When Nick and I were in training, we were challenged to give our “histories” (as Nick has talked about before). When given this assignment, my initial thoughts were, I have nothing exciting to talk about...everyone is going to be bored listening to my history. I remembered hearing different testimonies of previous drug dealers, murderers, strippers who had come to the Lord and had their lives radically changed. Awesome! But that wasn’t me. So, reluctantly, I sat down and started thinking through and writing my life story. It wasn’t long before uncontrollable tears began running down my face and snot poured from my nose. God was whispering in my ear, “Look how I’ve changed you.” My past experiences came back to me like semi trucks ripping through a frozen night. I had forgotten, no, I had locked away so many memories. But God helped me unlock them and write them down. He reminded me of beautiful days and of dark days. “I was there too,” He would seem to remind me as I laughed or cried.
Paul strikes a home-run again in Romans 6:19-23 when he says, “I’m using this freedom language because it’s easy to picture. You can readily recall, can’t you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing--not caring about others, not caring about God--the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different it is now as you live in God’s freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness? As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end. But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.”
As Nick and I wrote our histories, God showed us both that He had always been present. From the very beginning of our lives. Even when we didn’t know Him yet or when we pushed him into the closet and chose our own way. One of the greatest things He illuminated as we wrote out our stories was this: His timeline is perfect. After we shared our histories with our other fellow trainees and teachers, we were told many times things like, “God’s timing in your lives is just amazing to see!”
Today was the day Nick and I had set as our goal date to leave for England. We have been praying that we would have 100% of our financial support in so we could leave today. We have dealt with frustration and discouragement. We felt like we were failing and God wasn’t hearing our prayers, but He was. Of course He was! It just turns out that God’s answer is, “Don’t you remember that my timing is perfect!”
A couple weeks ago, when I was feeling nervous (as the support storm raged all around us), God brought me to Luke 8. I read the story many of us remember from childhood. It starts with Jesus saying, “Let’s go over to the other side of the lake.” So, the disciples and Jesus get in the boat and begin crossing the lake when Jesus falls asleep. A great wind comes and blows the water around them up like mad. The disciples get so scared that they wake Jesus up in a hurry thinking they were all going to die. So Jesus gets up and speaks to the storm calming everything around them. Then what did He say to the disciples? “Where is your faith?”
God told Nick and I, “Let’s go over to the other side of the [big] lake.” To England, if you didn’t catch that. :) Right now, we’re in the boat. We’ve gotten scared as our timing clashes with God’s timing and a storm seems to rage around us. But God keeps challenging us, “Where is your faith?” Just as the disciples did when the storm around them picked up and they felt its pressure on the sides of their boat, we forget that promise, “Let’s go over to the other side of the lake.”
His timing is perfect. He’s proven that over and over in our lives. We’re going to “the other side of the lake,” and we can’t let the trip cause us any doubt.
His timing is perfect. Thank you God!
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