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<\/p>\n\u201c\u00a0When we make plans, there is no guarantee they will happen, but if we hope to God, we can trust that whatever the outcome may be will be in his favor, which is always the best for us. This can be difficult especially in our American culture and with technology where we usually don\u2019t have to wait very long. This then affects us when it is time to wait, or our plans are delayed. In the moment we might become anxious and even angry that things aren\u2019t going our way, but as time passes and we look back, we see that we have grown and become stronger through our struggle of waiting. This can prepare us later on in life for even greater struggles.<\/p>\n
We read countless stories in scripture of those who display patience.\u00a0 Noah waited forty days and forty nights on the ark with his family and the animals until the rains stopped. His patience and reliance on God was ultimately rewarded when the waters of the flood receded and the promise of a bountiful future was heralded by the olive branch. Sure enough, his descendants spread throughout the world and the work of God continued. Abraham and his wife Sarah who waited 25 \u00a0years and years to conceive. That is almost three decades! I imagine they struggled with much doubt before their promise was fulfilled. Moses waited in the wilderness for forty years until they finally reached the promised land. Job waited through suffering and was then rewarded abundantly. The list goes on. What is important is through their faith and patience, the waiting was worth it. I\u2019m not wishing that all of our plans fall through or that we suffer, but when it happens, I hope that we learn how to struggle through them.<\/p>\n
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So the question is, do good things come to those who wait? A friend recently said to me, \u201cGod\u2019s timing is so much wiser than ours!\u201d We don\u2019t know if the waiting will be worth it, but God knows what is best for us. While we wait though, we can look at the examples of those who came before us, and not only those we read about in the Bible, but our ancestors who suffered to give us the life we have today. We can also learn from other cultures, like our Guatemalan brothers and sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n
– Missions update from Guatemala<\/p>\n
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– ***Now and then we include a particularly thought provoking or inspiring excerpt not from one of our regular \u2018Elders\u2019***<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201c\u00a0When we make plans, there is no guarantee they will happen, but if we hope to God, we can trust that whatever the outcome may be will be in his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modern-orthodox-elders","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8806"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8808,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8806\/revisions\/8808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}