Have you ever felt like you were playing telephone with God? Like you were on the end of a long string, complete with empty toilet paper rolls on both ends. You're saying something, asking for something in one end, and it seems like God must have heard something totally different on His end?
I remember feeling this way when my son was young, in elementary and middle school. He struggled to hear his teachers, but we would work on his assignments for hours, getting all his homework done. My prayer was that he would turn it in!
Once in a while that would happen, but rarely on the same day that the assignment was due. My son would say that he hadn't heard the teacher, or he had forgotten to get the paper out of his backpack. He would pull it out of the bottom, crumpled up and torn from his lunch and his books getting piled on top of it.
The beauty of this story is that he learned not to procrastinate, for anything. As soon as I or his wife ask him to do something, or even mention something needs done, he gets up and does it, right then. It's a beautiful gift of his, a way that he honors us.
I was praying for a certain outcome. Bottom line: turn in the homework, learn like everyone else. But God...was forming my son into the man he is today. He has such a servant's heart! I thank God that I didn't receive what I asked for!
Maybe you needed to hear this today. Maybe you've been praying for your child, too, and it seems like you're talking through a string. Or maybe, God knows a little bit more than you and me.
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