Dad! We have to!

The other day my kids were talking about our move to Chicago and how we had to wait another year. Remember that they are 7, 5, and 4 years old. When my youngest joined the conversation about moving to Chicago, she said, “Dad! We have to!”

She’s right. We have to. God has called us and we must go–even though the timing is not what we expected. It was a good reminder.

It’s in the waiting

A couple of weeks ago, we announced that we will have to hold off on the Chicago church plant. If you missed it, you can read the release here.

It was a tough decision. Since then, however, I have had peace about the decision. It’s not happiness, but it is peace.

I was already scheduled to attend a church planting conference this past week. I went, excited to have my fire rekindled, but it didn’t exactly happen that way. Many of the main and breakout sessions that I attended spoke about waiting. These are some of the things that were said:

• God is in the waiting;
• Don’t let the pace of ministry kill you;
• Take time so God’s vision can marinate in you;
• Spend an extra year just to wait; and
• Trust God enough to move at his pace.

Um, thank you?

But seriously, it was exactly what I needed. Pete Wilson spoke from John 11. This is the passage where Jesus hears that his dear friend, Lazarus, is sick, but he waits to go see him until Lazarus is already dead. It just doesn’t make sense. When Jesus arrived, Martha said, “If you would have been here, you could have healed him.” Notice that Martha did not question his power, she questioned his timing. Pete said this:

The question is not, “Can God do it?” The question is, “Can you wait?”

Later in the passage, we see that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. The waiting was for God to get more glory. I end this post with one last quote from Pete:

God’s silence is not his absence.

So we wait.