Sarah Hodgkinson, founder of Positioned For Promise, shares her wisdom for those struggling with the waiting.
My life dramatically changed during a meeting with my first year Bethel School of Ministry pastor Libby in 2016. A member of our church had just died of a brain tumour and I was really struggling with some health issues. I shared what was happening and quickly quipped: “But I do know God is good.”
She lovingly looked at me and said: “Sarah, I don’t doubt that you believe God is good but I want you to know it is okay to feel sad about everything going on.” It was such a simple yet profound statement. During the next hour I sobbed uncontrollably as I vulnerably and honestly processed with God and her what I was feeling about my life at that moment. Areas of my heart that I didn’t even realize were sick were met with wave after wave of God’s love and compassion and I walked away from that meeting feeling so loved and known and more in love with God.
She said: “Sarah, I don’t doubt that you believe God is good but I want you to know it is okay to feel sad about everything going on.”
For the past few years God has been taking me on a journey of further heart wholeness and actively partnering with him in preparing for things he has promised me. Out of this process, I felt the Lord invite me to create a course called Positioned For Promise to help others on their journeys. It covers how to process your prophetic words and wholeheartedly pursue your promise.
A big part of this includes what I call “the inner journey” which focuses on how we prepare ourselves on the inside for receiving the promises. Proverbs 13:12 says: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.”
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I am intimately aware of how painful the waiting can be and how despondent and disappointed (heart sick) you can get when you still haven’t seen the fulfilment of a promise. God gave me some beautiful keys over the past few years on how to navigate that in-between space well and here are four of them to help you position yourself for your promise.
- Get really honest about the condition of your heart. How do you see God and yourself at present? Are you feeling disappointed, hopeless or confused? Share where you are at with God.
- Pain and disappointment will cause us to shut parts of ourselves off from God. He deeply longs to have our hearts completely so give God permission to access those areas of your heart that need his love, compassion and truth again. I know first hand how scary this can be but I also know how radically life changing it is to entrust your heart to God again.
- Ask God to reveal any lies that you have believed as a result of pain and disappointment. Remember he will never condemn or shame you in this. While there is so much more to this process you can start by repenting and renouncing the lie and then asking God: “What is a truth that You have for me in exchange for this lie?”
- Find testimonies of God’s goodness and promises fulfilled. Psalm 119:24 says: “Your testimonies are my delight and my counsellors” so by hearing testimonies of God’s faithfulness, they begin to council us about who God is and what his heart is for our circumstances. The word testimony means “do it again” so every time we read a testimony we are essentially prophesying “God do it again”.
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