walls

 I have been encouraged, re-challenged, to be praying about the areas of my life where I don't see God working. Two areas quickly came to mind...stuck places, and a third has pressed in...a hopeless place. 

As I've been praying for these areas, asking God to work, I've been reminded that He IS working in those areas...I'm just not seeing it.  He's not too busy in the infield to be at work in the outfield...He's not a God of back-burners. He's at work.  I just don't often have His eyes.

So quickly, my urges of, Lord, be at work, have shifted to Lord, thank you that you are at work in these areas...give me faith to believe that which I don't see. 

Thanking Him for what He's doing in those places instead of begging Him to do something has been revolutionary. In fact, I'm finding that my whole attitude about those stuck and hopeless places is changing...again, not coming at them from a place of disappointment and doubt, but from a place of searching for the evidence of His promises, and thanking Him for THOSE...all those promises. I can't read through the Word each morning, no matter where I'm reading, without finding more of them. 

And He's taking it a step further.

As I'm trusting that He is on the move, I've been doing something I've never done before with my prayer time...I've been on the move. In the dark-early mornings I've been walking circles in my home, praying for these stubborn places. Six laps I circle, thanking Him for His work and movement in my life, in the lives of those in my circles. Six turns around the house I ask Him to work in me, to help me trust. Six times in these walls I prayer walk... around the walls I'm trusting Him to bring down, walls I know from Scripture are not for His glory or good. 

And as I take that last and seventh lap, I remember, every morning, that seven is what HE does. Seven is when we cease our striving. Seven is when we recognize and celebrate that God is at work doing what we can't even begin to touch. Seven is when the mighty walls tumbled, by the actions of NO man. Seven is resting in Him, His work, His walls.

I'm praying. I'm praying those places, I'm praying those roads, I'm praying those people. 

And if I'm honest, the result this week has been bleary-eyed mornings, extra coffee in the afternoons,  and what looks like discouraging backwards motion. I don't feel or see any rumbling, don't hear any pebbles losing grip...if anything, it's felt like Satan's been at work fortifying what I had hoped to weaken. 

But you know what? 

If that verse in Jeremiah that we love to quote, Jeremiah 29:11...For I know the plans I have for you, plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope...if THOSE words God spoke to Jeremiah at. the. very. beginning. of Israel's devastating seventy years of slavery and captivity and exile in Babylon...a promise about seventy awful years from now, then man.  If His promise for good plans and hope were for AFTER seventy years of slavery from now, I can hit a few more early mornings. 

His restoration will be. His promises will come full circle. His good plans will not be thwarted.

And He is not idle by.

Pray on, dear friends, on your faithful feet.

Don't forget to be loud.