Grace in the Gap | A WLI Share Your Story Blog

I sat on a plane from Heathrow to Detroit, staring out the window into the abyss. The inky night sky seemed a perfect metaphor for my future: murky and unknowable. I had just spent two years in London building a life that a week before had come crashing down.

For the previous two years I had been working for a mission organization in England, building relationships and a life overseas. It had been my intention for this trip to the States to be a short one, a necessity to renew my VISA. But a week before leaving, every opportunity that I had to return to London fell through, one by one. Many things that I had labored in prayer over for years disintegrated before my very eyes. There was a finality to it that was defining; I knew it was over.

In desperate sorrow I tried to find a quick alternative. I had plenty of connections around the world, people that I could shoot a text to and go stay with, organizations that needed volunteers or missionaries that I could go work for. But whenever my hand went to grab my phone to send an email or make a call, something stopped me. When I say I felt a finality, that feeling was very real, and I knew it was from the Lord. This was one of the clearest times in my life that God has given me a directive: He was telling me to wait.

So, I flew to Detroit and moved into my parent’s basement: 28, single, no job and no prospects. I took a nanny job just to make some cash while I waited. I worried that the parents of the child I nannied would think I was emotionally unstable because every day, I would spontaneously burst out in tears at their house—the grief of loss and the unknown almost too much to bear.

At best, waiting can seem like a waste. At worst, it’s incredibly painful. Why does God so often tell us to wait? As one of my favorite John Piper quotes goes, “God doesn’t always make His will clear because He values our being transformed more than our being informed.”

Some of the greatest transformations in my life have come through periods of waiting. God can work great things in the gap between one thing and the next. But being in the gap can be extremely uncomfortable. So how does God call us to live while in the gap?

Waiting Breaks Our Illusion of Control

We are creatures that naturally crave safety and security. We want to know because it makes us feel as though we have control over the circumstances of our lives. But the Bible clearly tells us that we do not: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (Proverbs 16:33). Not only do we not have ultimate control over our circumstances, but if we truly understood who God was, we would not want it. Timothy Keller writes, “If we knew what God knows, we would ask exactly for what He gives.” Having our lives in the hands of a God who is both all-powerful and all-loving should be our greatest comfort.

Waiting Produces Reliance on God

In times of uncertainty we should be motivated to lean on God. He invites us to do so; He loves to help us (1 Chronicles 16:9), listen to us (Psalm 55:16-17), and comfort us (Corinthians 1:3-4). Anything that God uses to bring us closer to Him is a blessing, even if it comes in the form of suffering. God wants us. He does not desire a sacrifice or a legalistic adherence to rules, but a contrite spirit that runs to Him for safety (Psalm 51:16-17). When we lean on God to be our strength, we are declaring His glory and His worth to the world.

Trust Begets Praise

The Westminster Shorter Catechism says, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” God is zealous for His own glory (Isaiah 48:9-11). He created us, chose us, set us apart, rescues us, spares us, is faithful to us, and restores us all for His own glory and for the sake of His name (Isaiah 43:6-7; 49:3; Ephesians 1:4-6; Psalm 106:7-8; Exodus 14:4; Ezekiel 20:14; 36:22 -23; 2 Samuel 7:23; 1 Samuel 12:20-22; 2 Kings 19:34). When we praise Him in the gap, we declare Him as our ultimate worth and prize, more precious than our own comfort or peace of mind. When we trust Him, we are saying He is trustworthy and more able to run our lives than ourselves.

Grace in the Gap

So often we cry out for God to end our season of waiting; we suffer in the unknown and ask to be delivered from it. But in the times when God says, “No,” or “Not yet,” He will supply us with grace to continue living in the gap. Paul asked three times to be delivered from a thorn in his flesh, but God’s grace came not as a relief from affliction but in Christ’s sustaining power: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). And so, in the seasons of waiting, God provides us with many smaller graces within a larger grace deferred or denied.

Nine months after returning from London with no plan for my future, I was offered a part-time job at Woodside. This job led to a residency with the Leadership Institute, which led to a full-time job at the Royal Oak Campus, which last year transitioned to a job with the Institute. This path has not always been easy. It was littered with gaps, painful transitions, deaths of dreams, births of new ones, and trusting God for my future.

Now as I work for the Leadership Institute, I see plenty of people in transitions in their lives: interns and residents joining our program to discern if God is calling them into vocational ministry, growing in their character and competencies as God prepares them for what’s next. In this season of growth, it can feel like a waiting period. The prayer of my heart for all our interns and residents is that while they journey on a path of development and discernment with the Institute, their souls would find the peace that only comes from a confidence in the loving care of our Heavenly Father. As Jim Elliot says, “Wherever you are, be all there.” There is grace for us in the gap!