“When I seem to be nowhere in sight, when there are no answers to your heart questions, when you feel that it is far past the time when I should have moved on your behalf, stay the course! Make sure that your demands of Me to fulfill My promises do not deny My Sovereignty. Search your heart for the things that I am after to make you holy. Repent of what I am showing you. Allow patience to have its work in you. Learn to make waiting on Me your highest reward. Think of it! You are learning to look to Me for everything. Soon I will really be your God.”

Psalm 37:4 NIV 

Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Romans 2:4 NIV 

Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?

2 Cor. 1:8-10 NIV

8) We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.

9) Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.

10) He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us…

How easily we forget what trials are meant to accomplish when we are coming to the end of ourselves. When it gets really uncomfortable, we squirm, reel with discomfort, and demand that God get on with His promises to us as our evil hearts are exposed. Often, we even curse His ways.

God is revealing our real heart motives. The refiner’s fire of His love is intensifying for those on their way to a bridal heart. He wants us to know when we will give up; and if we do, to remember how desperately we need Him. When will a break from our schooling be more important than becoming like Jesus in our hearts? When will we sell out for a bowl of pottage? When will we demand that God move on our behalf and deny His Sovereignty? How close are we to demanding our ways over His ways? When will we rest in His love and rejoice in His Lordship once again?

Forgive me, Lord,

Jim Corbett