who would use delay to grow my belief?

My expectancy is from Him. ~ Sara Hagerty, Adore   God Who Uses Delay to Grow My Belief Sara Hagerty, Adore My soul, wait silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him. — Psalm 62:5   IN THE GRIT   We've visited the same stretch of beach nearly every year for twenty-five years. There is not enough distance between visits for my memory to lapse.   When I'm back at the beach, I can access being seventeen and adventuresome.   And every year there is one event that I scrapbook in my mind. Unfailingly, the happenings at the beach seem to mark the movement of God within my heart.   This year's mark went like this: The place we vacation is a tangle of beach homes and bike trails at the edge of an island. Some years we spend just as much time on our bikes as we do in the sand, zipping in and out of neighborhoods, scouting for alligators and egrets and blue herons, the exotic creatures we midwesterners don't see.   Two days into our trip and halfway through our evening family bike ride, one of the children slid farther and farther back from our group. We lightheartedly cheered her on, "inviting" her to keep up the pace, with no success.   She didn't budge. This irritated me. In the time that it took for me to slow down to where she was and let the others pass, I eked out a prayer: Give me patience with her, Lord.   So rather than chide her into keeping up with the others (something I've regretfully done in other areas of her life), I went her pace. We biked and talked. A little tenderness from me and her countenance lifted. (Having six people tell you to hurry doesn't do a soul well.) And then I realized that I wasn't only slow enough to see her — to look her in the eye and know that she just needed someone to be with her — but I was slow enough to hear Him. The setting sun lit the pond we passed. The bullfrogs sang in chorus. My little girl began to recover and even glow. Whether it was His creation speaking or Him, I don't know, but it called me to attention.   This moment was my annual beach whisper from God.   Weeks earlier, I had asked Him about an upcoming writing project, and the phrase that came to me as I prayed over days was this: "Grow slow."   Very little about life in the twenty-first century encourages the value of slow growth. The news and our Twitter feeds become dated after twenty-four hours. Babies learn to read and get potty-trained. Eight-year-olds can travel the country for select-team athletics. And Miracle Gro promises to produce buds on my roses within days.   None of these things, by themselves, is wrong. None. God can feed five thousand from one kid's lunch. He can speed growth.   But when we make the exception — fast and out-of-time growth — to be our standard for living, our souls can cave under the weight.   My puttering bike trip with the girl whose heart was reviving at the thought that she could "be" instead of having to keep in time and in step with her siblings was the picture of that phrase He'd given me — grow slow.   Slide the watch off your wrist. Open your eyes to the view along the way.   Grow slow feels hard to me when I peer at what others are doing. But it feels invigorating when I consider that the God of all time ordains my times and seasons — so when He says, Grow slow, the phrase promises growth. Grow slow isn't stagnancy; it's the true metric for endurance that our digital world doesn't heed. What I get when I wrestle with this invitation not to grow as the world grows but to grow slow is the revelation that my heart is much more patterned toward the timing and thinking of the world than I've ever acknowledged.   I have a subtle drive to grow big and fast. Here's how I can tell: I want our children to have the emotional dignity of thirty-five-year-olds when they're twelve and in (normal) conflict with each other. In my more frantic moments, I want my four-year-old to learn his letters (and now), and I want someone, anyone, to see (with maturity) the connection between the number of condiments they use on their eggs and our ever-increasing grocery bill.   When I look closely, no one under my roof seems to be growing fast and big. Could the daily frustrations I feel trace back to my expectation that the best things in life explode overnight, rather than sit in the beauty of the slow and steady (and profound and lasting) growth that God often desires?   God gives us the waiting room, yet I see that the waiting room is merely that for many: a place to sit and wait, restless. He gave me the waiting room in my infertility, in my marriage, and dozens of times since — in events both big and small. Gritting my teeth and enduring or checking my watch felt natural. It's what you do in the waiting room. Yet this daughter, in this moment, opened me to hear His whisper, and I adored.  Psalm 62:5 tells me that my expectancy can grow in the waiting room. Against a world that speeds and a culture that tells me to hurry and an internal drive that measures my productivity, I adore through Psalm 62:5 and I stay on one phrase:   My expectancy is from Him.   I unclench my fist as I adore. The memory of that bike ride brings back the smell of salty air. I replace the expectations I have for my task list and accomplishments with Him. My expectancy is from Him, I tell Him and my soul as I adore. The waiting room looks different. Purposed. He meets me in the waiting room as I adore. It doesn't feel so claustrophobic, so limiting. It feels expansive as I adore and imbibe His perspective on the waiting room. There is intention in that room.   In adoration, I revisit the truth that expands my insides, over and over again without shame.   AND HERE, IN THE MIDDLE MINUTES, WE ADORE   FROM PSALM 62:5   You use every minute of my delay to grow me. The waiting room is Yours to hold, to use, to fashion. Every halted circumstance, every thwarted minute, every time my watch stops: You use it to grow my insides, to grow my expectancy in You.   As my externals stall, You create an expectancy in You within me.   I adore You, God of the waiting room. I praise You for turning what is otherwise discarded into a place where You grow me. I adore You for meeting me in the waiting and changing me in the waiting. I adore You for growing me slowly, God. Your way. I adore You for Your way, God. The best way.   GOD WHO USES DELAY TO GROW MY BELIEF   Psalm 27:14 | Psalm 32:20-22 | Psalm 37:34 | Psalm 40:1-3 | Psalm 62:1 | Psalm 62:5 | Psalm 123:2 | Psalm 130:5-7 | Isaiah 30:18 | Isaiah 40:31 | Lamentations 3:25-27 | Micah 7:7 | Romans 5:3-5 | Romans 8:23-25 | James 1:2-4 | James 5:7-8 | 1 Peter 1:6-8   TINY (BIG) PRAYERS   Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. — Isaiah 40:31   The Lord is good to those who wait for Him. — Lamentations 3:25   I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me. — Micah 7:7   Let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete. — James 1:4   DIALOGUE WITH HIM   My desire to heed His whisper, Grow slow, is not because I angle toward the small. It's the opposite. I want to see small fires of His heart spread everywhere across the earth into a raging blaze. (How's that for dramatic? It has been my prayer for years.) And I'm growing to trust Him enough to know that He put this desire within me, and so when He helps me to move in better step with His timing, I best listen. His way makes a harvest.   How about you? Where might He be "shackling" you with a slow biker to show you, in a picture or in a whisper, the timing He has for your current moment? Where is your waiting room? (Often it helps to identify it, rather than responding to it without naming it. Once we name it, we can ask for His presence there.)   Ask Him to prepare your heart to reclaim that room for Him. This is not a flippant decision nor is it a one-time decision; it is a progressive movement toward seeing what the world sees — and what you see — as waste through His eyes.   When you are ready (that doesn't mean when you are convinced; it means when you are prepared to unclench your fists and surrender this waiting room to Him), adore Him from that place. Ask Him to expand your insides to see what He sees there as you adore. Prepare to receive the waiting room in a new way.   Excerpted with permission from Adore by Sara Hagerty, copyright Sara Hagerty.   * * *   Your Turn   It's what you do in the waiting room. We're all waiting right now. Is your expectancy growing? Come share with us on our blog. We want to hear from you! ~ Laurie McClure, Faith.Full Leave a comment * TODAY ONLY *   Save 45% off    ADORE by Sara Hagerty A Simple Practice for Experiencing God in the Middle Minutes of Your Day Hardcover, Regular Price: $24.99 Sale: $13.74 (45% off) SHOP NOW For anyone who longs to experience God in the thick of life's demands, Sara Hagerty's Adore offers a simple, soul-nourishing practice for engaging with God in the middle minutes of your day.   None of us signed up for a conventional experience with the unconventional God, yet too often the spiritual life can become routine, dare we say, even boring.   In Adore, Sara Hagerty gives us all permission to admit "I barely know You, God," and with this honest admission, to scoot a little nearer to this familiar stranger. Adoration is the simple practice Sara discovered for starting where you are, and letting the grit of your day greet the beauty of God's presence.   Adoration is for the woman who feels frenzied and fearful in the middle minutes of her day. It is a simple practice for 7:37 a.m. when the children are waking and the dryer is already humming but also for the 12:17 p.m. lunch break and for 5:53 p.m. while stuck in traffic.   Adoration is the place where we put how we feel in front of God's Word, and watch what happens to our insides. It's what you were made for. Join Sara in this soul-stirring journey through thirty attributes of God which you can walk through at your own pace. Learn how the simple habit of adoration — in the middle minutes of your day — can help you see God with fresh eyes, and talk to Him right there. Experience a new way of engaging with God in your everyday. Adore will show you how. * TODAY ONLY *   Another great read from Sara Hagerty...   Get Unseen: The Gift of Being Hidden in a World that Loves to Be Noticed for 45% Off Softcover, Regular Price: $17.99 Sale: $9.89 (45% off) SHOP NOW How do we find contentment in God when we feel so hidden? Sara Hagerty unfolds the truths found in the biblical story of Mary of Bethany to discover the scandalous love of God and explore the spiritual richness of being hidden in him. Every heart longs to be seen and understood. Yet most of our lives is unwitnessed. We spend our days working, driving, parenting. We sometimes spend whole seasons feeling unnoticed and unappreciated. In Unseen, Sara Hagerty suggests that this is exactly what God intended. He is the only One who truly knows us. He is the only One who understands the value of the unseen in our lives. When this truth seeps into our souls, we realize that only when we hide ourselves in God can we give ourselves to others in true freedom--and know the joy of a deeper relationship with the God who sees us. Our culture applauds what we can produce, what we can show, what we can upload to social media. Only when we give all of ourselves to God--unedited, abandoned, apparently wasteful in its lack of productivity--can we live out who God created us to be. As Hagerty writes, "Maybe my seemingly unproductive, looking-up-at-Him life produces awe among the angels." Through an eloquent exploration of both personal and biblical story, Hagerty calls us to offer every unseen minute of our lives to God. God is in the secret places of our lives that no one else witnesses. But we've not been relegated to these places. We've been invited. We may be "wasting" ourselves in a hidden corner today: The cubicle on the fourth floor. The hospital bedside of an elderly parent. The laundry room. But these are the places God uses to meet us with a radical love. These are the places that produce the kind of unhinged love in us that gives everything at His feet, whether or not anyone else ever proclaims our name, whether or not anyone else ever sees. God's invitation is not just for a season or a day. It is the question of our lives: "When no one else applauds you, when it makes no sense, when you see no results--will you waste your love on Me?" SHOP NOW Miss any of our recent articles? Don't Take it Easy by Jennie Lusko You're Invited to the Captivating Online Bible Study with Stasi Eldredge Don't Stop Dreaming by Megan Fate Marshman *Sale prices valid through 8/31/2021, excluding eBooks. eBooks purchases are fulfilled by our partner, Glose.  Free U.S. shipping on orders $35 or more, excluding Alaska and Hawaii. 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