Why It's Wise to Wait on The Lord

First, it is wise to wait because God gives clear direction only when we are willing to wait. Remember, we don’t operate like the world operates. Instant gratification of need defines society. But we, as believers, live differently. We don’t take our cues from the world. We take them from God. He will give us clear direction, whether it is guidance for making a move or changing a career or choosing a mate. However, much to the distress of many, He seldom does it quickly. We must wait until He is ready to give direction.

God says, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye” (Ps. 32:8). We must wait until He is ready to give counsel to us. I know it’s hard. No one ever said it would be easy. However, it is absolutely worth it.

Second, it is wise to wait because God uses that waiting time to get us in step with His timing. Being in step with the Father’s timing gives us a sense of peace. However, when we run ahead of Him, we will constantly be trying to figure out how to make our decisions work. Instead of peace, we will feel the chaos of our choices.

Third, it is always wise to wait because God uses the time of waiting to prepare us for the answer. As earthly parents, we don’t give our children everything they ask for. Sometimes we know that the timing isn’t right. How much more our heavenly Father knows this for His children. He waits until we are able to handle the blessing with grace and trust.

Fourth, it is always wise to wait because waiting strengthens our faith. We might want to say, “Okay, God. I’ve learned as much faith as I care to. You can act now.” But when we realize that God is more interested in our character than in our comfort, waiting is a lot more palatable.

Fifth, it is always wise to wait because God gets our attention and sifts our motives. While waiting and praying for the promotion at work, we have time to think through our motives. Why do we really want that promotion? Do we want it to get more money or so others will think we are powerful? Could it be we want the promotion so we have a greater platform to serve the Lord? If we allow God to sift through our motives, the truth will surface—good or bad. It is amazing what we learn about ourselves through this waiting period.

So it is wise to wait because:

1. He gives clear direction.

2. He gets us in step with Himself.

3. He prepares us for what He has in store for us.

4. He strengthens our faith.

5. He gets our attention and sifts our motives.

Waiting is one of the more difficult things in the Christian life. However, it is never wasted time. God teaches us His path, changes our circumstances, keeps us in step with Himself, prepares us for His answers, and uses times of waiting to sift our motives and strengthen our faith.

The question comes: With all the advantages of waiting, why do we rush ahead as if we don’t have a trustworthy Father? We need to hit the pause button in our lives and take our lives out of the fast forward mode. God will amaze us with what He is doing while we wait on Him and watch Him work. 

~Charles Spurgeon

Powerful Song and Animation

Fishing With Trish...

Question: How do you deal with rejection? For example, when someone throws your gospel tract in the trash or doesn't want to hear the Gospel?

Answer: It used to really bother me when someone threw my tract in the trash or when they got visible upset at the gospel. Well, okay, honestly sometimes it still does bother me - but the next time you get rejected for the Gospel's sake or someone takes your tract and throws it in the trash or you're yelled at, just move on to the next person.

Think about a honey bee. It doesn’t sting the flower when it doesn't have pollen, it just moves on to the next flower to see if it can find pollen there. So when you have a "bad" witnessing encounter take courage friend and don’t get upset and “sting” the individual. Just move on to the next person.

Remember not to take it personal. It's the message they are rejecting, not you. Perhaps the Gospel has struck a cord in them. You just never know, do you? There's a saying, "the dog that barks the loudest is the one that most likely got hit".

I'm comforted by Jesus' words towards the Christian: “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." (Matt 5: 11-12). And 1 Peter 4:14, says, "If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you."

Be encouraged! There's no such thing as a bad witnessing encounter. Every time we share our faith it is a winning situation! We can never lose when we share the Gospel. Either the individual will get saved, or a seed will be planted, or their heart will be hardened (and God is glorified even in that). And if they throw the tract on the ground, another could come by and pick it up. I've watched this happen many times.

Don't ever give up sharing the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is through the foolishness of the preaching of the Gospel that people will be saved. I pray that God will empower you to preach the Gospel in 2014 more than you ever have before.

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." Romans 1:16

Fishing With Trish...

A Little Note of 

"Hey Trish, wanted to tell you how grateful I am that I missed my 2nd flight on my trip to Knoxville. I got on the next flight and got to witness to a guy named Jeremiah. He seemed to have a surface knowledge of God and the Bible, knew the right answers sorta, said he thanked God for everything, but was very casual about his beliefs. He said his dad had just died and he was on his way to the funeral. What a perfect opportunity to witness! I gave him the gospel, encouraged him to repent and place his faith in Christ, and said that I hope if we ever meet again that we can testify to God's goodness and we would love Him more than we do now. I wrote down the websites for Wretched Radio, RedGrace Media, and Heritage Grace. Praying he looks at those sites and the Lord uses them to grow him" ~Amanda

The amount of women I have seen evangelizing has become encouragingly greater.  I have met many sweet and dear women who are passionate for God’s glory in evangelizing the lost. These faces and voices, with their testimonies and stories have burdened me to further encourage women everywhere to share their faith since God does desire to use women in evangelism. 

And I’m so thankful that He desires to use us in this way. What a tremendous honor it is to serve Him in any way at all, and that He would want to make women "fishers of men" too. :-)

Fishing With Trish...

Got Stranger-itis? There's a cure for that.

I have always been a very outgoing person, and talking to strangers has usually been easy for me. A few of my friends, however, were shy growing up, and talking to strangers was painful for them. They had stranger-itis. That’s why it came as such a shock to their family and friends when they got saved and started sharing the Gospel. One friend in particular recalls after becoming a Christian many years ago, her young daughter asking her husband, “what happened to mom?” because there was such a drastic change in her.  She went from totally avoiding strangers, to handing out tracts, and to this day is what my husband calls one of my “partners in crime” as she goes out with me regularly and boldly shares her faith. That’s the power of the Gospel and the desire it puts in us. We go from being dead and fearful, to being alive and bold in Christ, which compels us to share with others. I’ve been asked many times, “Why did you start sharing the Gospel?” to which I answer, “I don’t know. I just got saved.”

I’m not totally immune to stranger-itis though. Once I was on a flight from San Diego to Dallas/Ft. Worth seated in the very back of the plane of a full flight. After 2 1/2 hours, we landed and when the pilot turned off the seatbelt sign I was quick to unbuckle and stand up to stretch my legs. I was glad to be home. Several others got up as well. For five minutes we stood in silence as we waited for the line to move, which took unusually long. I looked in my purse to dig out tracts to hand out, but was struck with stranger-itis and quickly closed it. I repeated the same pattern two more times. One guy looked at me strange as if he saw the struggle going on in my mind. Then I was reminded of Judgment Day and thought about everyone in line giving an account to God. It immediately moved me to action. I grabbed my money tracts and began to pass them out, saying "Did you get one?" and to the next person, "Did you get one?", and to the gentleman that helped me with my what probably felt like a 100 pound bag (it was packed with tracts and books), "Here, thanks a million for helping me!" He smiled. They all did.

After over a decade of sharing my faith, I’m still nervous but I let my compassion for the lost swallow my fears. And I remind myself of what the Proverbs say, “The fear of man brings a snare, but he who trusts in the Lord will be exalted” (Prov. 29:25). If I meditate long enough on Hell it moves me to action. It moves me to press pass my fears and share my faith. But if that's not enough to cure your stranger-itis, then be sure to listen to my friend Ray Comfort's message called "Freedom From the Fear of Man": http://www.wayofthemaster.com/audiolessons.shtml, and then get fishing!

Fishing With Trish...

Traveling This Christmas Season? 

Don't Waste Your Plane Ride

I had just finished speaking at a ladies’ event in Genoa, OH and was in the airport in Detroit, Michigan with my friend Kristen, ready to board a plane for home. We had “tracted” the people sitting around us when I suddenly thought of a bigger challenge.  “Let’s give tracts to everyone on the plane until we reach our seats.” I said. That may not seem like a big deal on the surface, but we had our roll on luggage plus our handbags, and handing out tracts is best done with two hands.

“Okay, sounds good. You get the right side and I’ll get the left, although, I’m not sure how we're going to do this one-handed”, she laughed.

I wasn’t sure either. We positioned ourselves at the very end of the line that was waiting to board, excited to see what would happen.

As we began to board the plane, I was ahead of Kristen and started giving everyone seated on the right side a tract. People were slowly moving to their seats, which made it much easier to hand the tracts out than expected. I guess everyone could tell that we were traveling together because Kristen noticed the people on the left actually waiting for her to get to them so that they could receive what I was handing to the people on the right. Only one man politely refused a tract, while all the others gladly took one. I was amazed at just how easy it had been. The biggest problem wasn’t that I was one-handed, but rather that the tracts I picked to hand out were brand new and were trying to stick together, so some people received two tracts, which come to think of it, isn’t a big problem at all, is it?

Fishing With Trish...

Don't Waste Your Cabin Fever

Last Christmas season was very cold. We experienced lots of ice here in Texas and had nearly one week where we couldn’t leave the house because the ice was so thick. For those of you living in the very cold states like New York and Minnesota I know what you are thinking, “If only she knew what it's really like. She is a lightweight!” But bear with me; I woke up one day to find a rather large leak in the ceiling of my office from the ice melting off the roof, that ruined the carpet and an entire wall. And because I work from home, it was certainly an eyesore. Not only that, but the heaviness of the ice had caused my car windshield to crack. During all of this I began receiving reports from some of our church members that several people had slipped on the ice, one of them requiring an ambulance. All of this happened while we were stuck in the house not able to go anywhere. I was beginning to feel cabin fever setting in.

The cabin fever was getting so bad that I was even beginning to have the urge to go running, and I’m not even a runner. I was so tired of being in the house that even running was starting to sound appealing.

Finally, the ice started to melt and one afternoon I heard sirens outside. The wailing got louder and louder, which instantly worried me. My first thought was that someone else had fallen on the ice and had called for an ambulance. As I peered out my office window, my eyes scanned the street to see where it was coming from. Sure enough an ambulance and fire truck were slowly creeping up my street. “Lord, please have mercy on whoever is in trouble.” But as they drove closer I heard honking, and saw Santa on top of the engine yelling “Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!” "Is this some sort of joke?", I thought. Then it dawned on me that it must be some sort of tradition within the city that I was unaware of since we had just moved there. Seeing that I had cabin fever and a strong desire to run, I looked over at my bookshelves, saw a stack of Ray Comfort’s 180 Movie DVDs, tucked them under my arm, grabbed my shoes and darted out of the house to catch the fire engine. But they were moving too fast for my slow feet. So I began to shout to each neighbor that was outside saying, “Merry Christmas and happy New Year…here’s a gift for you!” The neighbors were so grateful and shocked. They must have thought that I worked for the Fire Department and had been hired to run behind them and give everyone gifts on their behalf as I could hear several neighbors yelling “Hello!” back to me and, “Wow! How much do they pay you to do that?!” Only eternity will show the rewards.