Preparing for Action

Preparing for Action

Waiting, waiting, thinking, praying, more waiting. Have you ever found yourself in a season of waiting? I have! It lasted for nearly two years after my husband died. I felt like a little sailboat adrift on a big ocean with no wind and no rudder…and therefore, no direction or destination!

I remember asking God all the “What?” and “Why?” questions. What is my purpose for being? Why did you leave me here? What am I going to do by myself? What’s next for me? Why aren’t You giving me any clear direction?  …and there were periods of silence when I heard no answers.

We’ve all come to those crossroads that look suspiciously like a 5-way intersection. We consider the pros and cons of each pathway, and we seek direction. But there seems to be no definite leading as to which way we should take.

As I thought on this, my mind moved to one more question. What should I be doing during this time of waiting for something to happen? We find one possibility in 1 Peter 1:13. “Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”  In a word, this verse tells us that we should be preparing for action! Because we don’t know the plan or the destination yet, this most often involves doing whatever the next thing is that sits right in front of us. Take the next step! Prepare yourself to move when God gives the orders.

All of life is about His timing. I want to know the whole plan, the destination, the means of getting there. But God generally reveals one piece at a time. Action in any undertaking usually involves a time of waiting, practice, and preparation. Execution and action can never happen without a time of preparation and understanding what the plan is.

My grandson plays college football…now. But he started when he was about 8 years old playing flag football with other little guys before they graduated to tackle with pads and helmets. By the time he was in high school, he was memorizing plays. If this happens, we do this….if that happens, we do that! Every athlete spends time on the bench when he or she is not in the game. But they don’t sit there daydreaming and doing nothing! No, the coach expects that they will be carefully watching the game so that when they get sent in, they actually know what they should be doing! Olympic athletes practice for years and years before they ever get into the final competition.

No concert pianist ever takes the stage without years of piano lessons, a lifetime of practice hours, planning the program, and preparing mentally and physically for the performance. Frustration abounds during those times of feeling as though they will never conquer specific techniques or compositions.

Or think about labor and delivery! For nine months that baby grows and develops in the womb, silently preparing for life on planet earth. And for nine months, the body of the mother quietly prepares to deliver that little one into the world. We’ve all experienced or heard of Braxton-Hicks contractions. These are merely trial runs as the body prepares for labor and delivery of the baby. Waiting, anticipation, labor, and delivery are all stages that a woman must go through prior to birth.

All of these scenarios involve periods of waiting and waiting for the main event to finally happen! The same is true in our lives. While our husbands were living, it’s likely that we had plans for retirement, or plans for what we wanted to do for Christmas, or things that we wanted to do at some point in the future. When he died, those plans seemed to die with him. Suddenly, we may have found ourselves at the end of a pathway, lacking the ability to see anything beyond today. We may have felt like we lacked purpose and direction, and we had no destination – no forward movement.

While this may be true for a period of time after becoming a widow, it’s not God’s plan that you stay there forever. There are dozens of scriptures that tell us that during a time of waiting, we are to be preparing ourselves for action. Proverbs speaks of horses and armies being prepared for battle. We’re also told to learn from the ant who stores up provision for the future. And the New Testament writers tell us to prepare for the coming of the Lord.

What are you doing during your time of waiting? Are you working your way through the grief? Is your heart healing? Are you spending quiet time reading God’s Word and asking Him what comes next? Might I suggest that He won’t likely hit you with a bolt of lightning to get you moving. Most often there will be a quiet nudging in your heart that will guide you to do the next thing. Make good use of this time that God has given you to prepare yourself for the new season of your life.

What is that next thing for you? Have you been able to answer the question of what comes next for you? If you have an idea of what that might be, then prepare yourself to take the next step! If you don’t know yet, then hold steady, get quiet in God’s Presence, and begin to ask Him about a plan of action.

Consider this scripture: Isaiah 43:19 – New Century Version – “Look at the new thing I am going to do. It is already happening. Don’t you see it? I will make a road in the desert and rivers in the dry land.” God is at work behind the scenes preparing the new thing He has in mind for you to do!

“The Lord will direct us soon enough; it’s our job to be ready for action.”

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome here or you can email me at sheryl@freshhope.us. If you’re looking for a new purpose and a pathway to move ahead, please consider joining one of our Refocusing Widows groups, either in person or online. You can register at www.refocusingwidows.org/Groups. We look forward to meeting you!