{"id":21172,"date":"2017-10-24T00:05:49","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T07:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lccredding.com\/lcc\/?p=11824"},"modified":"2017-10-25T12:26:30","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T19:26:30","slug":"october-24-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/2017\/10\/24\/october-24-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"October 24, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"fusion-fullwidth fullwidth-box fusion-builder-row-1 nonhundred-percent-fullwidth non-hundred-percent-height-scrolling\" style=\"--awb-border-radius-top-left:0px;--awb-border-radius-top-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-left:0px;--awb-flex-wrap:wrap;\" ><div class=\"fusion-builder-row fusion-row\"><div class=\"fusion-layout-column fusion_builder_column fusion-builder-column-0 fusion_builder_column_1_1 1_1 fusion-one-full fusion-column-first fusion-column-last\" style=\"--awb-bg-size:cover;\"><div class=\"fusion-column-wrapper fusion-flex-column-wrapper-legacy\"><div class=\"fusion-text fusion-text-1\"><div style=\"background: transparent url('http:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Missionaries_edited-21.jpg'); background-size: 1200px 600px; left top repeat 0 100% width: 600px; margin: 10px auto; padding: 50px 200px 50px 200px;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-11825 alignmiddle\" src=\"http:\/\/lccredding.com\/lcc\/wp-content\/uploads\/Mclung-web-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"410\" height=\"356\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>&#8220;Be still and know that I am God.&#8221;<\/em> Psalm 46:10<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Suffering in the Waiting <\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Someone wrote and said to me that there is suffering in the waiting&#8230; that sometimes the waiting is as hard as what we are walking through.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I&#8217;ve thought a lot about that. There&#8217;s certainly a big truth in that statement. The waiting to see what&#8217;s next, what God has in store for us, how this journey will end, is intense. It is its own kind of suffering. There&#8217;s no control, no way to plan for what&#8217;s ahead, no lessening of the pressure&#8230; all you can do is wait! You feel stuck in a kind of limbo.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">As I was praying about this, I also thought of a different kind of waiting&#8230; or maybe a different aspect of it. I thought of choosing to be still in His presence, and waiting patiently for Him to act. Out of need, of necessity, I&#8217;ve learned a lot about being still during all these months. Many days when all strength was used up, I had no choice but to be still. On other days I simply chose to be still before Him because I needed to quiet my own heart.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We need time in His presence, in the stillness, for Him to minister to us what we need. I sometimes get impatient. I want to move on. I want to get things done. And I definitely want this journey to end.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">But I&#8217;m learning. I&#8217;m learning about waiting patiently for Him. It&#8217;s part of trusting Him. One song says, &#8220;Beyond our understanding, you&#8217;re teaching us to trust.&#8221; I don&#8217;t have all the lessons down yet, but they&#8217;re working their way deeper into my heart. And He brings comfort, grace, hope, strength, and peace as I wait.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Yes, there&#8217;s suffering in the waiting\u2014but there&#8217;s also the invaluable lessons that come through waiting that can&#8217;t be learned any other way. He hears each prayer I whisper, even if I don&#8217;t see or understand the answers yet. And the more I wait in His presence, the more I hear His whispers back to me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cFather, in our suffering, may we learn to be still before You, to trust Your good plans for us, and to wait patiently for You. In Your strength, not ours, Lord. Amen.\u201d<\/span> <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><div class=\"fusion-clearfix\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p92wjD-5vu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21172"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21182,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21172\/revisions\/21182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}