SPEAKING TO THE SOUL

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.
Proverbs 13:12 NLT

A credit card advert advertised with the slogan, “Takes the waiting out of wanting”. In other words, enjoy now and pay later. There is a discipline in financial management as there is in almost every area of life.

Hope deferred is not the realisation of the promise. For a promise may require a process before its fulfilment. Gratification is not the same as inhabiting the promise. Gratification satisfies my senses and appetites; the dream delivers upon God’s purpose in my life.

There was the waiting from the moment of the angel Gabriel’s announcement to the birth of Mary’s child. Within that period of waiting much turbulence was created; in Mary’s life, in Joseph’s life, and in the lives of their wider family. God’s purpose was hidden from view and only accessed through a confidence in the hope of the promise. Immediate circumstance could be subject to a number of different interpretations. Indeed, hope required a commitment to a belief in a supernatural account of this pregnancy.

I can never access God’s purpose for my life without looking beyond the natural to the supernatural. I interpret my life, take hold of apparent opportunities and take actions that I can rationally align with God’s purpose, without any specific confirmation that this is God’s purpose for me. I’ve grasped at many opportunities, often to satisfy my own need for gratification which have turned out to lead me away from, rather than closer to, God.

Anticipation demands I wait. And waiting demands that I trust the promise of God without any sure-fire guarantee that he will prove trustworthy or that I have correctly discerned his purpose. Yet, God will never abandon me and to be honest I may have to reroute myself, but the direction of trust has always pointed me in the right direction.

QUESTION

Take some time to discern God’s purpose for your life. Do you believe God’s best is your best too?

PRAYER

Father God, I wait on you. In the stillness and the waiting, I trust in you and in your promises that you will never leave or forsake me (see Hebrews 13:5).