Pray. Wait. Trust.

PRAY. WAIT. TRUST.

Three words. Words which make you stop, think, and meditate on when all you have left is your child in crisis.  

I used to have an ideology when a child reaches a certain age, they grow up and figure out their problems or the problems fade away.  Boy, was I wrong. In fact, they can often get worse. 

Many of my friends are seeing this in real life.  They imagined this could only happen to other parents. Now they are confronted with lives broken by the choices their child made.. 

Frozen in their steps, they are motionless as to what to do. If they intervene, this could make the situation escalate and shatter with far more repercussions. If they don’t do anything, they wonder if their fears materialize into a deadly outcome. 

So what do you do when you have no control of the circumstances?  

PRAY! 

We don’t have to know exactly what to pray for. We don’t have to have eloquent words when we pray. In fact, there are times in which we can’t even speak the words to pray because of the pain, hurt, and shock. So what do we pray for? We pray for God’s Will to be done. We pray for God to continue to pursue our child like the one lost sheep. We pray for protection against the enemy. We pray the darkness is exposed by the light of truth and the blinders fall off of our child’s eyes. We pray God will reveal Himself to our teen/young adult when they have finally hit rock bottom with nowhere else to go.  

WAIT!

Impatience gets the better of us all of the time.  If we jump too soon to help or rescue, then we can easily block what God has planned.  God always has a reason for us to wait.  We may not like it because of what we are seeing. However, God is good and good all the time. He is not out to punish us our children.  He has a plan in the making and needs us to trust Him. This means waiting.  You may be asking, “Waiting for what? Doesn’t God see how bad the issue is?”  Yes, He does.  He also sees the end result in which we do not.  Maybe waiting is to teach us something that God wants to see in us. God is in no rush. He can wait a thousand years if He wants to. Fortunately, He knows we can’t live that long, so He makes us wait a lot less.  Waiting is good for us.  Doors need to be opened and closed for His agenda which is to bring our children into His fold. This requires waiting. I have never seen a situation in which waiting was a bad thing.  

TRUST!

I know this is a favorite of many.  Trusting is hard when you cannot see God at work. This is what trust is all about. The definition of trust is believing, having faith in, confidence in, and reliance on in your situation.  If we don’t trust in God, then who are we going to trust?  When we trust in ourselves, it will always fail.  God never fails.  We may not like His ways or His results, but I guarantee His plan is far better than ours.  We will come to a place in time in which we will have no other alternative but to trust God. I have learned and still learning to just trust God’s answer. He has yet to disappoint me in all of my years in serving Him as well as giving my children to Him.  I used to just wait and trust.  Now I trust with expectation knowing God will fulfill what He set out to do.  If we trust in our own strength, we will end up swimming against the current and not get anywhere.  By trusting in the Lord, He will redirect us to where He needs us to go and we will get there faster.  

So, if you are feeling lost, broken, guilt-ridden, frustrated, wanting to give up, then learn these 3 key words. 

Pray during the times of trials. Wait upon God to give him answers or direction. Trust in the unseen. God listens and God will move.

We walk by faith, not by sight. 2 Corinthians 5:7

Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash