I get tired of not having access to my summer clothes, my books or my kitchen appliances. I'm noticing a fair amount of lower back pain and suspect it may be due in part to some months now of not sleeping in my own bed with its nice firm mattress. I realise that I get tired more easily than normal and sometimes I fall asleep when I get home from church on a Sunday afternoon. (I'm one of those people who can normally never sleep during the daytime.) I find myself feeling annoyed by things that would normally only be a minor cause of frustration, and discouraged by things that aren't really such a big deal.
This morning, for example, I fought for almost three hours with erratic internet. As can often be the case here in wet or windy weather, the wifi kept cutting off every two or three minutes, completely sabotaging all the plans I had made for the early morning time slot - including an online connection for someone with a special birthday and an online payment that I needed to make. After many dozens of attempts to re-connect, only to be cut off again a few minutes later, I found myself dissolving into tears. That's not normal! No one breaks down sobbing over internet problems! And so I'm aware that, although I'm doing well on the whole, there's definitely a level of stress that comes with living with constant uncertainty about the future, not to mention the frustrating and tiring process of following up on every new possibility of a place to live.
And so I'm needing to be even more intentional than usual about spending time in God's presence and drawing on His peace amidst challenging circumstances. As a number of old songs expressed it: we may not know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future.
I was reminded this morning of one of the Bible accounts of a seemingly delayed answer to prayer. In the Old Testament book of Daniel, we see Daniel praying and fasting on behalf of the people of Israel. In chapter 9, God had answered Daniel's prayer before he had even finished praying, but in chapter 10, a few weeks go by and there seems to be no answer at all to his prayer.
Finally, an angel appears to him one day while he is praying on the riverbank. The angel tells him (Daniel 10: 12 - 13) that on the very first day Daniel began to pray, God heard his prayer and began to answer it. But there was some enemy opposition to that answer and for three weeks the angel had been fighting against a spiritual entity called the Prince of Persia who was seeking to delay the answer to Daniel's prayer.
It can be easy for believers to think that God isn't listening or that He doesn't care, when in fact the delay may be due to a battle in the spiritual realm. This demon in Daniel 10 was not able to stop the answer to Daniel's prayer (at least, not as long as Daniel continued to pray) but it seems that he was able to delay it.
It might not be accurate for me to assume that there's a element of spiritual warfare around my failure to find a new home; after all, there are thousands of people all over the country, believers and non believers alike, who are in the same position as I am at the moment. It seems hardly a week goes by without my hearing of yet another person or family who is looking for a place to live.
However, when there's a preponderance of such delays going on (my Mum is Scotland is also having to battle with a number of situations that are still unresolved) it would certainly seem that the enemy has a hand in it.
Our response needs to be twofold. Whatever we do, we mustn't stop praying, thinking that God's not doing anything. We need to continue in prayer until the delaying spirit has been overcome.
And secondly, we need to protect ourselves from discouragement and fatigue... and we do this primarily by spending time in God's presence and declaring our trust in Him.
Thank you to those of you who have been standing with me and my family in prayer during this challenging season. Thank you for trusting with us for a breakthrough.
