Do you ever feel like no matter how much you pray, none of your prayers are being answered? Trust me, I feel the same way sometimes. Actually, at this point in my life, I feel like that all the time. But recently, I’ve been thinking about it and I actually saw a different blog post pop up in my facebook feed talking about a similar topic, but what if the reason the Lord hasn’t answered your prayers yet is because He is saving you for something even better? Because I truly believe with every ounce in my body that He has heard my prayers. He has heard me cry myself to sleep. He has been beside me every step of the way; even when I haven’t prayed, I’ve just been thinking about it. He has always been there and has heard all of it. Maybe He is saving me for something better than I can think of?
Trust me, I know it’s so dag on frustrating!!!! I have been saying that for 3 very long years. I shared part of this in my last blog post titled “Updated story & where I am. Do you know where you are?” (shameless plug telling you to go read it if you haven’t already). But I was saying in that post how the stage of life I am in right now is so hard, it’s annoying, it’s frustrating, it has been long, I have no idea where I am going....you know, those things that you just can’t help but think about when you aren’t a fan of this stage of life. But I watched a sermon the other day by Steven Furtick, titled “Trapped in Transition” and I will link the youtube video down below and I HIGHLY recommend that you go watch it! He talks about how even though you are trapped in a season of life, and we would call it a transitional season of life because it’s between two pivotal points in our lives, we need to figure out how to be okay with this transitional time.
Furtick mentions in his sermon that transition is
hard and it becomes difficult to sit still during transition when you are threatened by opposition from the outside. I think we all know what opposition means but I looked up the definition and here is what it said - opposition: resistance or dissent; a group of adversaries or competitors, conflict.
It is so hard to focus on what you’re going through when there are things from the outside trying to tear you down. Furtick also mentions that the best place for attack is during transition - because where there is transition, there is distraction, and where there is distraction, there is opportunity to create instability.
The passage that Furtick uses is Acts 3:1-11 and it’s the story of Peter and John healing the man that was paralyzed that sat at the gate of the temple begging people for money and handouts. Furtick goes on to preach that when that man woke up that morning, he didn’t expect to be healed of a disease he had had his whole life. That man was just asking Peter and John for some loose change, just like he had been doing with every other passerby, but Peter and John helped give him a different kind of change. Change he wasn’t expecting, wasn’t asking for, change that I’m sure he didn’t think was possible. But God had already decided before the man had even gotten to his begging spot that he was going to walk that day. God doesn’t need for your life to be at a certain point in order to bless you. People might tell you that you have to be at a certain point in your life before God can bless you and if you aren’t there yet, you just have to keep waiting. No, that’s not how it works. Those people saying those things aren’t God so they can’t possibly know when “the right time” to bless you could be. God isn’t waiting to bless you when you get to the spot. He can bless you before you even get there; before you even have time to settle down.
God is most active in moments we perceive to be instability and transition. And we don’t have to wait to believe God and what He is doing until after we get through the transition. We can believe Him before it and when we’re right smack dab in the middle of it. And not only CAN we do that, we GET to believe that He has everything worked out for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28). The miracle is in the transition; the place that you tend to feel hopeless and worthless. The time of life that feels like it will never end; especially when you can see it, visualize it, even taste it and experience it - that is like a whole other kind of torture. But it gets good when you can go from theoretically believing something to practically acting it out in your life. And even though sometimes it doesn’t feel like God is listening to your prayers, He is. And He is going to send you that miracle when you aren’t quite at your spot yet.
I am using a good amount of what Furtick said in his sermon to write this post, just because it is such a great sermon (which is why you should certainly go watch it!). But Furtick pointed out that Peter and John were on the way to the temple when they saw this guy on the way to his spot to start begging. How many things in the Bible happened when someone was “on the way”? God often works in the journey. He works in transition. How many times has God worked in between two fixed points in our lives that we deemed important. But what is cool about this miracle that happened in Acts is that it was the first miracle recorded in that book. And that miracle was waiting in something that everybody else was stepping over to get to something they viewed more important. Let that sink in for a second...that miracle was waiting in something that everybody else was stepping over to get to something they viewed more important. The people were on the way to the temple, which was important, but Peter and John saw the importance of helping this guy out and stopped to do just that; to help the guy that was paralyzed and to heal him in the name of the Lord.
Getting healed was not on that guys calendar for the day. But some of the greatest things that God will ever do in your life will not be on your calendar. I can agree with that statement because 3 years ago, China and orphans were not on my calendar. But that is all I want to do with my life now. The story of Jesus feeding the five thousand, He was on the way to Bethsaida when He stopped to feed the five thousand. So in this story that we can see in Matthew 14, Mark 6 and Luke 9, we see that Jesus was ON THE WAY somewhere when he stopped to feed five thousand people and that was not on his calendar (and really it was more than that because the Bible says it was five thousand men, that doesn’t include women and children. So we have reason to believe it was more like twenty thousand people).
God doesn’t meet our needs, He exceeds them. So we shouldn’t be surprised when He gives us what we have been asking for. If what we are asking for is God honoring and Kingdom building, He will give it to us if we keep praying about it and if it is in His plan for our lives. And I think we tend to forget sometimes that our lives are not really our own. They’re God’s. And that can sound really scary but God is a God of love and mercy. He wants what is best for us and for us to give Him glory and praise in return. It’s honestly pretty simple. We just always forget that, at least I do. Jesus told us that if we ask anything in His name it will be given to us. Because His name represents power and authority.
“Change and transition are not the same. They are two different things. Change is external, it does something to you. And it is a situation that is imposed by outside circumstances or unforeseen conditions. Transition is always internal or a psychological event. (Acts 3:8) ‘He jumped up’ is change, ‘he began to walk’ is transition. Transition is where transformation happens.”
Transition takes time, change happens suddenly. And to be trapped in transition is to be waiting for your mind to catch up with the transformation that has already happened in your life. And I will leave you with what Furtick said towards the end of his sermon, “The only way to know the difference between God’s will for your life and your will for your life is you have to go to Gethsemane. You’ve got to go to the place that Jesus went to to learn the separation between based on what I want, between comfort and convenience, and human preference and feelings, and what God wants based on the position that He has placed me in. Understand that when Jesus got to the cross, He had no trouble giving up His life. It was only in Gethsemane, transition, where He had to pray to God, ‘if there is any other way…’ because the greatest test is in transition. So if you are being tested, you are in transition. What that means is the greatest oil for anointing comes in the place of greatest transition.”
It matters what you cling to is times of transition. What do you cling to? Because if you are trying to hold on to something new while you still have a death grip on something old, it will tear you apart. You have to figure out what you are clinging to; because what you cling to in times of transition determines whether you are going forward or you are staying at the gate. “God wants to do something in you before He does something through you.” - Levi Lusko. God wants to use you. He set it up so He could use you. God set it up so He could use you for His purpose and His glory, but you’re in transition right now. And by holding onto the old, you forfeit the future. He uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. You are frustrated because you have been trapped in transition for so long and nothing has changed. Ask God what you need to let go of so you can grab onto something new and so He can begin to use you in extraordinary situations.
Here is the link for you to go watch the video. Most of my points for this post came from this video because it was so good and I loved hearing every second of it and I want you to go watch it as well. https://youtu.be/Wnp_v83GsAo
Love y’all!
-Han <3-
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