We aren’t required to do handstands, back flips, or any other such nonsense to hear from God, yet, it is only natural for us to try and hurry along the answers to our prayers. One of the most difficult things that I have ever been required to do is WAIT. It isn’t in my nature to wait. I’m the one who rarely asks for help, and it is even more challenging for me to step aside while someone else picks up the baton, if you will, and completes a task that was my vision. It tends to lose some of its appeal if I’m no longer involved, after all, no one will ever be able to follow through the way that I can follow through. If a project is taken away from me, it ceases to become my project.

I started the Lattereign, in 1995, because I was searching for where I could fit in to ministry. I’m not saying that I was super talented or even slightly professional in writing. All I had when I started this ministry, was a desire to fill a need to share what the Lord gave to me to maybe encourage someone else.

I made glaring errors in the first few years of writing as I developed both the equipment that I used, and learned to know who I was wanting to reach, so I decided to just forget professionalism and all of the other traps that might hinder the message from being portrayed, and I started focusing on praying until the Lord spoke to me about what to write. I still continued learning what it would take to be a good writer.

I would like to say that lightening bolts of glorious inspiration just etched words on the pages every time that I touched the keyboard; but then, I would have to repent for exaggerating the truth which involved many blank pages and late nights fretting over what I wanted to write instead of what the Lord wanted me to share. It took a long time to finally allow the Lord to guide me in what he wanted to say. Not my will, Lord, but thy will be done.

I wanted to be used in a different ministry altogether, at first, but the Lord said no. I was devastated at the time and I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t “good enough.” I know now that if the Lord hadn’t said no, the Lattereign would have never been started. As I think back on it, not being allowed to be used in one area, yet, could have made me bitter enough to walk away from one of the deepest desires of my life: to be a writer.

Even today, after 24 years officially being labeled a writer, I still have times when I’m reminded if I hadn’t waited on the Lord, he wouldn’t have led me in the path that I’ve been walking. The Lord may say, no, it’s not time, wait, but that doesn’t mean that later after you have been found faithful, and you continue growing in the Lord, and learning to submit to your leadership, and to be sensitive to the spirit of the Lord, when serving  becomes more important than recognition, and doing your best, takes precedence over a pat on the back,  that the Lord will find that you have reached a place where you can be used.

It’s not about me, Lord. It’s about entering into worship. I could have many awards on the national scale in my professional writing life, but what have I gained if it’s all about me, me, me, and I lose my passion and burden to share the Lord’s message. If the opportunities come, then let them come, but if they don’t; then, I will be humbled if one person has been encouraged by something that I have written. It will be worth it all.

In this week’s Lattereign, we find that when you reach out to the Lord and make your petitions a matter of prayer and intercession, you will find joy.

 They that sow in tears shall reap in joy