"The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few"

Isn't it funny how we are amazed when God answers prayer? Like we said we believed He could do it, but yet in the back of our minds, there sat the doubt. Is it really gonna happen? Laying dormant, but not erased. And then amazingly, He actually does what we've been praying and trying to believe him for….and we can hardly believe it!

This has been me. Ever since Cindy moved in December we've been praying this prayer at 1:05 each day. For the Lord to send more workers. With two specifically in mind. And next week one of those workers, Naomi, will be here! For some reason I can't shake this amazement at the Lord. Thinking in my head, "You actually did it, Lord. I've been praying and praying and it's actually happening!" And God probably smiles back at me saying, "Love, if I can? All things are possible to him who believes." He sees those doubts that mingle within my prayers and still longs to answer the cry of my heart. What an amazing God we serve.

I was reading in Isaiah today when I came across this verse:

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”  He said, “Go, and tell this people:

‘Keep on listening, but do not perceive;
Keep on looking, but do not understand.’
“Render the hearts of this people insensitive,
Their ears dull,
And their eyes dim,
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
Hear with their ears,
Understand with their hearts,
And return and be healed.”

 Then I said, “Lord, how long?” And He answered,

“Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant,
Houses are without people
And the land is utterly desolate,
“The Lord has removed men far away,
And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. “Yet there will be a tenth portion in it,
And it will again be subject to burning,
Like a terebinth or an oak
Whose stump remains when it is felled.
The holy seed is its stump.”

I remember reading this a year ago as I had just moved to Lincoln and as the nerves and anxiousness had set it. I remember being reminded that I had told God that I was willing, that I would go. This year though, I saw something different. I've always seen this as a glorious mission. I've pictured him standing up and triumphantly shouting that he will go. But as I read it today I noticed the hard things God was asking him to do as well. He was about to go to a people with hardened and insensitive hearts. That wouldn't listen and wouldn't hear. He was not going to do some glorious and triumphant thing. He was asked to go where the road was rough, broken, and narrow. But Isaiah didn't back down. This is the realness of doing what God asks you to do. It's not always full of mountain tops and flowers. I've had to learn this a lot this past year. A lot of the time He asks us to walk the weary road thats drenched with rain. But there's another thing that road is marked with…the footsteps of our Savior. And there's not a better road to walk than that.