The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.
We get up every morning and act upon what is to come, and because what is to come is sure, we know that our labor in God’s name in never in vain. So we wait and act. We wait and work. We wait and fight. We wait and conquer. We wait and proclaim. We wait and run. We wait and sacrifice. We wait and give. We wait and worship. Waiting on God is an action based on confident assurance of grace to come.
Ella took a deep breath and exhaled. She walked down the hallway toward her office with a confident certainty that God would give her the right words to encourage her newest counselee to stop her self-harming habit of cutting. Ella felt personally distressed by the increasing number of junior high and high school students she met with weekly that were resorting to this dangerous self-soothing habit to cope with their anxiety and stress.
We Can Help The Hurting
As Ella entered her private office, she began reviewing her notes from fourteen-year-old Morgan’s last session. Carefully, Ella reread her comments and those she had taken down alongside Morgan’s responses to her questions. Oh, Ella thought, to turn back the clock to those days when the most destructive acts I ever witnessed within these four walls were kids who got into minor verbal confrontations with their peers. Now all I seem to hear are accounts that border on life-threatening choices of substance abuse, self-harm, and suicide. Lord, help me! Please give me your words to help direct Morgan away from hurting herself just so she can feels something other than numbness. Sometimes I wonder if I’m making any difference at all anymore. Help me to keep on communicating your truth and love to these wounded ones and be thankful you’ve placed me here to serve them. Amen.
Ella then took out pen and paper and began jotting down the specific questions she wanted to discuss with Morgan that day. From long counseling experience, Ella had become adept at reading her young counselees’ expressions and she knew just how and when to press a little further to get them to open up. It’s all about baby steps. One question, one honest response, that’s how I build the trust between us. If I can get Morgan to take a closer look at why she feels compelled to cut herself, then we’ll have a stepping stone for moving her out of this harmful place.
Hope Is the Key For Change
Prepped and ready for her appointment, Ella pulled out her private journal and spent the next ten minutes listing every bit of positive progress she could think of that related to her counselees. Be it little or large, Ella had learned to be proactive about identifying all the good God was up to in these troubled young lives. For her own sake, Ellen recorded every baby step of hope and progress she witnessed taking place. Ella never wanted to give up on any of her counselees so she learned to give thanks and be thankful for even the slimmest signs of hope of change even if that meant waiting for those evidences to make their appearance. Ellen learned to live in confident assurance of grace to come.
Like Ella, we must choose our attitude and response to the difficulties that surround us. These day to day challenges may never disappear, in fact, as in Ellen’s workplace scenario; the severity of consequences may only increase over time. But as Ellen learned to remind herself every time she grew weary of trying to fight the spiritual, mental, and emotional battles for the youngsters in her charge, God is the only one who effectively rescues and changes us from the inside out.
God Is the One Who Empowers New Life
Ella learned to give thanks to God for each and every counselee she had the privilege to invest in. She truly lived in that precious place of confident assurance keenly aware that it is God alone who equips her to speak for him and into the lives of these young girls and boys. As Ella developed the daily discipline of identifying and giving thanks for every work of grace God was up to in their lives, her own spirit soared.
Change Isn’t Always Visible
Was it challenging for Ella to not consistently witness weekly (or even monthly) progress in her counselees? Absolutely. Like us, Ella sometimes fought a real battle against discouragement when nothing in the visible world reassured her that her words were making any difference. But Ella didn’t stay in that place of discouragement long. Instead, she prayed for God’s sustaining grace to help her wait well. The change Ella hoped and prayed for may not present itself in her timeline or even in her lifetime. But Ella’s confidence wasn’t measured in seeing results in the now. Ella was strengthening her spiritual muscles to serve God and others over the long distance of all of life’s ups and downs.
Like each of us, Ella had to confront and face those obstacles that threaten to render us weak and ineffective. And she did so by relying on God to supply her with the grace she needed at each moment of the day. And then, in no smaller measure, Ella learned to identify the good God was doing and give him thanks. Only then was Ella able to leave work matters at work and walk away each afternoon in confident assurance of grace to come.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In