If God bowed to my will…

If God always bowed to my will…

if He answered in the exact way I demanded,

in the timing I insisted upon,

according to the limited vision I cling to,

how could He ever be God at all?

How could He ever surprise me with glory,

or overwhelm me with wonders

that I never even knew to ask for?

If He only did what I thought was best,

my life would be painfully small,

hemmed in by my impatience,

confined to the narrow corridors of my understanding.

But He is not bound by my begging,

and He is not shackled by my short-sighted prayers.

He is the God who breaks open the impossible,

the God who writes stories beyond the ink of my imagination, the God who answers prayers I didn’t even have the courage to whisper.

Sometimes I resent His silence.

Sometimes I mistake His waiting for absence.

Sometimes I cry out, “Why not now, Lord?”

And yet, in the stillness, I feel His hand restraining me, not because He is cruel,

but because He is weaving something greater,

something so far beyond my vision

that if He gave it to me too soon,

I would ruin it with my own unprepared hands.

I don’t just need a God who echoes my wants.

I need a God who exceeds them.

A God who dismantles my plans

only to rebuild something eternal.

A God who loves me too much

to surrender me to the smallness of my own desires.

So I bow, broken but believing.

I release my grip on how I thought it should be.

And I confess with trembling lips:

Lord, if You never did another thing the way I expected, You would still be faithful.

And if You delay until my faith feels stretched thin, You are still good.

For You are the God who does exceedingly, abundantly above all that I could ever ask,

all that I could ever dream,

all that I could even dare to imagine.

And maybe, Your delays are not denials,

but doorways into a glory

that will one day make me fall to my knees,

astonished at how little I asked for,

and how much You gave.