From Now On

We were on an early morning walk & I was chattering away about things I needed to do. Andrew gently said, "You've been single all these years and I know you're used to taking care of yourself, but those days are over. From now on, I get to take care of you." And then I stopped right there on the sidewalk, burst into tears and buried my head in his shoulder. Overwhelmed at the way this man loves me. #worththewait Eph. 3:20-21

Paul Tripp - God's Agenda

I was just having a conversation this week about how I wondered years ago how to fall in love with a life I never wanted, trusting God's goodness when your heart gets broken, when the deepest longings of your heart go unfulfilled for so many years, etc. 

Then I read THIS today by Paul Tripp: "I am deeply persuaded that many of us struggle with questions of God's goodness, faithfulness, and love, not because he has been unfaithful to any promise in any way, but because we simply are not on his agenda page. Our agenda, our definition of what a good God should give us, is a life that is comfortable, pleasurable, and predictable; one in which there's lots of human affirmation and an absence of suffering. But consider God's agenda, as it's revealed in the following passages: James 1:2-4, 1 Pet. 1:6-7, Rom. 5:1-5, Phil. 3:7-9. 

The message is consistent throughout all of these passages. God is not working to deliver to you your personal definition of happiness. If you're on that agenda paye, you are going to be disappointed with God and you are going to wonder if he loves you. God is after something better - your holiness, that is, the final completion of his redemptive work in you. The difficulties you face are not in the way of God's plan, they do not show the failure of God's plan, and they are not signs he has turned his back on you. No, those tough moments are a sure sign of the zeal of his redemptive love." 

For further study and encouragement: 1 Peter 4:12-19

Encouraging Resources on Prayer, Waiting and Truth

Article on Prayer by my fiancé Andrew Hess: http://www.churchleaders.com/daily-buzz/277022-10-powerful-prayers-the-apostle-paul-prayed-over-gods-people.html

Matt Chandler's Interview on Marriage and Working Through Tough Times by Andrew Hess: http://www.churchleaders.com/podcast/253639-episode-1-matt-chandler-marriage-working-through-tough-seasons.html

Paul Tripp's Interview on How Awe Changes Everything by Andrew Hess: http://www.churchleaders.com/podcast/272183-paul-tripp-why-awe-changes-everything.html

Quotes on Waiting and Truth:

"You are waiting because there is a plan. You are waiting because your life is under the control of One who is wise and good. You can rest, not because you know what is happening, but because you know the One who is in control of what is happening right now." - Paul Tripp

"It is through the most difficult trials that God often brings the sweetest discoveries of Himself." ~ Streams in the Desert

"God's purposes are good and He is at work doing a thousand things that no one can see but Him. All the perplexing turns in my life lead somewhere good. God is plotting for my joy in all of the seeming setbacks of my life." - John Piper

"When we don't receive what we pray for or desire, it doesn't mean that God isn't acting on our behalf. Rather, he's weaving his story. Paul tells us to "continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving" (Colossians 4:2). Thanksgiving helps us to be grace-centered, seeing all of life as a gift. It looks at how God's blessings impact our lives. Watchfulness alerts us to the unfolding drama in the present. It looks for God's presence working as it unfolds into future grace." - A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World by Paul E. Miller

"In one way or another, every problem we have in this world is the fruit of deception - the result of believing something that simply isn't true." - Lies Women Believe by Nancy Leigh Demoss 

"...there is nothing more crucial than what we believe about God. As Hannah Whitall Smith points out in her spiritual autobiography, The Unselfishness of God, "Everything in your spiritual life depends on the sort of God you worship. Because the character of the worshiper will always be molded by the character of what he worships: If it is a cruel and revengeful God, the worshiper will be the same, but if it is a loving, tender, forgiving, unselfish God, the worshiper will be transformed slowly, wonderfully, into this likeness." 

"When prayer teams up with gratitude, when we open our eyes wide enough to see God's mercies even in the midst of our pain, and when we exercise faith and give him thanks even when we can't see those mercies, he meets us with his indescribable peace. It's a promise...Are you facing one or more chaotic, unsettled situations? Is your soul weary? There is peace, my friend, God's peace, waiting for you just beyond the doors of deliberate gratitude." - Choose Gratitude by Nancy Leigh DeMoss

"We must not suffer Satan to shake our confidence in the God of truth by pointing to our unanswered prayers. Unanswered petitions are not unheard. God keeps a file for our prayers - they are treasured in the King's archives. This is a registry in the court of heaven wherein every prayer is recorded. Tried believer, thy Lord hath a tear-bottle in which the costly drops of sacred grief are put away, and a book in which thy holy groan ins are numbered. By and by, thy suit shall prevail. Canst thous not be content to wait a little? Will not thy Lord's time be better than thy time? By and by he will appear, to thy soul's joy, and make thee put away the sackcloth and ashes of long waiting, and put on the scarlet and fine linen of full fruition." - Spurgeon

Books:

One of my all time favorites!! - Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free by Nancy Leigh DeMoss

http://www.amazon.com/Lies-Women-Believe-Truth-that/dp/0802472966?ie=UTF8&keywords=lies%20women%20believe%20and%20the%20truth%20that%20sets%20them%20free&qid=1460994496&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1 

Always True: God's Promises When Life is Hard by James Macdonald 

http://www.amazon.com/Always-True-Gods-Promises-When/dp/0802458696/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460994582&sr=1-1&keywords=always+true+james+macdonald

PP&T Retreat 2016!

Can't WAIT for this weekend's retreat getaway with my 7 closest friends from college!!! We met our freshman year -  17 years ago & I love that we still do our yearly sleepover / retreat to catch up on all God is going in our lives & pray together. Priceless friendships. 

"...in those moments I realized why this kind of time together matters so much: because there are things you can't know, and questions you can't ask, and memories you can't recover via email and voicemail. It was about being there, about being there to really see what's exactly the same and what's totally different about each one of us...because we had the time, because we could let conversations wind and unwind, because we could start them at dawn and pick them up again in the afternoon and add a few more thoughts in the evening, we circled down to the places you never get to when you just see one another at weddings, giving out funny sound bytes over bites of cake....if you're lucky enough to have your {heart to heart friends} all right in your very own town, I hope you soak it up, and that you lie around in each other's backyards every Saturday afternoon or stay up late on one another's porches three nights a week. But if you're like me, and if those faces are far away, get a weekend on the calendar and get there. Share your life with the people you love, even if it means saving up for a ticket and going without a few things for a while to make it work. There are enough long lonely days of the same old thing, and if you let enough years pass, and if you let the routine steamroll your life, you'll wake up one day, isolated and weary, and wonder what happened to all those old friends....so walk across the street, or drive across town, or fly across the country, but don't let really intimate loving friendships become the last item on a long to-do list. Good friendships are like breakfast. You honk you're too busy to eat breakfast, but then you find yourself exhausted and cranky halfway through the day, and discover that your attempt to save time totally backfired. In the same way, you can try to go it alone because you don't have time or because your house is too messy to have people over, or because making new friends is like the very worst parts of dating. But halfway through a hard day or a hard week, you'll realize in a flash that you're breathtakingly lonely, and that the Christmas cards aren't much company. Get up, make a phone call, buy a cheap ticket, open your front door. Because there really is nothing like good friends, like the sounds of their laughter and the tones of their voices and the things they teach us in the quietest, smallest moments." - from Bittersweet p. 62 by S. Niequist