This is Felicia Ferguson with Christian Mix 106, helping you build faith for the journey.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick. And a hope denied can devastate it.
A long wait an especially hearing a no to a prayer we’ve prayed can do both. But if we focus only on the wait or that no answer, we can end up stuck, mired in the clay, and open the door to sadness, bitterness, and even despair. The lives God planned for us, while they may not look how we wanted them to look, are still good. There is still joy to be found, and somewhere, a new hope.
The key is to focus not on what you don’t or won’t have, but on what you do have. It is a personal and some cases a very difficult choice to make. But changing your focus will help ease the pain. When you focus on what you have chances are, you’ll be seeing what you actually need.
God is not a genie. He doesn’t grant wishes or even wants. What he does do is give us what he knows we need. And I’m not going to lie. I think he’s wrong sometimes. I think what I want is exactly what I need. But he knows me better than I know myself. He knows the end from the beginning. He knows exactly how my wants would turn out. And the result is not for my good. Or for his plans and purposes.
It’s such a hard emotional road to walk, this not getting what you want or having to wait years or even decades to see it come to pass. But God didn’t promise us ease. He promised to be with us. He came to earth to live like us so that we could truly believe he understands our struggles, our pain, our disappointment. So in the wait, focus on the now. In the no, focus on what he has said yes to. Life is still wonderful and amazing and when we finally see the whole picture, the first words we’ll say will be, thank you, God.
This is Felicia Ferguson. Thanks for listening to Christian Mix 106.
