• What Do You Do When God’s Answer is Delayed?

    As most of you know, we’ve had a vision for the next phase for a while now. It involves a bigger house on some land, and becoming a community hub where families come together to eat, swap recipes and health tips, and like-minded people call on the name of the Lord in worship and prayer.

    It’s important to note how easy it is to lose your way. To focus on the wrong part of the picture. I’ve been guilty of that lately. Driving to my men’s group tonight, the Holy Spirit pointed out how I’d been focused on man-made opportunities and hanging my hopes on them, rather than maintaining my focus upon the One who solves problems and answers prayer.

    The Setting

    There are a few more days left for people to sign contracts on homes and receive the $6-8k from the U.S. government. It’s a feeding frenzy. Buyers are literally putting contracts on multiple homes simultaneously in order to ensure that at least one of them goes through for the right price before the deadline. I know this because we received an offer on our house last week and were told that he’d put offers elsewhere to hedge his bets. He was going to walk away with one of them, no matter what.

    Well, he bid low for that reason, and we didn’t accommodate him. He held firm on his original offer after we countered, and so far we’ve heard nothing else. We know that more people are urgently looking to buy a home right now because of the government’s incentive. The problem is, I started focusing too much on that deadline as our window of opportunity, and began to feel the pressure and the disappointment creep in as the deadline approaches and we have no workable offer.

    Tonight, God reminded me that He never promised we’d sell our house before this government deadline. We attached our hope to it because it seemed like the ideal vehicle for delivering the perfect buyer. But in the end, whether it happens this week or next month, we have a Father who provides for our needs. We can get all torn up over the disappointment of not having our expectations met, or we can readjust our vision to focus upon what REALLY matters – that He is present and available to us. It’s equally amazing and frustrating that God is so wise that He often does nothing when we are CERTAIN He should.

    I’m not saying an offer won’t come in tonight or tomorrow morning. That’s precisely what I’m praying for. But I will suffer needlessly if I continue to focus upon a man-made season of opportunity as my best chance at results. God is not a man that He should lie. His ways are above our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. We cannot fathom why.

    But let me close with a promise from Scripture. We read it in my men’s group.

    God’s promises

    ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’ (Jeremiah 33:3)

    The goodness of God is that A) He will answer when I call; B) not only will He answer, but He’ll ALSO tell me great and unsearchable things I do not know. In other words, when I call out to Him, not only does He answer, which is exactly what I want Him to do – He also shows me more than I bargained for. He shares His secrets with me. He shows me what is unsearchable, i.e. what I could never discover on my own.

    Our prayer

    Father, we’re calling out to You as a family, putting our lives to some level on public display. And we’re asking You to show Yourself faithful, good, abundant, and able to do more than we could ever ask, think, or imagine.

    For we’re not just after the sale of our house. That’s mission impossible #1. Then there’s the question of “where do we live?” And beyond that there’s the question of “how will we have the provision to get the property our hearts desire?

    We’re many steps from a mission complete. And there are SERIOUS temptations to be discouraged, disheartened, and altogether disgusted. It’s my prayer that God gives us the grace to see this through and to trust in Him even when what we hope for is still invisible.