Up until now, we’ve shared with you a few possible answers that God gives in response to our prayer requests.
We’ve talked about when God says “yes”, including an important caution about our attitude towards getting what we want. We’ve also talked about “no” as a valid answer to our prayers, not one that’s discarded as “God not answering.” In some cases, He might say “slow.” This might be because the plan needs refinement, His goals are different from ours, or we’re moving too fast and need to slow down in order for the timing to work with His plans. Lastly, we’ve talked about when God says “grow.” Perhaps there is some way in which we still need to mature or undergo further equipping before engaging in what God has planned for us.
Of course, these are not the totality of the answers that God might give, but they are a good place to start as we move forward in submitting ourselves to God’s plans and timing.
How do all of these answers work together? Sometimes the best way to understand is through a concrete example, so today I will share an illustration from my own life.
After God called me to become a missionary in Japan, I tried to obey immediately. Though I'd known since I was seven that I would be a missionary, Japan wasn't on my radar for long-term missions, so I interpreted His call as a short-term one. Within a few months, I tried to go on a short term mission trip to Japan, but it ended up being cancelled because not enough other people wanted to go. Over the years, I would try again, and again, and again, to no avail.
After Peter and I were married, the delays continued. At points, I wondered if God was perhaps rescinding my call to Japan, but the truth was there were many things that Peter and I both needed to learn before embarking on this next phase of obedience. I can confidently say that without our having learned the lessons we did over those years, we would not still be missionaries in Japan.
We didn't realize it for quite a while, but over those years God was telling us, "GROW." In the end, it would be 11 years before we received our “YES”, and landed in Japan following that initial call.
Within two weeks of first arriving in Okinawa, Japan, I encountered a back injury that left me in constant pain and bedridden for a year. This was emotionally agonizing for me because I had worked so hard to get to Japan, only to be stymied by my own body. And yet, I knew that God was sovereign. I knew that He could have prevented this injury. Why hadn't He?
As the months rolled on, answers began to reveal themselves. The time I spent bedridden ended up being an intensely fertile period of spiritual growth. It also translated into a mighty focus on praying for our ministry. God used that time to create the building blocks of dependence and prayer on which the entire rest of our ministry would be established.
But there were other reasons as well. During that year, Peter and I finally realized that God wasn't just calling us to be missionaries in Japan for 3 years, but for much longer.
Through that time, God imparted several promises to us regarding the future He had planned for the people of Okinawa. These promises would become the foundation for a future ministry that He would take another decade to reveal.
In those first few months of injury when I was at the height of emotional pain, I questioned if I had done something to remove God's favour from me. I wondered if He was now punishing me for some reason.
His answer: "No, Valerie, I'm not punishing you. I will heal you in My time. But there are people here that I don't want you to meet yet. Pray for these people. Pray for this city, this prefecture and this nation. I will heal you in My time."
God was saying, "SLOW."
After eight months, our organization would fire us because my injury wasn't healing quickly enough. We fasted and prayed, begging God to change His mind and let us stay with our former organization, but He said, “NO.”
We spent a year in limbo, trying to find a new organization at the request of the Okinawan pastor with whom we had been working.
Through our search, we would discover that very few mission organizations actually operate within Okinawa. Though several expressed interest in having us join their organizations, they also made it clear that were we to join, we would have to relocate from Okinawa to the areas in which they operated. However, since we were only searching for a new organization at the request of the Okinawan pastor, we were convinced that relocating to a different part of Japan was not part of God's plan for us.
At the time when we first came to Japan, our former organization was one of the only ones operating in Okinawa. We had no idea that Okinawa even existed, but God led them to send us there. In the end, we would find a new organization (another “YES!”), and be allowed to stay in Japan. We would later discover that our former organization had pulled its workers from Okinawa and Hokkaido to concentrate their efforts on a few key areas of the country. If we had stayed with that organization, we may not have been allowed to remain within Okinawa.
In His infinite wisdom, God had used our former organization to get us where we needed to be, and then He used their impatience with His timing to ensure that we would remain in Okinawa.
Along each step of the way, God answered our prayers. His answers weren’t always what we wanted, but they have resulted in thriving ministries in Okinawa, and many more people coming to love and embrace Jesus. Thank God that He is ever so much wiser and more powerful than we are!
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