John and Karen Bull have become good friends; they live in St. Pete with their four children. You can learn more about them here and here. This is a nice post by Karen that I wanted to share:
OK, this is really John’s revelation…but it was so good for me, that I had to write it.
Background:
I have often felt frustrated with “last minute” things that are done “by God.” Sometimes, wondering—were they from God or did people just make it happen and it finally did. OK, more than that, let me go even farther and say that I have chatted with the Lord(once or twice) about “why don’t you do things ahead of time and prove Your Hand is in things, instead of being so last minute—it does terrible things to “God’s reputation” when people think…well, you just have to wait for Him to act and it won’t happen til the end.”
Yes, I did have this conversation with God—nope, He didn’t take my advice:)….He didn’t need to. I had this conversation before coming to Russia, b/c I felt that everything–well, visas…and invitations and such weren’t falling into place until the month before coming…and oh, I almost forgot—our house had not sold—it was on the market for over a year!! Why??? Why did it have to sell in October??? Why didn’t God show His hand earlier? Was it because it was His plan all along?
Sometimes, these “plans” are called into question when they don’t happen earlier—sometimes people may have thought…we shouldn’t have come here to Russia b/c everything didn’t happen earlier. Were we forcing things to happen so we could come to Russia? Yep, people thought things things and sometimes even voiced their concerns to us, we even wondered about it at times.
OK, so on to another story—Corrie Ten Boom—seemed to question God’s methods too. Her father used the example of not giving her a train ticket that he had bought for her until they reached the station. Why did he wait…she didn’t need the ticket beforehand. He had done the prep work, bought the ticket, brought the ticket and yet, still had Corrie wait to get it in her hand. He said that God doesn’t give us things until we need them. (By the way, we do the same thing with Katie and metro tokens)
On hearing this story told by John many times this year, I have felt much better about God’s ways, but still thought that God should spare himself the “last minute” reputation til today.
We have been praying a lot lately and have both been hearing separately and together and from others that the Lord has our work set out, He will make it clear, and He is doing the prep work for it, but that we are not to worry but to wait, and trust Him. Vague? I thought so, but I WILL follow Him.
So, on that note, John was praying and he felt that God said to him this morning…Trusting Me means also trusting my methods. Whoa!!! So, enough said…that’s what we are doing!!! Trusting Him and His ways (b/c don’t we always say that His ways are higher than ours????) Well, now we get to trust in them too and not knock the way He does things!.