If you ever have any sort of health issues, waiting is mostly what you do. You have to wait for pathology reports, wait for surgery dates, wait for doctor’s appointments, wait for medicine to work, wait for nurses to respond, wait for the stitches to come out, waiting ad infinitum it seems.
One of the biggest challenges in waiting, especially with a life threatening diagnosis potentially lurking in the wings, is not allowing your thoughts to go wild. I have a friend who often says, “Our thoughts create our emotions.” And she’s right, so that’s why it’s so important to surrender our thought life to the Lord, because if our thoughts are centered on him, our actions will not be far behind. II Corinthians 10:4 says “…we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” That means we don’t get into all the “what if’s” in a situation, because that only takes us to a bad place. We don’t let our imaginations conjure up worst-case scenarios or brood over what might happen. Sometimes we can’t stop thinking about something detrimental, but what we can do is substitute the truth of God found in scripture and meditate on the life changing and life giving words found there.
As difficult as it is to say, the waiting time is where God has often done permanent and life altering work in my life. Yes, I’ve found God is all about the wait. Sometimes, I think he has more for us in the process than in the end result. If we allow it, the wait is where he refines our character, tunes our heart, and takes us to higher ground.
We’ll find in the end, the wait was definitely worth it.
One of the biggest challenges in waiting, especially with a life threatening diagnosis potentially lurking in the wings, is not allowing your thoughts to go wild. I have a friend who often says, “Our thoughts create our emotions.” And she’s right, so that’s why it’s so important to surrender our thought life to the Lord, because if our thoughts are centered on him, our actions will not be far behind. II Corinthians 10:4 says “…we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” That means we don’t get into all the “what if’s” in a situation, because that only takes us to a bad place. We don’t let our imaginations conjure up worst-case scenarios or brood over what might happen. Sometimes we can’t stop thinking about something detrimental, but what we can do is substitute the truth of God found in scripture and meditate on the life changing and life giving words found there.
As difficult as it is to say, the waiting time is where God has often done permanent and life altering work in my life. Yes, I’ve found God is all about the wait. Sometimes, I think he has more for us in the process than in the end result. If we allow it, the wait is where he refines our character, tunes our heart, and takes us to higher ground.
We’ll find in the end, the wait was definitely worth it.