By Karisa Moore

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

Turning My Page

My bed finally deflated. After three weeks of camping out in the living room, post foot surgery, I made the decision I would brave the stairs to sleep in my bed. I didn’t realize until I determined to press forward into healing how crippled I had become in spirit. Two nasty falls had made me terrified of reinjuring my vulnerable foot. Even when my family attempted to help or push me around in a wheelchair, I would grip the wheel or gripe that they were going too fast. I wanted control of the healing.

But I don’t get to determine how long the bone, tendon, muscles, or skin take to heal. I both need to be actively moving my foot to keep muscle weakness from setting in, and keep weight off it. Time, patience, and a willingness to allow others to provide for me are all necessary. Oh, how restless I become while dependent upon others.

God, I treat you with the same impatience. When I hear another person has given in to despair, I wonder where you are. When my own children wrestle with loss and health issues beyond their comprehension, I grow weary. Do something! I scream. I know you have a perfect plan, but this does not feel perfect. I desperately want to know my two remaining children will survive their physical challenges and thrive in life and faith. I want friends and family to know the compassion and grace of God, and I want the tide of despair in this world to turn.

And God agrees with those desires because at just the right time he entered the world in human form. We were sinners, longing for someone to rescue us from the cycle of destruction we seemed set in. Heal us from our sickness! Deliver my child from demons! Rescue us from oppression. Years and years Israel waited for the Savior and he didn’t come. They poured over scripture, neighboring nations heard of the promised one, and paranoid kings shivered with nightmares of a God greater than themselves. People suffered. Still, he didn’t come.

Just as God knew his one and only son had to be born at the exact time in history for Christianity to spread like fire, he enters our pain and reveals his good, pleasing and perfect will. Do some of us hear the message and reject him? Yes. He is nothing like I expected. He will never fit into my box of preconceived beliefs, but he expands my faith to recognize his will is that none perish. Healing came for all mankind.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/martyrs/dietrich-bonhoeffer.htmlI may never fully see this side of heaven the result of standing firm in faith when my legs are literally jelly right now. Are you standing in what feels like quicksand? Press into the fullness of God’s good, perfect, and pleasing will. His timing brings us stories like Isaac, Joseph, King David, Ruth, Esther,  the Apostle Paul, Corrie ten Boom, Harriet Tubman, William Wilberforce,  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Kanye West and my own. Add your story to this list. Be patient in affliction and wait expectantly for God’s will.  Deflate the bed of fear and trust God’s good, perfect, and pleasing will.

Turning Your Page

Do you have a fear you need to deflate? Identify any fear that hinders you from moving forward and embracing life. There are so many heroes of faith. Study the ones in scripture, study the modern-day heroes of faith. Not even one of you is alone in fear, alone in circumstances, and or alone in faith. Take courage that you can stand firm even when your heart feels it can’t.

• What fears are currently plaguing your life and crippling action? List them on paper and then pick one or two verses addressing fear to meditate on.
• Observe others who wrestle fear. What actions do they take to move forward, what encourages them?
• What positive habits do you have, or will you have that are not based upon feeling? Pick a few to do every day without fail. These are nonnegotiable.

Lord, I am paralyzed with fear. Reveal the clear next step and help to stand firm when I feel I cannot go further. Amen

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