By: Deanna Drogan

I have a habit of praying bold prayers to grow in different areas of my life and then sometimes forgetting that God is actually listening to me and willing to answer. However, more often than not, He does not just snap His fingers and give us the quality or growth we desire right away, but takes us through various seasons and situations to grown in that particular area.

One time I decided to boldly pray that the Lord would take away my debilitating fear of what others think of me. In that same day, actually within just a few hours, I found myself in a long line at a favorite Mediterranean restaurant. I stood there observing the various hummuses, oblivious to my surroundings and accidentally found myself standing way closer to the lady in front of me than I thought. As if that wasn’t uncomfortable enough, my shoe somehow got caught on hers and instead of reciprocating my awkward laughter and apologies as I lost my flip flop, she gave me a nasty look sided with a harsh comment. I stood there shoeless on one foot feeling the stares of all of the other Mediterranean restaurant-goers like laser beams. Instantly the heat rushed to my face and for the next several hours that scene would play over and over again in my head, until my sister snapped at me to simply “let it go.” I guess God wasn’t kidding when He said “He will call on me, and I will answer Him.” I don’t know how I was expecting Him to answer this prayer to get over my fear of man, but I thought that it might just be a little more graceful than that.

We are a people of instant gratification, meanwhile God is a God of the process, the God who takes us through different experiences. I don’t know about you, but when I think about growth, I instantly visualize a flower or some sort of plant. A flower does not instantly go from being a seed to a flower. It goes through a process, a process in which in the beginning it looks nowhere near the end goal, but after different steps like germination, sprouting, seeding, it eventually turns into something very beautiful. The same goes for a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. How sweet is it of our Heavenly Father to give us an image through nature of what the process of growth looks like?

Something I always try to be very cautious of when writing is putting God in a box. I have no doubt in my mind that God in His omnipotent power could remove someone’s anxiety from their life with one snap of His fingers, but I think that more times than not, He guides us through different experiences in order to overcome our greatest fears–almost like some sort of holy exposure therapy.

One of the craziest things about growing or overcoming something in your life is that a lot of times you don’t even really notice what God is doing until a random moment down the road when it hits you that you used to be one way and now you are another. How did I get here? It’s almost like that common sensation when you are driving to a destination and get there but cannot even seem to recall any of the route you just took. Somehow you end up there in one piece!

We have a God who means what He says. As I referenced before, Psalm 91:5 says, “He will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.” When we pray for things that are in accordance to God’s will, we can rest confidently that He will answer in a way that is always for His glory, and for our good. The most beautiful part of that is that we do not have to be the ones to figure out the journey that God will take us on to answer that prayer. While we can do all we can to help ourselves, ultimately the healing, the growth, the arrival at our destination is God’s responsibility, not ours.

I often have a hard time finding the balance of doing my part, and resting in the sovereign hand of God. But we know from His word in Matthew 11:30 that “His yoke is easy and His burden is light.” What does it look like to do our part? I just heard a sermon that gratefully impacted me from a pastor named John Onwuchekwa in which he said, “You are not in control. You’re a first responder, not a scriptwriter. A first responder comes on to the scene in some sort of chaos and they do not get to dictate the circumstances of their arrival. Their duty is to respond to the things that are there.”

Even though we rest in the sovereign hand of God, as His people, we still have a duty. If we desire peace, how can we expect to experience peace if we do not spend time with the source of peace? If we want to grow in our love for one another, how can we expect to do so by not spending time with love Himself? There are things we pray for that we cannot expect to receive a part from spending time with the source. We do our part the best we can and we allow God to bless our obedience in the strategic ways that only He can. We also rest in his mercy along the way in our imperfection.

I have flown on airplanes all my life, but it was not until a few years ago, I randomly found myself gripping the arm rest as soon as I heard the words “Boarding is now complete, the cabin doors are now closed. Flight attendants prepare for takeoff.” What my brain hears instead is, “Boarding is now complete. You are now trapped in this flying contraption for the next several hours with no escape.” I don’t really know exactly where this sudden sensation of feeling trapped came from, but I knew that I had to figure out how to get over this fear fast as my job requires a lot of travel. This led to much exhaustion.

A flight would be approaching and the night before, my brain would be on overdrive trying to figure out everything I needed to do in my power to prevent this fear from happening the next day. While I wasted away hours that could have been spent resting, as I developed my own game plans that were failures waiting to happen, God was crafting His own strategy that would be way more effective. At the height of this fear, I found myself in a very busy season of travel for work in which the span of 3 weeks, I would find myself on 13 different flights. Flying so much, that not only did I recognize my flight attendant on one of my flights, but I also found some of the people working at the Washington Reagan National Airport saying “welcome back Ms. Drogan!” Talk about exposure therapy. Exposure therapy that I did not choose for myself. And of course at flight number 13, I felt this fear shift to the background instead of right in my face.

“Our Father knows what you need before you ask him.” Matthew 6:8

There is so much freedom for our minds in the realization that God is the one with the strategy. The one with the regimen. The one with the process. I once had a dream that I was playing chess with Jesus. The problem was that I had never played chess in my life. I don’t even know the rules. Often when I cannot figure something out myself, my default is stress, however not in this dream. In this dream, I felt carefree. I felt joy. I felt present in the moment, enjoying my company to the point where we were dancing with each other (that part you can refrain from visualizing for your own good). Why was I not stressed in my ignorance of the game of chess? Because Jesus was playing for me. I never even had to pick up one of the pieces on the board. He played for me the whole entire time and while He did, I was simply enjoying just being there with Him.

It is not up to us to strategize the route to the destination we long to get to. Maybe your destination is to learn how to surrender control, to get over the fear of man, or maybe to grow in your confidence. You don’t need to figure out all of the details to get there. What you do need to know is that it most likely will be a process in which the Lord guides you through His own kind of divine exposure therapy. But one of the best things you can do through the process is to be attentive to all the ways that God is working. Maybe consider writing them down in a journal to look back on later on once you find yourself on the other side of your prayer.

Don’t miss out on being attentive to the ways God is working in the process. Don’t zone out on the ride to your destination to the point where you cannot remember the beautiful scenery you passed on your way there. Do all that you can to be obedient and ultimately learn to trust that your Heavenly Father has the strategy that will be more effective than anything you could have ever thought up yourself.