I think I used to see God working in my life very linearly. I kind of saw God as someone who coached me along my journey, and if I screwed up too badly, he would replace me with someone better. Then one day, while reading Lewis’s Mere Christianity, I realized God is timeless. God was not just going through life linearly with me, God also saw my life from above the timeline. God had chosen to walk with me, even though he knew I would mess it all up at various points along the way.
I think I saw God as someone I had to keep going up the mountain to find. Then I realized God, seeing all of my timeline, had already chosen to come down the mountain to me. I saw God as angry, or at least someone willing to get angry quickly if you didn’t keep him happy. I didn’t realize God is accessible. God seeks, God finds, and God knocks. You don’t have to find God because the story is God finds you. You just have to open the door and let him in. It’s your turn.
I have a blog that I run with my best friend called I’m That Wife.
We blogged every week for three years and had 9,000 followers. I was tired. I was tired of watching girls posting sexy photos on Instagram blast the growth charts. I was tired of seeing posts like “napping hehe” get more hits than my actual think piece. I was tired of watching people on their public platform be nothing like the private people I knew in person. I started asking God why he wasn’t policing them better? Some of us were out here praying and fasting and others were feasting.
I didn’t want to judge, but things got pretty judge-y. My jealousy blurred my vision. I saw myself as someone who had gone up the mountain, and I become resentful when God didn’t say thank you. All I saw was myself and how hard I tried to get God to notice me.
God was holding out on me
Ultimately, this belief that God was holding out on me hindered everything I thought about who God was and who I was in relation to him. It also destroyed how I was able to see other people. I didn’t see people; I saw competition. And God was the guy at the top of the mountain watching to see which of us would play the part good enough to reach him first. What happens when we start to want something more than we want God is that God suddenly starts to feel distant. That thing we want gets closer and closer on our hearts, and God feels further and further away. But God didn’t move—we moved God.
I learned to say It’s Not Your Turn. I prayed I could genuinely clap for someone who had what I didn’t. I prayed I could trust God to judge his children so I wouldn’t have to. I decided who I was while it wasn’t my turn would determine who I could be when it was.
Adapted from It’s Not Your Turn by Heather Thompson Day. Copyright (c) 2021 by Heather Thompson Day. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
