Hi, and welcome to Five Word Prayers Daily, a five day a week daily devotional where we share the word, prayers, and our heart.

I'm Lisa Whittle, and I welcome you to just five minutes with me, which I trust and pray will be five minutes well spent.

Well, today is going to be an important five minutes for some friends, at least that's what I'm sensing in my soul, because I know that

one of the hardest things for all of us is to wait. So hard, right? Especially that great in-between

when you know that God has put something inside your heart, he wants you to do, and yet it

seems like nothing is coming from it. Nothing you try, nothing you pray about, nothing. Crickets. Yeah.

Well, we need to spend a few minutes on this, I think, today.

I shared about this in The A Moment to Breathe Devotional, which we'll put in the show

notes if you want to check

that resource out about this idea of what happens when God annoys you but doesn't yet appoint

you. And man, this is a reality of waiting that resonates with many of us because by nature

we're a people who want what we want right now. That's our flesh, and that's also our culture by and large.

And so living in the space of not now is perhaps the hardest and the holiest of all.

The hardest, we all know, we've already talked about that, but the holiest as well, which we may not have thought about, is this, because in the wrestling with

God over our desire to do something we believe is good and right and maybe even urgent,

God is in his position knowing everything, like usual. He knows everything. The timing, the plan,

the strategy, the purpose, and the waiting is part of the plan,

too, though that's our least favorite part, I think. At least it's usually my least favorite part.

But the spiritual disciplines of surrender, trust, and faithfulness, all things required for the wait,

make us more like Jesus, which in turn make us

more ready for the appointing. The truth is the anointing often comes before the appointing.

Our job is to believe God and pursue holiness in that space in between. And sometimes that's very difficult because that involves

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