GCD Short - I'm Struggling

 

 I am going to be fully honest and transparent with you, my readers. I have been struggling lately. Those of you who have been regular readers of my articles (I suspect that there are very few of those) will know that I have been called of God to not work for several years already. There have been times when I have had the opportunity to undertake some labour for somebody, but I have never requested payment for that work. I am not receiving any government handouts, I am not visiting food banks and nobody has been supporting me with regular financial contributions. God has been acting in various different ways to meet the needs of myself and my family.

I know that I should be grateful for God's provision, and I most definitely am grateful; most people don't get to live under the direct provision of God's hand. But one result of this way of living is that I do not feel productive. I grew up on a farm and working is in my nature. I enjoy working and accomplishing things; improving the lives of myself, my family or others. There are times when I feel like a failure as a husband and a father due to the things that my family has had to go without. You see, though God has provided for our needs, we have been living under mostly tight financial situations for most of the last seven to eight years. I can't tell you how many times I have asked, and even begged of God to allow me to either get a job or start a new avenue of self-employment over the years, but His answer has always been "Wait on Me" and "Trust Me". It has variably been a time of struggle or a time of peace; right now it is a time of struggle.

In about August or September, I finally got the word from God that I could start looking for work. I eagerly began scouring the employment websites for suitable work for me. Unfortunately, my housing situation is such that I need more than a basic job to cover my expenses; not just any job will keep us clothed and fed. That shouldn't be a problem, because I have a wealth of knowledge and experience that should allow me to secure a good job. But that has not been my experience.

It is now approaching the end of January and I am still not employed. I spent two to three months searching and applying for numerous job opportunities, all to secure only one interview. I think I could have had that job, but when I inquired about the salary scale for that position, I realized that I just couldn't afford to take that job, and I left that interview still unemployed.

Part of the thing is that in early November, God started giving me a different instruction. It took me about two weeks to really understand this instruction in it's full context. I was so gung-ho about finding work, and I had heard part of the instruction so many times before that I missed the significance of the other part of the instruction. The new instruction was "Just wait".

As I mentioned earlier, waiting was nothing new to me, but I completely missed the impact of the first word for while; "Just". I eventually clued in to the fact that the word "just" was important.

I am somewhat of a word nerd, and I didn't like where my new enlightenment was leading me, so I decided that I would pull out my trusty old dictionary to dig into what the word "just" really means. Now, since the word immediately after the word "just" in my instruction is an action word, "wait", making it a verb, it makes sense to me that the "just" is an adverb, or a word that modifies the associated verb. 

So we know what it means to wait, but for the sake of being thorough, let's look at the dictionary definition for that first. Wait, according to the World Book Dictionary of 1976, means "to stop doing something or stay until someone comes or somethings happens; to deter or suspend, as speech or action". Now we add the definition of "just" prior to the word "wait", and it modifies the verb. The definition of "just" is "no more than; only; merely". When we put these definitions together, we get "no more than to stop doing something until someone comes or something happens."

So now, after having spent years waiting on God for who knows what, I was finally given permission to move forward, which I acted towards for two or three months, and then I was suddenly again told not only to wait, but to do only that; "Just wait". Do no more than wait.

What I am about to state next is a simple statement that may make it sound like it was easy to do, but trust me, I am still struggling with it. 

I suspended my job search. Just like that. I am currently waiting on I don't know what, which will happen I don't know when. There was one position that I applied for and was excited about because I sensed a quickening of the Spirit at the very moment that I saw the ad title, not even knowing what the position fully entailed, but this position is right in my wheelhouse. I applied for it immediately and I have been hoping for months to get an interview request. Most jobs don't take this long to fill, but I have been told that this organization can easily take six months to fill its advertised positions. So I continue to wait and hope that God's plan is to place me there. All other positions that I have applied for have long been filled; this is the only potentially unfilled position that I have applied for, and since I have not been searching or applying for nearly three months now, all my hope hangs on this one position. In the meantime, our needs are still being met.

I don't claim to know God's reason for why I was released and then reined in again. I can speculate, but those thoughts are my own and will not be shared here; at least not yet. My logical mind tells me that God released me to search for work in time to apply for this desired position, and that if it is His will that I get it, then there is no reason for me to continue to search and apply and sicken myself with anxiety over my inability to secure any job over these intervening months. I hope that this is the case. I don't know that it is the case. One of the frustrating things about committing to obey God in whatever He instructs is that He very seldom tells us the why, just the what.

This brings me back to the beginning of this article; I have been struggling lately. God has continued to provide for us, but He sometimes does so in ways that I struggle with receiving. There are wheels in motion that should provide us with some money to work with in the short term, with potentially more in the long term, but it is a road to walk and not a destination to arrive at. In the meantime, I had to borrow my rent money for this month from a friend and I don't know how God will provide the money for next month's rent. He tells me that He's got this, so I have to trust Him, but even this far into the journey, it can be nerve wracking.

I don't know what God's plans are for this blog, but if He eventually gives me some type of following, I want you all to know that I am merely human. I am sharing my struggles with you. I am not someone who has things all together and I am learning as I go. This platform is simply a way for me to share the things that I am learning with others in a way that will hopefully encourage others to pursue God more closely.

I guess that's about it. I spent about an hour working on a few articles that I have started composing, not knowing what I would post for today. As it turns out, I am just supposed to pour myself out to you, my readers, today. So there it is. If you don't mind, I could really use some prayers to help me get through this current time of struggle until I can come again to a place of peace in the waiting.