Did You Hear Me, God?

Read Time:4 Minute, 47 Second

Sitting here looking out the window at all of the snow and ice, I am very thankful to have a warm spot to write. Here we are at the end of the first month of 2023. Hard to believe, as it seems we were just celebrating Christmas. Many of us have already failed on our New Year’s resolutions, and those that are still going strong are pretty proud of themselves.

Me, well, I failed, but I keep trying to reboot it every week. It is hard to work out/exercise when life gets in the way, but that might be a bit of an excuse as well.

One thing that never needs a reboot is my overanalyzing different forms of entertainment. Movies, TV shows, song lyrics…I just put a lot of thought into them. I really can’t help it. It’s just the way my nerdy, English teacher brain works.

If I’m being honest, I actually love it. For instance, analyzing and conversing with friends and family about the new show Kaleidoscope on Netflix just makes me happy. I even organized a dinner and final episode watch party to discuss it after we all watched the episodes in a different order. That’s the hook of the show: you can watch the episodes in any order, brilliant! The whole evening was a blast.

However, it’s not only TV and movies; song lyrics are the same way. Just the other night, my wife and I got into a conversation about Morgan Wallen’s latest release Thought You Should Know.

If you didn’t already know, I am a huge country music fan. My wife surprised me with Luke Comb tickets for Christmas, and I was like a little kid. So last Friday night, Thought You Should Know was on, and I started to explain to my wife the importance of the word “must” in the chorus of the song. She looked at me as though I had three heads and said, “What?”

We discussed, and couldn’t agree, but it was fun anyway. The line in the song is, “I thought you should know, that all those prayers you thought you wasted on me, must have finally made their way on through.”

You see it, right? How important “must” is? Well, we won’t spend time debating that because as I was thinking about this blog, God laid something else on my heart. I love this song, but as I thought about this line more and more, it was as if the Holy Spirit was saying to me, “You know, that’s not how it works. Your prayers don’t stall out somewhere in the cosmos and then finally get to God.”

After that, I analyzed the line in a whole new way, because I think this is what many of us feel like when we pray and we don’t get the answer right away. “Maybe God didn’t hear me,” or “maybe I’m not doing it right.” “Maybe He just doesn’t care about me,” or “maybe it takes a certain amount of times before what I ask reaches God.”

Of course none of these is true, because God hears you when you pray. There’s no streaming delay. Your prayer doesn’t have to buffer before reaching God’s ear. However, in our instant gratification world we live in, we want an answer now, not tomorrow, or six months from now, much less 10 years down the road. We are impatient and forget that God does things on His time to fit His plan, not ours. That is often the hard thing because we want God to adjust to our plan and that just isn’t the way He works.

One of my favorite coffee mugs says “pray, wait, trust.” It is that second word that causes so many problems. We just aren’t a patient society and waiting often affects the next word: trust. In our impatience is when our trust starts to waiver. Then all of those “maybe” questions start to creep back in and now, besides the issue we are praying about, we’re also left wringing our hands and worrying about whether our prayers are even making it to God. They are, and He hears you, but He also knows what’s best for you and those around you. I mean, Abraham and Sarah waited about 25 years for Isaac to be born. Their prayers didn’t finally just make it through; it was just part of God’s plan.

Waiting. It may be the hardest thing we do in the world today. We drive eight miles out of our way to avoid traffic and are happy we figured out an alternate route. But God doesn’t want you to find an alternate route. He has the roadmap of your life laid out in front of Him, and He knows the best way to go, even if you have to sit and wait through a construction zone or two.

Pray, WAIT, trust. I know that middle word often trips me up. Since October of 2020, that is something the Lord has helped me with because when it comes to my MS, I want answers now, and I want fixes now. However, that isn’t the reality. God has answered prayers, some quickly and some not so quickly, and some not at all yet, but I know He hears my prayers, and I just have to keep reminding myself: His plan, not mine.

So when you reboot your resolution, whatever that looks like, remember to add this to it – pray, WAIT, trust, and I will certainly do the same. Until next time.