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Waiting on the Lord

Stephanie Lynn

Psalm 130:5-6 “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.”

Are you stuck in a painful waiting period? Me, too. It can be so hard to hold steady when it feels like you are just waiting for that last Jenga piece to be pulled out from under you, and your whole life topples. In my own desperation, I sat down and read through the book of Job, and I learned so much that I have to share it with you, my friend.

At the beginning of the book, Job has it all. A large and healthy family, strong and producing land, livestock by the thousands. Chapter 1 tells us he was “the greatest of all the people of the east” (Job 1:3). He lacked nothing. He was cared for by God, and he was an upright man of deep faith. And then, in that same first chapter, Satan comes into God’s presence and makes his accusation. Take away the blessings, he says, and Job will curse You to Your face.

Here is the part we tend to rush past. God allows it. Not because He is careless with Job, but because He knows something about Job’s faith that Satan does not. In the first round, God gives Satan power over everything Job has, with one limit: “Only against him do not stretch out your hand” (Job 1:12). In a single day, Job loses his livestock, his servants, and all ten of his children. And his response is one of the most staggering sentences in all of Scripture.

Job 1:21 “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Then comes a second round. Satan is permitted to strike Job’s own body, with one limit again: “only spare his life” (Job 2:6). Job is left covered in sores, scraping himself with a piece of broken pottery, sitting in ashes.

And this is where the book gets quiet. This is where the waiting begins.

Because here is what surprised me most. The disasters happen fast, in the first two chapters. But then Job sits. His friends show up and give him page after page of bad counsel, insisting his suffering must be his own fault. Job argues, and weeps, and cries out to a God who, for chapter after chapter, says nothing at all. If you have ever been in a season where the bottom fell out and then, worst of all, heaven seemed silent, you already understand the middle of this book better than you wish you did. The hardest part of Job’s story is not the loss. It is the waiting that comes after.

But watch what we know that Job never did.

We got to read chapter 1. Job didn’t. We were shown the conversation in heaven, the reason behind it all, the fact that God Himself had spoken of Job with something like holy pride. Job sat in his ashes with no idea any of that had happened. He never got the explanation we were handed on page one. He had to wait in the dark without ever being told why.

And so do we. Friend, there may be a chapter 1 being written over your life that you cannot see from where you are sitting. The silence you are in is not proof that God has forgotten you. It may be the very evidence that He trusts you with something. His silence is not His absence. He had already spoken over Job before Job felt a single thing, and He has already spoken over you.

That is the kind of faith that learns to wait. Not a faith that has all the answers, but one that holds on without them. Job said it himself, from the middle of the ash heap.

Job 13:15 “Though he slay me, I will hope in him.”

Job 23:10 “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.”

He could not see the way. But he trusted that God could. In his word I hope, the psalmist says. That is waiting faith. It hopes in the dark, on the strength of God’s Word alone, before the morning ever shows up.

And the morning did come. God finally answered Job “out of the whirlwind” (Job 38:1). But notice how. God does not hand Job a single explanation. He never tells him about the conversation with Satan. Instead, He gives Job something better than answers. He gives Job Himself. And when it is over, Job says the thing the whole long wait was for.

Job 42:5 “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.”

Yes, God restored Job. The final chapter gives him more than he had at the start. But if you read closely, that was never the point, and Job never treats it as the point. The reward of the waiting was not the return of his blessings. It was that he came out of it seeing God in a way he never had before. The waiting gave him the one thing nothing else could.

So if you are waiting today, hear this. Your soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, and the morning always comes. But even now, while it is still dark, He is not far off. He is nearer than the silence makes Him feel. He was there in Job’s chapter 1. He is here in your long middle. And He is already writing your final chapter.

Wait for Him. In His word, hope. He is worth the wait, and He is with you in it.

 

Standing in the Fire

Stephanie Lynn
In the Fire

Today we are going to look at chapter 3 of the Book of Daniel. I would encourage you to read the whole chapter for yourself. It doesn’t take long, and it is worth every verse.

Here is the short version. King Nebuchadnezzar built a golden image and commanded everyone to bow down and worship it. Three young Jewish men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, would not. When the king heard of it, he gave them one last chance to bow, and he made the stakes plain. Worship the image, or be thrown alive into a burning fiery furnace. Then he asked a question he was certain he already knew the answer to.

Daniel 3:15 “…And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?”

He was about to find out.

I want us to slow down right here, because there is something in this story we tend to rush past. We read Daniel 3 as a rescue story, and it is. But it is not a rescue from the fire. It is a rescue in the fire. And that one difference changes everything about how we face our own.

Let’s start with the part we would rather skip. God allowed the furnace. Let’s not soften that. Nebuchadnezzar had the men bound. He had the fire heated seven times hotter than usual, so hot that it killed the very guards who carried them up to it. And they went in. God, who could have stopped all of it before it started, who could have struck the king silent or shattered the golden image where it stood, did not. He let them be thrown in.

That is a hard truth, isn’t it? Because it means the fire in your life may not be a sign that God looked away. Our God is sovereign over kings and furnaces alike, and nothing reaches His children that has not first passed through His hands. Sometimes He keeps us out of the fire. And sometimes, for reasons we cannot yet see, He allows us to walk right into it.

But watch what He does next. He does not allow us to be in it alone.

Daniel 3:24-25 “Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, ‘Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?’ They answered and said to the king, ‘True, O king.’ He answered and said, ‘But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.'”

Four men. They threw in three, and the king counted four.

Do you see it? God did not spare them the furnace. He met them inside it. He did not call down encouragement from a safe distance. He got in the fire with them. And notice what the flames actually did. The only thing that burned off of those men was the rope. They went in bound, and they walked around free. The fire that was sent to destroy them could not do anything but loosen what held them.

This is the God we serve, and He said it long before Daniel’s day. He means it still.

Isaiah 43:2 “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”

He does not promise us a life with no fire. He promises us Himself, in the middle of it.

Now here is the part I cannot get past. Before they knew anything about a fourth man, before they saw a single flame, these three already had their answer ready.

Daniel 3:16-18 “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, ‘O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.'”

But if not.

They believed God was able. They hoped He would. And they settled it ahead of time that even if He didn’t, they still would not bow. That is faith that does not hang on the outcome. It is not “God will fix this the way I want, so I will trust Him.” It is “God is worthy whether He rescues me the way I want or not, so I will trust Him either way.”

Most of us can trust God for the deliverance we can already picture. The deeper faith, the harder faith, is the kind that holds on in the dark, before we know how the story ends, and still says, “Even so, I am His.”

When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego finally walked out, Scripture tells us the fire had not had any power over them. Their hair was not singed, their clothes were not scorched, and they did not even carry the smell of smoke (Daniel 3:27). And the same king who built that idol ended up blessing the God of these three men in front of his entire kingdom. The fire did not consume them. It displayed God.

I don’t say that lightly, because I know some of you are in the furnace as you read this. This is not a promise that your trial will be short, or that deliverance will come on the timetable you would choose. Paul understood that as well as anyone.

2 Corinthians 4:8-10 “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.”

Afflicted, but not crushed. Struck down, but not destroyed. How? Because there is a fourth man in the fire. There always is.

So if you are in it today, hear this. The flames around you are not proof that God has abandoned you. He allowed this. He is in it with you. And He will not waste a single degree of the heat. You may go in bound. By His grace, you will not go in alone, and you will not come out the same.

He is with you in the fire. He always has been.

 

What If We’ve Been Getting Forgiveness Wrong?

Stephanie Lynn

Matthew 6:12 (ESV) “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

Let me guess. Somewhere in your life there’s a person you know you’re supposed to forgive, and you can’t. Or you won’t. And underneath your reason, if you dug down to it, is this: *forgiving them would be like saying what they did was okay. And it wasn’t okay. So how could I?*

I lived in that exact spot for a long time. And I couldn’t move out of it until someone showed me that I had the word wrong the whole time.

We hear “forgive” and we think it means *pardon.* Excuse. Let off the hook. Pretend it didn’t matter. And when what happened truly mattered, when it wounded you, or worse, wounded someone you love, everything in you rightly refuses to call it fine. So if forgiveness meant pardon, you’d be right to refuse. I would too.

But that isn’t what the word means.

The Greek word Jesus uses is *aphiēmi.* And it doesn’t mean pardon. It means *to release. To let go. To send away.* It’s the ordinary word for setting something down and walking away from it. Look at how the Lord’s Prayer actually reads: *forgive us our debts.* Forgiveness is releasing a debt. Not pretending the debt was never real, but taking your hands off of it.



That one word changed everything for me. Because here’s what I finally understood:

**I am not pardoning. I am releasing.**

The wrong stays wrong. The debt stays real. My hands just come open.

“But if I let go,” I used to think, “then they just get away with it.” No. Releasing a debt doesn’t mean it goes uncollected. It means it stops being *yours* to collect, because you were never able to anyway, and it’s poisoning you to keep trying. You hand it to God, who is a more just and righteous Judge than you or I could ever be. The debt isn’t dropped. It’s transferred to the only One qualified to settle it.

And here’s the part that finally set me free. When you refuse to release a debt, you think you’re holding *them* captive. You’re not. You’re the one in the cell. The bitterness never touches the person who hurt you; they’re usually out living their life, not thinking of you at all. It lives in *your* chest. It takes up space in *your* head.

So releasing them was never about being generous to them.

It was the cell door opening for me.

That’s what forgiveness actually is. Not saying it was okay. Not letting them back in to hurt you again. Just opening your hands, handing the weight to God, and walking out of a prison you didn’t realize you were the only one still sitting in.

If there’s a name that came to mind while you read this, you don’t have to sit across from them to do this. You don’t need their apology. You can do it today, right now, in prayer. Release them to God, and let Him carry what you were never meant to hold.

*Is there someone you’re finding it hard to forgive? You don’t have to name them. But I’d love to pray for you as you work toward setting that weight down. Comment below and I’ll add you to my prayer list this week.*

When Did You Last Talk to God?

Stephanie Lynn

Matthew 6:6 (ESV) “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

We all know how much communication matters in a relationship.

Have you ever wanted someone to just open up to you, and they wouldn’t? A spouse who goes quiet. A friend who never has the time. A boss who keeps you in the dark. When the sharing stops, you start to feel unimportant. Maybe even rejected. And the relationship itself begins to wither, because relationships live on communication.

Now picture God on His throne, wishing you would just take a minute to tell Him about your day. What you’re struggling with. What you’re grateful for. He already knows all of it, of course. But any good father wants his child to come and share anyway. How much more, then, does our Heavenly Father, who loves us more than we can imagine, long to hear from His children?

That’s really all prayer is. It’s talking with God. It’s how we share, confess, repent, and bring Him our requests. It should be as natural to us as breathing.

But if I’m honest, it isn’t always. And unlike the disciples, we don’t have Jesus physically here to show us how. What we do have is even closer than that.

Romans 8:26 (ESV) “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

Read that again if you’ve ever felt like you don’t know how to pray, or didn’t have the words. You’re not disqualified. The Spirit Himself carries what you can’t put into words. You are never praying alone.

The Desperate Plea

If you’ve read the book of Daniel, you know he was a man of prayer. So devoted that it landed him in a lions’ den, because he refused to stop praying even when he was ordered to (you can read the whole account in Daniel 6). I know it sounds like a fairy tale, but it’s the real thing, and God delivered him.

Here’s the part I don’t want you to miss. Scripture doesn’t record Daniel praying inside the den, but I have to imagine he cried out to God the moment that door shut. I call that the desperate plea.

We all know the desperate plea. When the diagnosis comes, when the money runs out, when someone we love is in the hospital, we have no trouble begging God for help. And He hears it.

But notice what Daniel had already done. He built a foundation of prayer with God long before that night. He didn’t ignore God until the moment he needed Him. The relationship was already there. The desperate plea wasn’t a stranger knocking on a door. It was a child calling out to a Father he already knew.

That’s the difference a prayer life makes.

A Small Assignment

God is our Father. There is nothing we should want more than a real relationship with Him. And a relationship is built the same way every good one is: by showing up and talking, not just in the emergencies, but on the ordinary days too.

So here’s my small assignment for you today. Pick a time you’re going to pray. That’s it. If you haven’t prayed in a long while, or ever, this might feel bigger than it sounds, and that’s okay. Set a time anyway. Then, when it comes, keep it simple. Thank Him for something. Tell Him what’s heavy. Ask for what you need.

And afterward, notice how you feel. A little nervous going in? Different coming out? Sit with that.

If your heart is tugging on you right now, don’t brush it off. That pull is an invitation.

Take the first step. He’s already leaning in to listen.

How can I pray for you today? Leave a comment below and I’ll add you to my prayer list this week.

God, Why Am I Here?

Stephanie Lynn

Well, friend. It’s been a while.

Jeremiah 29:11 (ESV) “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

If you’ve been subscribed to this little corner of the internet for a long time, you may have wondered whether I fell off the face of the earth. I didn’t. But I did go quiet. And before I pick this back up, I want to be honest with you about why, because I think there’s something in it for you too.

When I first landed where I am, I liked it here. I really did. But somewhere along the way, through all the seasons that followed, I realized I had never quite let myself feel at home. My heart was always set somewhere else. On another place, another season, the somewhere that would finally feel like mine. And without ever really deciding to, I started treating where I was as just a place to pass through. Not home. A stop on the way to home.

And here’s what I’ve learned about living that way: when your heart is always somewhere down the road, you stop noticing what God is doing right where you’re standing. Why would you look for him here? You’ve already decided here doesn’t count. It’s just the waiting room.

Then a pastor said something a few Sundays ago that stopped me in my tracks. He talked about the words we let run on a loop, the quiet things we say to ourselves so often we don’t even hear them anymore. And I realized the loop running under my life had been one long not home yet. Not here. Later. Somewhere else. And it hit me that I’d been asking God the wrong thing entirely. I kept asking him when. When do I get to go, when does the next thing start, when do I finally get home.

I had never once stopped to ask him why.

God, why am I here?

Do you hear the difference? When keeps you standing at the door with your coat on. Why sets your things down and starts looking around the room. One of them waits. The other one listens.

And when I finally started asking the better question, I went looking, and I found the strangest instruction tucked into Jeremiah 29. Most of us know verse 11. We put it on coffee mugs. Plans for a future and a hope. But look at what God tells his people just a few verses before it. They are in exile. In Babylon. In the very place they never would have chosen in a thousand years. And here is what he says to them:

Jeremiah 29:5, 7 (ESV) “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce… But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

Read that again. He does not tell them to treat Babylon like a motel. He tells them to build houses and live in them. To plant gardens and actually eat what grows. To make a home in the very place that wasn’t home. Because somehow their welfare was wrapped up in the welfare of a place they never would have chosen.

Grow where you’re planted. It’s an old saying, and I always thought it meant grit your teeth and endure until you can leave. It doesn’t. It means let yourself be at home here. Put your roots down and receive what God actually has for you, even in Babylon, even in the season you didn’t pick, even before the somewhere-else ever comes. Because he is not waiting for you to get home to start his work in you. He is working right here. In this place. The one you’ve been treating like a stop along the way.

I spent a lot of days with my heart down the road instead of in the room I was standing in. I don’t want to miss any more of them. And I don’t want you to either.

So here I am. Coat off. Roots going down. Asking the better question. And, it turns out, writing again, because it was never the place that quieted me. It was that I kept waiting to feel at home somewhere else.

I’ve been working on something in this quiet season, and I can’t wait to share it with you. A devotional, built on the Lord’s Prayer, teaching us how to actually talk to God, one piece at a time. There’s more behind it too, but we’ll get there. For now, I just wanted to knock on the door again and let you know I’m still here, and he has been faithful the whole time, patiently working in a season I kept trying to rush past.

If your heart is set somewhere down the road, waiting to feel at home in a place that isn’t here yet, I want to gently hand you the better question this week. When you catch yourself asking God when, try asking him why instead. God, why am I here? Then watch for the answer. He is not silent. Sometimes we’re just looking so far down the road that we miss the home he’s building right where we are.

Welcome back, friend. I’m so glad you’re still here. Hit reply and tell me where you’ve been these last few years. I would truly love to know. We were never meant to do this alone.

Proverbs 27:17 (ESV) “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.”

Much love in Christ,

Stephanie Lynn