Trust the Slow Work of God
Recently my 5, 8, and 10 year old kids have gotten into making time-lapse videos of themselves coloring a giant coloring page together at our wooden dining room table. They set up the video camera on a tripod, put their heads together around the page, and fill it in with their colored markers. They add music and video transitions and are so proud to show me their completed projects. It’s so fun and satisfying to watch a 20 minute process fly across the screen in 20 seconds.
Sometimes I wish I could push a button to speed up the processes in my life too. I wish I could jump from the blank page to the finished product, without the patience and time it takes to see the process all the way through.
Four years ago, it felt like most of our life was turned upside down as we followed God into a new career, starting a new business, changing church communities, and building new friendships. Many times the processes have felt frustratingly slow. Our church transition took place right before the pandemic happened, which made an already difficult process that much harder and longer. As a church girl through and through, going through a period of two years trying to find a church home in the middle of the pandemic, watching services online, and trying to get connected in such an unstable time felt painful and lonely. In the past year, God has lovingly led us to a beautiful church home and people who have enveloped us in friendship, but it didn’t happen overnight. The church community we are getting to experience today feels that much sweeter and deeper because of the patience and trust that God walked us through to bring us here.
As God leads me through this season of struggle, this is what He is teaching me about about slow growth:
1. Slow often produces fruit that fast never can.
Rushing and hurrying and doing things ourselves may produce quicker and more visible results, but often what is created is fragile and only an imitation of the real thing. The fruit God wants to produce in us is healthy and lasting. Real fruit is only born of the Spirit, and we have to let the Spirit do the work. Often deep fruitfulness comes after patience and planting and waiting. The slow work of God often produces the deepest roots and sweetest fruit.
2. Slow teaches us to trust the unseen work of God.
Walking out obedience even when it is difficult and we don’t yet see what the final result will be teaches us to trust what we cannot see. God is never not involved. He is never not working, never not sovereign, never not loving and good. Romans 8:28 says, “In all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” I am in awe when I look back and see how God has worked through the most challenging seasons of my life. I couldn’t see what He was doing at the time, but His sovereignty and goodness are clear at the other end of the timeline.
God led my husband and me to homeschool our kids over 5 years ago, and it was something I didn’t want to do and didn’t feel qualified to do at the time. Even so, we started finding homeschooling friends to give us advice and point us in the right direction to even know where to begin. Over time, and through a lot of trial and error, we began to find what worked and what didn’t work for our family. We began to find curriculum we loved and a homeschooling philosophy for our family that was life-giving for us. At the time that we began homeschooling, we had no plans to start our own business in the future. Two years later, God led us to start a business that required a lot of flexibility for our family schedule to be able to stay close and connected during long hours of work and building. Looking back, we could see God preparing us for the needs our family would have when He led us into homeschooling, and we were so grateful that He knew what we would need before we did.
The time God takes is intentional and kind, and He knows perfectly how to work for our good and for His glory. He sees what we cannot, and our job is to follow in obedience.
3. Slow teaches us surrender.
Because it is so counter to our human nature and to our cultural pressures, slow teaches us to surrender to God’s sovereignty and pace. It teaches us to trust that God’s way is the better way. Surrender is a beautiful churchy word, but it can be a painful one to live out. Surrender—lived out in moments and choices and relationships and careers and homes and churches—forces us to let go of the places deep inside of us that still believe we know best.
These past few years as I’ve walked in obedience through some difficult life changes, I’ve come back over and over to this phrase: “Trust the slow work of God.” I’m learning how differently He views time than I do. He is not interested in the most direct route. Even though He could do or create anything in an instant, He chooses to work through time and processes, through seasons and waiting, through silence and trusting. He often chooses to work deeply, working in us - both through time and over time. The deepest work that He does in us takes time, and God is in no hurry.
Stay patient in your waiting, in the slow work of your character and your strength. God is far more concerned with who we are at our core than what others can see. There’s no rushing the character He is developing in us, the likeness to Christ He is forming. Trust the slow, good work of God in you.
