Trusting His Timeframe.

First off I would like to say I am no expert on trusting God because we can never be experts on trust. I just wanted to share how I have grown to trust God more and hope it will help someone reading.

As I have gotten older I feel as though I have to do a specific set of things in a certain amount of time for my life to be "successful". I feel like I have to do so many things within a timeframe and if I do not accomplish these things I have not been working hard enough or doing the best things for me. I see people say they want to have graduated college, have their dream job and house, and be married and maybe have a kid by the time they are 25. To me that just makes me feel like you are setting yourself up for failure. To me that seems like if you will stop having dreams and aspirations after 25. To me I feel like you are discrediting God's plan for your life in the next 6-10 years. Not to say it is bad to have big aspirations because trust me I have them too, however, when you put a time limit on God like that it's basically saying you don't trust him after that point and if it does not happen within that timeframe you should not have any of those dreams at all. In my own life I have seen that when I put time limits on God I am not trusting his timing and start to worry and get angry when he does not meet my expectations. In times when I say "Lord this is what I desire in my life I trust your timing on this and know your timing is way better than mine could ever be" I instantly stop worrying about my timeframe and have peace knowing God has the best timing for everything and may have something even better planned for me. There have been some things in my life that have sure not gone the way I planned them. I'm sure we have all experienced those moments. We had this vision in our minds how something would go and in an instant something occurred and our dreams were crushed. These are the moments, when I am at a point where nothing seems to be going how I want it to, that I realize my plans only look at the present and near future, but God's plans look at eternity. My plans only look at myself and His plans look at everyone on the planet. Sometimes I see in these moments I was being selfish in my plans or that my plans would have been destructive to another person. God does not simply "ruin" our plans because he is aggressive and mean. By no means is that God. God has plans to help us become more like him every step of the way. Sometimes things do not go our way and that moment is for us to realize "hey you need to trust God more." Through my time as a Christian, especially the last 5 years, I have seen that trust is something we always have to be focused on. I thought once after a long season where I really had to trust God "oh I got through that I do not have to worry about trusting Him as much now I am a pro." Looking back that was one of the dumbest things I could ever think and I launched right in to another season where I really needed to lean on trusting God, but did not realize it until I went through some unnecessary pain due to distrust. No matter if you're in an amazing season of joy or a pit of sorrow, you have to trust God. You never graduate from trusting God. No matter the situation, you have to put trust in Him that he's got you in his hands. So no matter where you are on your walk with Christ, I encourage you to let go of your timeframes and just trust. Trust God has your life in his hands. Trust that he has better plans than you could ever imagine and rest in the peace he's got it.

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One of my biggest encouragements that I have received about learning to trust is to write down all of my dreams. So I have a journal that I just write down dreams I have for my life. Then, instead of making timeframes for these dreams or putting limits on God, I just pray over the dreams letting God have them and use the however he chooses. Sometimes I can look back and see how God changed my heart to where a dream is not ever slightly a desire of mine anymore or I see how God took that dream and made it even better than I could have ever imagined. This is such a great rhythm for me because now I can see how God is working in my life within each dream of mine and I see his greatness in that. This exercise is also a great reminder for me in a time when I have to decide whether I should trust God I look back and see what happens when I trust God with my dreams.