After reading my journal, specifically “Overcoming Doubting Thomas” and recounting some of the events that I posted in March, something occurred to me. As I prayed that evening and thought about those events, the memory of the path that I saw before me when Jesus had held out his hand to me kept coming to me.
Suddenly it dawned on me that the path was indeed my journey with him and when the path had turned and disappeared for a while was the break that had happened when I was doing so much for God and then got caught up in more earthly matters. It was not completely my doing but I didn’t think it would happen to me. I had read about people who had amazing encounters with God and then got caught up in everyday life and things cooled down with God for a prolonged period. One example of that is David Wilkerson who wrote The Cross and the Switchblade, which I highly recommend.
What God had been doing with me was basically a crash course in spirituality and I surely thought his plan for me, this purpose or mission, would be coming shortly. I was wrong. God’s time is not our time. As the bible states, a thousand years are as a day to God. Through this, I also learned that his steering my life was not always gentle. I had been forced out of ministry and public speaking, had begun to work full time to help with expenses as the kids were getting older and our business was going down the drain and eventually closed.
I got involved with ministry again a few years later and again had to stop. I realize now that God had been at work in the background because he wasn’t ready for me to start his mission for my life. I must admit I began to feel like Abraham and wondered if I would be too old to accomplish his mission. Often my mantra to God was “If not now, when?” His response was always the same, “Soon” which was extremely frustrating.
Now I realize, like a light bulb going off in my head, that the part of the path that I could not see were these last several years. Duh!
