Have you ever attended a conference, a workshop, or even just listened to a speaker as they tell you about a hard time in their life?
They explain the situation, the darkness, the tragedy that they walked through. Then as they keep speaking, they also explain how the story resolved. They tell you of how they got hope, how the ending either came about in a beautiful way or was redemptive, perhaps in spite of not being what they were hoping for. What did you come away with? Hope? A renewed sense of energy to keep pressing ahead?
We love hearing people speak to us about the situations that have already resolved. We love hearing what they’ve walked through, accomplished, learned, and who they’ve become on the other side of their suffering. It gives us hope. It gives us this renewed sense that whatever it is that we’re going through, there might be an end, a redemption. So it gives us the joy and even motivation to keep moving forward. And we need these reminders.
But being the middle is SO very hard.
I’ve been thinking about this a little more recently. If we look at the stories we’ve been given in scripture, each one is written, shared with us after the fact. We have the assurance that their ending is complete. Their situations are resolved. If we think about it, it’s safe.
But what I think we also need, is to see and hear from some of those who are currently walking through the same struggles and hardships we are. Those who are still in the middle, that the ending isn’t yet secured. We need to see that faith being lived out too. Because being in the middle, being in the space where the redemption hasn’t happened yet is so very hard. It’s scary, it feels uncertain, and we can’t actually see the end yet. Sometimes we just need the reminder that we’re not alone. Sometimes we need to be able to recognize that as much as we want out, as much as we want to be on that other side of this story, it’s still something we have to walk through.
Take Abraham and Sarah for example. God came to Abraham and told him that he would have a son, that he would have descendants. For twenty-five years Abraham and Sarah waited. Sometimes patiently, sometimes not so patiently. But can you imagine having to wait twenty-five years for a promise to be fulfilled? Can you imagine waiting approximately 9,125 days for something to happen?
What we don’t always recognize when we look at hope is that we still have to keep going. When we’ve been given this answer, when God is doing something or telling us He’s bringing something about, we still have to be in the middle, to continue to walk it out in the midst of uncertainty because the ending hasn’t happened yet.
And this is just as true for singles as it is for marrieds, or as it is for parents. Each one of us has a season of being in the middle, of being told something’s coming, of knowing God is doing a work, and yet we don’t yet see it with our own eyes.
But we have to go on living in the middle of those seasons. We still have to live life. We still have to be faithful. For Abraham, we do get to so see some other small parts of his story along the way. But not a full twenty-five years of daily waiting. For others like Joseph and Moses too, each had a pretty long waiting period before the redemption or culmination of their purpose was brought about. But we don’t get to see the full extent of their middle season. What we don’t have written, what we can’t see are the simple, ordinary ways, how day after day they had to go on living. We don’t get to see the ways in which they had to continue on during the middle.
Being in the middle is hard. So as someone who is currently in a middle season, who’s waiting to see God’s redemption, provision, and waiting to see the end…. I want you to know that you’re not alone in your middle season. So let me share with you four things that God has been telling me during my own middle season:
1. God is a God of action
While we’re in the middle season, it’s so hard to understand what God is doing. It’s easy to lose focus, it’s easy to doubt. It’s easy to lose hope. We look around and can’t see how God is moving with our physical (or sometimes even spiritual) eyes and we begin to despair. But it’s during this season that we have to remember, as Isaiah points out, there is no other God who acts on behalf of His children. “From ancient times no one has heard, no one has listened to, no eye has seen any God except you who acts on behalf of the one who waits for him.” (Isaiah 64:4) While you are in this season, be reminded that even if it doesn’t seem like God is moving in this moment, though you may not be able to see it, God’s character is that He is a God who acts on behalf of those that love and wait for Him.
2. Ask, but then surrender
I really struggle with asking. I don’t like to be one who needs help. I like to be the one who helps others. But in doing this, I’ve come to realize that I’m really bad at asking and knowing when to ask for things, whether it’s something I need or something I realize I just want. During this season of my middle I’ve been slowly reading through Paul E. Miller’s book, “A Praying Life.” One of the biggest lessons I’m walking through right now is being challenged to have the boldness, courage, and hope to ask. Miller comments that, so often we as Christ followers are quick to try and surrender to God’s will without first telling God what is honestly on our heart. We see this modeled well in Christ’s own prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. He asks, “If you are willing, take this cup away from me—nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” (Luke 22:42) He made the ask. He knew what was coming, and yet both poured out his heart to the Father, and still surrendered. But he wasn’t afraid to ask.
Other passages also encourage us to pray, to ask. Consider the parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18 where it explains that the reason Jesus was telling his disciples this was so that they would know to keep asking, to keep praying “and not give up.” (vs. 1) We also have Matthew 7 where Jesus instructs, “Ask and it will be given… For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” (vs. 7-8a) During your season of middle, make your ask. Take your request to the Father.
3. Hope mixed with reality
Another concept I’m having to learn and wrestle through is the tension between hope and reality. If we focus too much toward the side of hope, the moment we glimpse reality we begin to despair. If we keep our focus solely on our present reality, we don’t see the potential and may decide to stay where we are, unmoved. We don’t ask for the shift. We don’t have the boldness to pray for the change. Again, from “A Praying Life,” Miller brings up the situation with Abraham and Sarah. God had promised that a child would come. Abraham literally was given the promise, but it had been so many years since God had first told him. Yet as he continued to walk in the middle season, Romans 4 states, “He believed, hoping against hope… He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body to be already dead (since he was about a hundred years old) and also the deadness of Sarah’s womb.”
Miller points out, “Abraham stakes his life on the hope…but he never takes his eye off the reality.” And so it needs to be with us too. Hope and reality have to walk hand-in-hand. God doesn’t deal only in hope. He doesn’t only leave us in our current reality, but he also doesn’t neglect the reality of the circumstance. He doesn’t sweep it off to the side. He addresses the weight, the brokenness of our present situations. God enters in, is present with us, and in doing so, then also brings hope. Which brings me to my next point.
4. God can do it
Some of us need to be reminded right now that God is fully capable. Words I didn’t know I needed to hear during this time was, “Elise, God is fully able.” But I did, and so do you. In your current middle, you need to be reminded, that God can do it. And you need to remind yourself, feeding your faith that God is able. If we look at the next couple verses in Romans 4 we see it written, “He (Abraham) did not waver in unbelief at God’s promise but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, because he was fully convinced that what God had promised, he was also able to do.” (vs. 20-21, emphasis mine) Brother or sister, if I could look into your eyes right now, I would speak these words to your heart. God can do it. He is fully capable.
Abraham and Sarah didn’t always spend their middle season well. And honestly, we won’t either. We’ll fail at various points. But part of being in the middle is learning how to live life in this season. It’s a matter of wrestling through the challenges, learning how to grapple and grab hold of God. Brother, sister, live in the middle well.
—
Questions for further consideration:
1. Where does God currently have you in a “middle” season?
2. During your “middle” season, what is something God has laid on your heart to pray for? (Consider the Persistent widow of Luke 19).
3. How is your unbelief? Do you need to remind yourself, or have a friend help actively remind you that God is fully capable?