what pleases the Lord.

May 17, 2010

I’m impatient. 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked to the Lord and said, “How long?”  “Why must I wait?” and “What am I waiting for?”  But all along the way, I’ve asked him to guard my heart, and he has, faithfully.  It’s so easy to become discontent, to feel like my lonliness or emptiness can only find relief in tangible things, relationships I can see and feel more obviously, and preferably instantaneously.

But the truth is, the Lord desires to fill that role for me.  HE wants to hold my hand, HE wants to listen to me as I spill my heart out, and comfort me when I need it.  No one does it like He can.  And I need to let Him.  That’s a continuous process.  Sometimes I have to confront it on a daily basis to make it true.  But I know, in the long run, it will be worthwhile.

And now, I’ve realized that in the meantime, I should be finding out what pleases the Lord, and desiring and striving for that most of all.  So I came back to an all-too-familiar passage, appreciating more fully its meaning this time around:

“but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.”  1 Peter 3:4

A gentle, quiet spirit is one that seems hard to come by as of late.  But it is precious in my God’s sight!  So it must be worth hoping and working and praying for.  This is what pleases the Lord, and I will do my best to grasp it, relying fully on His grace to carry me through the process of refinement.