What To Do While You’re Waiting For The One

I for one, hate waiting. I hate waiting for the bus, waiting for people to finish their sentences and waiting for people to arrive at the time we’ve both agreed to. Call it contradictory but I wouldn’t call myself impatient; I don’t believe in get rich schemes and I’ve given up on fad diets, my only issue is waiting for things that don’t have to take a long time to come. I have downloaded the bus app for a reason so why am I still waiting for buses when technology is so advanced it can predict exactly when they should be arriving?! Waiting for people to turn up comes a close second in the amount of frustration it causes. It would come first but with my track record of lateness, it would by quite hypocritical to put it first. The reason waiting for people grinds my gears is not because their train was delayed or that there was a lot of traffic, but because they didn’t leave their house with enough leeway time to account for all these delays. In other words, it could be avoided, in the same way thinking before we start our sentences would avoid long pauses thinking of words that the other person (usually me) feels the need to interject.

Ok, rant over!

It’s fair to say that sometimes we are in control of our waiting time: the longer we put off taking action, the further away our goal becomes. You may be trying to get organised but buying a diary keeps slipping your mind. The same applies to getting fit and attending the gym class you keep signing up to. Occasionally, there is a very easy fix on our behalf and suddenly that thing we’ve been waiting for no longer remains out of reach. But what about everything else that we are wondering when the arrival time is, the things that no amount of effort can bring about sooner? The most frustrating thing to wait for, because you maintain hope that it will come, but have no clue when or how, is no, not the wait for the partner of your dreams to arrive in your life,but the wait for everything God has promised you to happen.

Waiting for God can take its toll on a girl like me who is adversed to waiting for buses. Do you struggle as well? You are 100% sure you heard God on a matter, at least you were when you first heard it, but now that’s it’s taking so much longer than you anticipated to arrive, you are not so sure whether it really was God. We’ve heard it all before “good things happen to those who wait,” and “you’re delay is not your denial” but that doesn’t help you deal with how it feels to wait in anticipation for something you can see no signs of happening.

Do you know when God told Abraham he was going to have a child? Do you know when Sarah conceived?

What about when God first told the Jews he would send the Messiah? Do you know how many years later Jesus was actually born?

Some of us have lost all faith in God because that thing he said he would do still hasn’t appeared, and instead of making progress towards the end result he promised, it seems you are moving further away. What can I say?! God doesn’t work in mysterious ways (and that phrase isn’t actually anyway in the Bible). God does things in his own time and in his own way. The order of events you have imagined need to happen in order for the words God has spoken to you to become true, probably won’t happen how you thought.
So what to do?

1) Keep thanking God in advance for everything he has promised
(Have a read of Romans 4:13-25, literally mind blowing)

2) Stop trying to figure out the how and wait for God to reveal the next piece of the puzzle

God said:

My ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are not your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8

(Read verses 9-13 to be mind-blown some more)

3) Think about what can you actively do to help someone else in their walk with God

We get so focused on the ‘I’ we easily forget about each other , and our brothers and sisters in Christ should be at the forefront of our minds. Stand in prayer for someone else to see the things God has for them!

If God said it, he’s going to do it. I can promise you that!

Happy Monday!

Dani xxx

Why Am I Still Single?

I’m not sure whether this has happened to you before, maybe it has, maybe it hasn’t. If it hasn’t, I’m going to to set the scene for you:

 Your friend invites you to a gathering and to your surprise it’s not completely boring – in fact, it’s becoming the best night you’ve had in a long time. Conversation is flowing, everyone is having a great time and then the person you’re talking to you suddenly says:

 You’re so great – why are you still single?!

This startling (and arguably offensive) question reminds you of the not-so-subtle hints and questions you’ve been receiving in what were once safe environments.

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It all began the year I graduated from university; I noticed that when the women from my church would pray for me, ‘a god-fearing husband’ was suddenly on the menu of blessings. From that point onwards, I began to notice a shift in other areas; young women I had known for years would drop sentences into our conversations such as ‘so when I get married’, wedding ideas were casually being thrown into discussions and my Facebook newsfeed became an array of engagement rings and relationship status updates.

What was going on? What had I missed?

Let it be known that I had no real problems with weddings (except that they were long and there was rarely enough food for everyone). Even though I wasn’t really sure why people were so excited about marriage (if it was so easy, why were there so many divorces?) my main concern was the assumption that because I was a woman and above the age of 21, I should be seeking a man to settle down with.

There is a deep-rooted cultural and religious belief that we are somehow completed when we meet our life partners and that this is when our lives truly begin but this simply cannot be true. As a Christian, our lives begin the moment we surrender to Christ and true completion can only be found in him. He is the One, our soul mate, our true love – and all those other mushy western concepts.

It is so easy to get sucked into that weird world of ‘waiting’ but before I jumped on the eager-to-be-married-bandwagon, I decided to ask myself a few questions:

 Do I believe I have an individual purpose?

God created me with wants, needs, hopes, dreams and most importantly, a purpose. Now while I believe that some of our purposes can be linked in some way to other individuals, I also believe that if our purpose were completely dependent on another, we would have been born in twos. Since we were not, I am forced to conclude that… wait for it…there are things that we have to accomplish as individuals and certain parts of our journey that we have to walk alone.

Am I lonely?

Loneliness is an issue we don’t really like to talk about because it makes us seem weak, feeble and needy, but it is a state that a lot of us experience – some of us experience it every single day. Every time I am lonely, I begin to question how far I am standing from God. It says in the Bible that God will never leave me (Deuteronomy 31:8) so whenever I feel alone instead of reaching for my iPhone, I do my best to reach out for him because he is always there.

 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

John 15:13

Real, real, real talk: if you are Christian who is constantly jumping from one relationship to another because you desire constant communication and validation, I urge you to look to God; the one that stays and never leaves (Joshua 1:5) and the one that does not forsake (Deuteronomy 31:6). I hope that you will also come to see the finished work of the cross (John 19:30) as your constant source of validation. Remember that there was a man that loved you enough to lay down his life for you in the hope that you would one day come to love and accept him. He loved you even before you could love him. If that doesn’t make you feel just a little bit special, I don’t know what will.

Am I seeking to be the perfect spouse or am I seeking to be like Jesus?

Okay, I get it; you wouldn’t try and sit an exam without revising (unless you’re me and it’s GCSE time) so yes, it is important to prepare yourself for marriage. However, the Bible speaks more on striving to be like Christ than it does about journeying to become the perfect spouse.

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.

1 Peter 2:21

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Ephesians 5:1-2

Every time I feel like I am getting somewhere with God, I inevitably become complacent; a day will pass where I haven’t set time apart for him or a situation will arise where I respond inappropriately. There is internal work to be done and there should a constant movement towards the person God called me to be because that it my ultimate goal.

Have I forgotten that there is a time for everything?

There is no rush and there is no decree that I must be married by *insert arbitrary age here*

 For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

Doing things in my own strength and my own time usually has disastrous consequences. Sometimes I’ve got to shake myself and remember that I am  worth having and that my spouse will be worth the wait.

This vision is for a future time. It describes the end, and it will be fulfilled. If it seems slow in coming, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed.

Habakkuk 2:3

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I know that my stance isn’t a popular one at the moment. I should be telling you to wait patiently in your bedroom praying, hoping that the One somehow finds your address and knocks on your front door but that would be poor advice. There are many other Christian blogs which will detail heavily ‘what to do while you wait’ and that’s great, it really is, I just feel that we have shifted our focus and have begun to idolise marriage. This is deadly  because it will never live up to our expectations or withstand the burden we are placing upon this sacred union. There are many more important things (outside of marriage) to be achieved and seeking God about those things should not be neglected whilst you ‘wait’. Marriage is a beautiful thing, but life revolves around Jesus – he is the One.

Your Single Pringle,

Joy xxxx