God answered your prayer: You got that promotion, new opportunity, new home, new business endeavor, new baby, or new relationship…
But you find yourself thinking: “This is too hard. I’d rather just go back to the way things were.”
God promised you something and now life is more complicated or everything that could go wrong, has. You feel frustrated, confused, and discouraged. You’re tired. You’re anxious. You’re overwhelmed. You feel alone.
The Israelites felt the same way…
God answered the Israelites’ prayer by sending Moses to lead them out of their captivity from Egypt to the promise land of freedom. They had to go through the desert first. It was intense, hard. They were unhappy, they complained, they were afraid, and sorry they had left Egypt. They were mad at God, blamed Moses, and although they were treated terribly in Egypt, they knew what to expect every day. Their captivity was a familiar way of life.
There are necessary “desert” seasons we must go through for our heart’s desires to be fulfilled even if we didn’t ask for the desert parts.
Our brain follows the path of least resistance so when we encounter difficult circumstances we’re not expecting, we look for the easy way out. We fear the unknown. We can’t see the promise anymore. Like the Israelites, we long for the old days.
Now it’s too much work. You’re having a confidence crisis. You’re a little bitter. Things aren’t going as well as you’d hoped.
The struggle is real and so you wish it to be different, but hoping for a different set of circumstances does nothing but leave you disappointed, empty, and heartsick. Hope deferred makes the heart sick (Proverbs 13:12).
This is the time to let go of control and surrender the promise back to God even though your current situation or relationship is harder than you imagined.
The sooner you face what is hard the sooner you’ll discover there’s a lot more strength and capacity in you than you ever knew and a lot more to God's promise than you ever dreamed possible. You’ll gain wisdom, maturity, and realize what is truly important.
Rather than wasting your energy on wanting to go back to an easier and more comforting time, remind yourself how during that time, you asked for this.
Living a life of purpose and promise is not for the faint of heart, yet…
“Being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perform it.” (Philippians 1:6)
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