don't know how else to explain why the Lord allowed certain things to come our way in spite of all the prayers and all the faith. Sometimes our faithfulness to Christ doesn't do much to shield us from such affliction. Unanswered questions can be painful to muse over, so we reluctantly dismiss it to the concept that the Lord knows best.

Daniel of the Old Testament days faced a somewhat related dilemma. Of all the administrators of the time, he was the most distinguished and with exceptional qualities such that the King contemplated setting him over the entire kingdom _(Dan. 6:3)_. This thought did not go down well with Daniel's colleagues, so they tried to find ground to accuse him before the king. Apparently, they couldn't find anything of which they could accuse him. They realized that there was no corruption or negligence in him _(6:4)_.

Would your colleagues, or family, or those around you say the same of you? How deep would others have to dig before finding a serious breach in our conduct? No one is perfect, that is given, but, are we working out our salvation to the extent that our spiritual maturity is evident in our character? When our colleagues are asked to name those who are faithful, would your name make it to that list? When your own family is asked to list your shortcomings, would they struggle to come up with something, or would they point out the flaws with ease?

Daniel's colleagues concluded that: " _we will never find any basis for charges against this man unless it has something to do with the Law of his God"_ _(6:5)._ Daniel was so straight that, the only way to find crookedness in him was to bend the rules. The men trapped the king into issuing a decree that would feed his ego. The king charged that for the next thirty days, all men were supposed to pray to him alone, and anyone who did not was to be thrown into the lion's den _(6-9)._ The men were so sure of Daniel's faithfulness to his God that they knew they would finally get rid of him.

There were obviously no human rights groups then, or judiciaries or lawyers. The word of man was final; it could not be denounced, not even by his own self. And so much so the king's; his word was as good as a law in the constitution. We may not be able to relate with that because we live in a time when we change our minds like undergarments. Promises and vows, let alone mere words, are broken without remorse. The 'you have my word' of yester decades is not the same as today's. The pledges of today, unless secured with collateral like a bank loan, are simply not trustworthy.

So Daniel was as good as dead. His allegiance to his God could not be averted, and neither could the king's edict. Daniel eventually ended up in the lion's den, much to the king's sorrow, and thanks to his ego. I wonder what went through Daniels heart as he was led to his death for being faithful to the Lord. Did he blame the Lord? Did he feel betrayed by the Lord? Did he feel what some of us feel in even less severe circumstances – that all our 'faithfulness' is worth nothing to the Lord, that we surely deserve better from the Lord? That at the least, God should reward our 'being good' by either provision or protection or both.

We occasionally go through certain situations because of our allegiance to the Lord. We encounter jealous relatives, bitter friends, malicious colleagues and downright nasty neighbors. The enemy comes in to steal, kill and destroy ( _Jn. 10:10_ ), and he sure has readily available people that he can use. So, regardless our dedication to the Lord, 'shit happens'. We get set up real good, and we hope or expect that the Lord will to run to our rescue with sirens and armies, but like Daniel, we end up right inside the lion's den.

It could be that Daniel expected that his God would do something, a miraculous rescue perhaps, as he was led toward the den. But the Lord did not show up. Maybe it was that the Lord was waiting to show Himself faithful right at the entrance, but He didn't show up there either. The Lord did show up eventually– inside the lions' den! ( _Dan. 6:22_ ).

The next morning, Daniel was pulled out alive, without even a scratch! Somehow, the lions had not touched him. In a turn of events, the king had the men who had plotted against Daniel thrown into the den together with their families. This time round the lions did their job. The king also issued another edict- that over his entire kingdom, all people were to fear and reverence the God of Daniel _(6:25-27)._ In the end, Daniel's faithfulness to his God caused an entire kingdom to acknowledge the Lord.

Many are the times that we want the Lord to protect us from troubles. We want our faithfulness to Jesus to be a kind of guarantee against problems. When we encounter setbacks, we feel bitter, or assume that we have wronged the Lord and given the devil a foothold in our lives. We try to handle the setback by repenting fervently, binding the forces of evil and 'closing every door' that our rebellion may have opened for the enemy. Of course, most of the time, it hardly changes anything, so we end up feeling powerless.

All the same, that doesn't stop us expecting. We expect that the Lord will meet us somewhere in the midst of our challenges, but He doesn't seem to bulge from His seat. We expect that we will see His faithfulness at the entrance of the den of destruction, but He still doesn't move. Yet in the gloom of darkness, He sustains us! Somehow the ferocious beasts do not devour us; somehow the infection we dreaded does not kill us; somehow the disappointments do not destroy our hope. Somehow we survive.

The time in the lions' den may seem endless, but morning does come, and things go back, not just to normalcy, but to the very elevation that our enemies had dreaded. And the haters who wished us evil might end up in the very pit they had dug for us, and there'll be no one to save them.

This will only happen if we hold on to our faithfulness and refuse to compromise, even if it means coming to the point of death. Jesus said that ' _whoever seeks to save his life will lose it_ ' _(Matt.16:25)_. There's absolutely nothing wrong with preserving life, but not if it's at the expense of our faithfulness to Christ. The enemy keeps closest to those who are faithful, looking for the slightest opportunity for them to slip so that he can accuse them. One simple 'excusable' concession is all it might take to set us tumbling down the hill. What others have been doing for years and getting away with, may take us doing just a few times before landing in serious trouble.

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# How far would you go for the Lord?

In the same book of Daniel, we read about three other young men who were fellow royal Jewish exiles with Daniel, set apart to serve the Babylonian king. Nebuchadnezzar, on one good day, decided to make an image of gold for people to worship. He set out leaders who would play out some instruments, and at the sound of the music everyone within the kingdom was to fall down and worship the image of gold. Anyone who did not fall to worship was to be punished.

Now Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego were God fearing men who, like Daniel, would not do anything to renounce their God, or to break his commandments. The Jew-hating leaders noticed that at the sound of the music, the three men did not bow down to worship the golden image, so they were taken before the king. They reminded Nebuchadnezzar of the decree he had issued charging that everyone was to worship the image which he had made _(Dan.3:8-11)._

The king was furious, but he gave them an offer. If they bowed to the golden idol right there, he would set them free, but if they still refused, then they would have to be thrown into the furnace. Adamant, the three men said to the king –" _O king, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up" (3:16-18)._

For me, this is one of the stories that I find really challenging and inspiring in the entire Bible - **the resolve to remain faithful to the Lord, even when He doesn't help you.** Most times, what encourages us to stand strong in the face of trials is the belief that the Lord will rescue us at some point. But to unconditionally commit to the Lord without caring whether He will meet us halfway proves real spiritual maturity.

Can we say the same thing regarding ourselves and our situations? The mere thought of it is quite hard to swallow. If Jesus doesn't answer our prayer, will we still follow Him? Will we still love Him? Even if He doesn't fulfill the desires of our heart, are we still willing to remain faithful? What's wrong with compromising in just this one thing, can't the Lord surely understand?

It all comes down to where we've put our focus. If our focus is on ourselves, on saving our own lives, or on what we want, then remaining faithful without expectation becomes a difficult choice. If we feel as though God owes us something, then we will always expect Him to meet His 'obligation' to us, and when He doesn't, we feel cheated. On the other hand, if our priority is God, then it does not matter if He comes through for us or not.

That sure doesn't sound fair. Maybe it's not. Even Job thought so. That was until the Lord confronted him and asked him some difficult questions, and then Job realized that he could not measure up to the Lord. I mean, what would you answer the Lord if He were to ask you – " _Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand_ ( _Job 38:4_ ). _"Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?"_ ( _Vs.12_ ). _"Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?"_ ( _Vs.16_ ) _"Do you know the Laws of the heavens? Can you set up the Lord's dominion over the earth?"_ ( _Vs_. _33_ )

Let's revisit the story of prophet Jeremiah at the potter's house. If the potter can take a piece of clay and make it into any vessel he wishes, how much more can the Lord do with us? The Lord asked the prophet _"O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does"_ _(Jer.18:5)?_ The only consolation we have is that the Lord will not allow bad stuff to happen to us just because He can. Whether we understand it or not, whatever the Lord does is always for a greater good.

Just like Daniel, the Lord did not save Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego in the eleventh hour. They ended up being thrown into the furnace which was so hot that it burned up the men who were throwing them in!

But God was in that furnace. Where they dreaded to go, it was there that the Lord was at; and where the Lord is, there is no condemnation. Not even the furnace of the king could burn them up: just as the curses of the enemy will not destroy you. If the Lord saves us from going into the fire – great! But if we do end up in the oven of tribulation, the Lord will be there, and we will not be consumed.

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## Chapter 13: Get over yourself

Life does not start and stop with us. We may be individuals, but by ourselves, we are incomplete. We are members of a family, members of a society, neighborhood, district, county, country, continent and eventually, earth. As Christians, we are members of a body – the body of Christ. Ideally, we ought to be members of a church. Apostle Paul spoke about spiritual gifts and gave the example of the human body with each body part having an individual function, yet still benefiting the entire body. Our experiences with the Lord should as well be for the benefit of others and not just ourselves.

What does that mean? From time to time, we get to hear other peoples' testimonies; we get to hear about their experiences, their encounters, their pains and their triumphs. A lot of times these testimonies encourage us, and sometimes they help to increase our faith in God and give us the hope to hold on; to keep believing. What if no one ever shared a testimony? Most likely we would have no reason to hope. It would be relatively easy to take the biblical miracles and encounters as 'something that happened only in those days'. But the every now and then testimonies of people within the body of Christ, and even outside sometimes, helps us to see that even today, the Lord still works; that the Lord of the Bible is still present and still able even today.

Other times our experiences are meant to sensitize us toward the needs of others. Going through, and surviving some misfortune or undesirable situation puts us in a position to be of assistance to someone facing a similar predicament. Possibly it is for this reason that the Lord allows us to go through unpleasant circumstances in order for us to stand in the gap for someone else.

Have you ever stopped to think that whatever it is that you are trusting the Lord for will not just be for you, but for the benefit of others as well, whether directly or indirectly? In the Bible, many of the times that the Lord answered prayer or performed a miracle was not for the benefit of only one person, but for families, communities, or an entire nation. For instance, when you get your aching tooth fixed, your whole person benefits, or when you get your hair done, the whole person benefits. In the same way, as a member of the body of Christ, when the Lord does something for you, the whole body benefits, even if only indirectly.

Abraham was blessed, not so that he could show off to his entire clan, but so that 'nations could be blessed through him' ( _Gen.12:3_ ). God chose Jacob over Esau, not because he was a better man, but because God's plan for salvation of the entire world would be through him. The Lord later changed Jacob's name to Israel, and Israel later became a nation.

Though sold as a slave in Egypt by his own brothers, the Lord's favor was evidently upon Joseph, and the Lord blessed him and elevated him to a position of prime minister in a foreign land that abhorred Jews- for the benefit of Egypt and surrounding nations, and for the benefit of his own family (the very foundation of the twelve tribes of Israel) who would have otherwise starved to death.

When the children of Israel had stayed in Egypt for so long and had greatly multiplied, threatening the natives with their overwhelming numbers, the king of the day gave instructions for every male child born to be killed ( _Ex.1:22_ ). But by God's favor, somehow Moses was spared, not so much because he was better than the rest, or his parents were more righteous, but because God had predestined the liberation of the Israelites through him in the future. Later, God called Moses, not so that he could have greater credentials than others, but to lead the Lord's chosen people out of Egypt into their own land.

I have always believed with the deepest conviction that most of the children who survive great tragedies, against the odds, usually have great, God-ordained purposes ahead of them. God chose Israel, not because they were a better people, but because the Lord wanted to show Himself to the world through them ( _Gen.12:1-3_ ); they were only a vessel.

During the times of the Judges in the scriptures, whenever Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, He gave them over into the hands of enemies. But whenever the Israelites cried out to Him in despair, He always had mercy on them and sent them a deliverer. One such time, the Lord raised Gideon. Gideon was not an important man, he was neither a warrior nor a hero, in fact, he himself acknowledged his shortcomings ( _Judg. 6:15_ ). It had to take the Lord to convince Gideon that He (God) would be with him and give him victory. All this was not to exalt Gideon, but to deliver the children of Israel from the hands of their oppressors.

It is really tempting to swank in the event of a promotion, whether spiritual, social, corporate, financial or other. We often lead ourselves to falsely believe that it is because of our effort or righteousness that has made God to notice us. We think to ourselves that if we have gotten it, it is only because we deserve it. The story of Gideon and Moses should make us realize that the Lord does not necessarily pick out the strongest or the fastest, the most educated or the prettiest. That is normally the reserve of man. In 1 Samuel, when the Lord sent out the prophet to anoint a king, He told Samuel that unlike man, He (God), does not look at the outward, but looks at the heart.

We must therefore cease to think that the reason why the Lord wants to make use of us is because He must have noticed something very special in us. We live in a time when men have elevated greatness more than faithfulness, and most of us are led to believe that unless we acquire some sort of recognition, then we are not achievers but failures. No one wants to be a failure. So we venture out into the world with a mindset that we must be great, and in order to be great, we must achieve, and our achievement must be recognized, if not celebrated.

It's not just today that greatness is sort. During the time of Jesus, the disciples desired to know who was the greatest amongst them ( _Lk.9:46_ ). The mother of James and John also wanted to secure a great position for her sons in heaven. She wanted that one of her sons sit on Jesus' right side and the other on His left in heaven ( _Matt.20:21_ ). In a later argument about greatness, Jesus answer was probably one that His disciples did not expect: "whoever wants to be the greatest must be the least" ( _Mk.10:43-44_ ). In other words, greatness, in the eyes of Christ, is servant-hood – the very opposite of what the modern world sees as greatness.

The unfortunate thing is that even what Jesus Himself described as a ticket to greatness is often overlooked in the church. People are still scrambling for positions in the hope of achieving greatness. Pastors and preachers are seeking all sorts of ways to woo people into their churches because, the greater the congregation, the greater the prestige. Exactly how many pastors do you know who would boast of a fifty-member church? Pastors find it easier to feel successful when their congregation consists of large numbers.

It's not just in the numbers that they seek greatness; they also want to come across as powerful and impressive. They do all sorts of gimmicks and theatrics, and preach user-friendly sermons that draw the masses to them. Well-gifted singers, with little or no background check on their faith or character, are employed as praise and worship leaders. In the end, we have celebrated pastors with mega churches and a multitude of followers, but have little regard to spiritual growth, holiness or morality.

The crowds are drawn to these pastors and their churches not so much because of the good news, but because these pastors have managed to fool them into thinking that there's a shortcut to the Lord and to His blessings. They manage to sell to the people a God that has never been for sale, yet the people keep buying the Lie over and over again till they hit spiritual bankruptcy.

Teachings of grace have sharply declined and have been taken over by teachings of law and legalism in a very smartly concealed version. Messages of planting monetary seed in order to reap a monetary harvest are leaving a lot of frustrated, desperate believers with injury. Believers, who unfortunately, do not want to read the bible for themselves and who do not know, or have not been taught how to hear God for themselves are falling victims to deception by the numbers.

Secular teachings on steps to success have been altered to sound spiritual. A lot of unknowing church goers are faithfully employing these magic recipes to success and constantly falling short, driving them to deeper desperation. They assume that the Lord is not interested in them and end up feeling rejected and hopeless.

Sermons and teachings based on the word of the Lord should draw us closer to Christ and guide us into spiritual growth, encourage us in times of turmoil, and warn us of the dangers of sin and rebellion. However, some sermons leave us feeling more discouraged than encouraged, more condemned than redeemed, because of their rigidity to law and manmade 'know-how's'.

What steps did Abraham take in order to become the father of nations? How many were they and what was their order of precedence? What about Joseph, David, Moses, Gideon or even Paul? How much monetary seed did King Solomon sow in order to become the richest man to ever live?

If the so called recipes to success work, or if the programs and procedures that are cleverly laid out worked perfectly, then need would greatly be reduced in the world. Yet these seem to work only to some extent; and only for some very few individuals. To be fair, there is space for worldly knowledge, effort, discipline and determination. These are all great qualities and character traits that we should possess. But, they should never become absolute laws in that unless followed in totality, endeavors cannot triumph. The law of knowledge and effort can take us so far sometimes, but it can never outdo the law of grace.

The teacher in the book of Ecclesiastes taught that, ' _the race is not to the swift or to the strong, but time and chance happen to all' (Eccl.9:11). And in Psalms 127:2 (New_ _American Standard Version_ ), the Bible says that _'It is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors; For He gives to His beloved even in his sleep.'_ Further, Jesus said that the Lord chooses the foolish things of this world to shame the wise ( _1 Cor. 1:27_ ).

When the Lord does something, He doesn't do it just to soothe an individual's ego. Like Israel, He chooses us in order for Him to become known to others through us. Like Gideon, He picks us out in order to save our communities from oppression. Like David, He anoints us in order to lead people to the fear of the Lord. Like Paul, He blinds us in order to make us see the truth, and to teach that truth to many others.

Hannah, in the book of 1 Samuel, had desperately wanted a son. Rebecca her co-wife and mother of several children endlessly taunted barren Hannah. When Hannah vowed to give her son back to the Lord, He answered her prayer and she conceived. And true to her word, she took baby Samuel to the temple to be under the care of the priest Eli. Samuel grew up to be a great prophet and servant of the Lord, and Hannah conceived and bore other sons and daughters. For many women (and men) who desire children so much and yet aren't able to have any, when the Lord finally blesses them, the Last thing on their minds would be to give their child away.

Let us turn the focus from ourselves and back to our maker. Let us seek to find out His intention with our lives, with our circumstances. Let us find out if our story is meant to touch the lives of others, or make a difference in the kingdom of God. We can never out give the Lord, and no man has ever become poor from blessing others. Proverbs tell us that ' _there is one man who holds back and yet becomes poor, and another that keeps giving but keeps increasing (Prov.11:24)_. Holding back does not guarantee security, and giving out does not necessarily limit our provision.

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## Chapter 14: A step of faith

The one reason why waiting is uncomfortable is because most times we are never sure how long we will be waiting. The longer we wait, the more fear and doubt start to seep into our hearts. A number of people who wait on the Lord turn back in the middle of the journey because they give in to the taunting questions: what if I did not hear the Lord correctly? What if the Lord did not promise? What if it was just a dream? What if the Lord did not really speak? What if I'm waiting for nothing?

The world believes that the answers lie with us, so we are mocked that we pray when we should be strategizing. We give in to the pressure and abandon the waiting, and start to look for our own means to the end. We end up settling for so much less than the Lord would have wanted for us. We run around after every new treatment in town, we distribute our papers everywhere and talk to almost every other person in the name of networking. We labor. We run ahead and wonder why the Lord is not catching up.

So, what are we supposed to do? Should we dance to the tune of the world and apply the formulas of men? Should we revert to what makes sense to the world? Or should we become the foolish believers who trust the Lord to our death? Should we really pray when others are working, should we have faith when others are laboring? What is taking a step of faith? Is it a leap into the dark in the hope that the Lord will be challenged and jump in after us, or is it a guided act by the Lord Himself? If, and when we are sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit, we will know what to do and when to do it.

When the people of Israel fled Egypt and were at the shores of the red sea, they looked back only to see the armies of pharaoh in hot pursuit. If Moses had taken a blind step of faith, maybe he would have prepared the people on how to surrender, or maybe he would have asked the people to take courage and dive into the water and start swimming. Instead, when he cried out to the Lord, who had walked with him this entire journey, the Lord _asked_ him to stretch forth his staff – and Moses did, and the sea parted. The emphasis here is that it was the Lord who told Moses what to do; it was not Moses who told himself what to do. It was in the same way that the Lord asked him to strike the rock so that they would get clean water to drink.

There are many occasions that King David consulted the Lord before taking action. One such time was when the Philistines heard of his ascension to the throne and decided to plot against him. David inquired of the Lord, " _shall I go and attack the Philistines? Will you hand them over to me?" (2 Sam. 5:19)_

From his reputation, you would wonder why David had to inquire of the Lord; he could surely face them as he had faced so many others before and won. But it seemed that David had given himself over in the hands of the Lord. We should realize that God knows best, and that as a Father who has good plans for us, He is more than willing to order our steps because He after all knows what we do not. He knows the best way around or through a situation and He knows the outcome of each action. Proverbs tells us- " _trust in the Lord will all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths" (Prov.3:5-6)._

When we take a misguided action in the name of 'step of faith', most likely we will act according to 'our own understanding'. We will do what we think will work; we will act according to 'our own wisdom'. If we, on the other hand, acknowledge the Lord in all our ways, then He will guide us into the way that we should go.

How do we acknowledge the Lord in all our ways? Walking with the Lord is not an occasional affair, but a continuous journey. In order to get to that place where we perceive the will of the Lord in situations, we have to invest our time in Him. We have to engage in reading His word, in worship and in prayer and in other Christian disciplines like attending church or fellowshipping with other believers.

The Lord speaks through His word, but if we do not read the scriptures, then how will we know what He is saying? Sometimes the Lord will clarify something through the preacher, but if we never attend church or listen to sermons, how will we hear Him speak. Sometimes the Lord deposits something in our spirit during times of worship or prayer, but if we don't have time for all that, then surely, how will we hear Him speak to us. Imagine switching off your phone, not checking your email, and staying away from all forms of communication, and then go ahead to complain that people are not getting in touch with you. Or, imagine switching off all types of media and then wondering why you don't know what's going on.

It's important to know that God can't be put in a box. There's no formula or set of procedures to follow in order to hear from the Lord, but I strongly believe that it is about giving ourselves over in the hands of the Lord, acknowledging that He is indeed our Father, trusting in His mercies and having faith in His compassion. Then, He will stir our spirits to action; He will guide and direct our paths in the direction of His will.

When we trust in our efforts, sometimes the Lord will back out, especially when He wants to glorify Himself. The Lord will not share His glory with our efforts. If you look through the Bible at most of the greatest actions and miracles that were performed, you realize that the effort of man had very little to do with it, and that even man's contribution was only through the Lord's guidance.

During the days of Gideon in the book of Judges, the Midianites rose up against Israel in numbers that could not be counted. They ravaged the land of Israel and oppressed them to a point that the Israelites made shelters in caves and mountain clefts. Whenever they planted their crops, their enemies would invade and ruin the crops and kill every other animal. The Israelites were driven to a point of so much distress such that they even prepared their food in hiding.

The Lord had mercy on them and raised a man called Gideon as a defender who defeated an entire army of the Midianites with just three hundred men against tens of thousands. He was a hesitant and fearful man, not really the stuff that heroes are made of. He didn't just get up one morning, decided that enough was enough, and took a step of faith. Gideon, after a series of events through the leading of the Lord, had managed to gather up men from his country to fight the Midianites. But the Lord said to him, " _you have too many men for me to deliver Midian into their hands. In order that Israel_ _may not boast against me that her own strength_ _has saved her..." (Judg. 7:2)_

The Lord wanted to diminish the strength of Israel to a point where they could not boast of their own strength. Had the Lord allowed them to go in that number (thirty thousand) and defeated the Midianites, they would have thought to themselves that they had the military might. When twenty thousand of them left and ten thousand remained, the Lord was still not happy with the number, ' _they were still too many_ ', and don't forget that those in enemy camp were as ' _thick as locusts' (vs. 12)._

It finally came down to three hundred men against a countless army. It was then that the Lord asked Gideon to go down to the enemy camp and listen in on what they were saying, so that he would know for sure the Lord was going to give them (Midianites) into their hands. To cut a long story short, Gideon and his three hundred men defeated an entire army. And the Midianites ran crying out in terror as they fled _(vs. 21)._

It was the Lord who had called Gideon. It was the Lord who had instructed him and guided His steps. It is the Lord who has called us, it is the Lord who has promised, it is the Lord who will instruct us, it is the Lord who will direct us. If we take a misguided 'step of faith' and do it our own way, we will most likely be defeated, because like King Saul and his army before Goliath, we will try to use our wisdom and our effort. We so often like to trust in our limited wisdom and frail strength. Our flesh constantly seeks glory, and that's why it is said that it's better to die fighting. People who die 'fighting' for what they believe in are commended for their endeavors, even when they don't achieve anything, because it's the effort that counts. If Gideon had gone without the Lord and died in battle, Israel would have celebrated him as a hero who fought for his people. But Gideon went with the Lord, and he won the battle, and he lived.

Those who sit still and wait for the salvation of the Lord are considered fools, even in the church- especially in the church. Still, let's decide to wait for the Lord through thick and thin, in times of provision and in times of lack, through deserts and by rivers, through cheer and through jeer. Let's not expect that others, especially those closest to us, will understand. They'll think that we are fools, and they'll dismiss our salvation and our faith as foolishness. They'll even quote scriptures – especially 'faith without action is dead'. They'll misquote scripture – and say that 'God helps those who help themselves'. Yet in the end, one thing is guaranteed- _that those who hope in Him will not be put to shame_ _(Isa.49:23)._

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Waiting is not an easy thing to do, and especially when we don't know how long we have to wait. We want to see things happening, we want to see progress, we want to see results- as quickly and as easily as possible. Even when we pray, we want prompt answers, and if not, then at least we want to know that God somewhere out there has heard us, and we want to know when and what He's going to do about it. But it hardly ever happens that way. Most times, for most of us, once we pray, we wait. Many times we don't know for how long we have to wait. This book seeks to find encouragement from biblical stories that relate to waiting and the lessons we can learn and apply in our own journeys of waiting.

### About the Author

### Lynn Jaguar is a born-again Christian who is passionate about Christian Living. She serves in the Christian education ministry in her local church. She desires to share the insights and lessons she has learnt and continues to learn in her journey of faith, and encourage other believers in applying bible lessons to everyday life.

Encouraged? Connect with me at lynnjaguar@gmail.com

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