Giving It Your All

Eternal Encouragement post:  How to Wait in the Waiting Room

Waiting is hard. Are we going to sell our house and move or stay here? Will you be switching jobs this year or staying? Are we going to change churches or not? In Jeremiah 29 God’s people are waiting. Does He tell them to just, “wait a minute” or to do nothing and just wait?

In Jeremiah 29 the Jews were in a waiting period after they had been moved from one long-term spot and were leaving a temporary spot, while waiting for their now long-term home. They had been in Israel and that is where they were going back to, but at this moment they have been freed from being Babylonian captives and temporarily they have no home.

Here is what God tells His people while they are waiting: “Build houses, settle down, plant gardens, and eat what they produce, marry and have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage. Increase in number there and do not decrease. And, seek the prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

So God clearly says that when we are in an in-between time or place that we aren’t to hold back and just wait. Instead we are to live like we’re going to be there the rest of our lives. He uses words like build, settle, plant, increase, work for the good of that city, improve where you are.

I can hear myself saying something like, “But God, this isn’t where I want to be. I just want to ‘get by’ until I get to where I am going.”

Jeremiah 29:11 is that great verse that so many people quote, where God says, “I know the plans I have for you…”Now remember, this verse immediately follows everything God told them to do while they wait.

“I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future,”Jeremiah 29:11.

See, God’s good plans for tomorrow come from you living whole-heartedly today wherever you are. Today maybe you’re not where you want to end up, you’re between jobs, or you’re in one that’s just a stop-gap. Or you’re waiting, wanting a baby. Maybe you’re living in a temporary situation. Well, like the Jews of old, it’s just an in-between place. But like them, God expects you to build there, to plant there, to increase, to improve that place. And as you do, you give God the attitude that He can use to ultimately bring you His very best.

If you are in-between times right now remember to live by giving it your all. Be all you can be right where you are. Actually that’s the best way to get safely to the destination that you want so much.