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Just kidding. Chances are you are still part of the cheapskates who refuse to part with money to read the good stuff. 👀😂

Alexa, play “Wait On You” by Elevation Worship & Maverick City Music. We are going to need that one for today’s climb. ⛰️

Today’s blog is free because my spirit felt led to motivate someone.

I do not know what you are going through. I do not know which prayer you keep repeating, which door you keep hoping will open, or what news you are afraid to hear. Maybe you have been holding on so long that even the people who love you have stopped asking about it.

But I want to tell you something before the enemy tells you anything else today: God is with you.

I do not know who your god is, but let me brag about mine for a moment. My God is the Lord God Almighty. He is the beginning and has no end, as He is from everlasting to everlasting. His name is above every name. He is Yahweh, and He is the God who walks with me on the training mountain.

Many a time, we want to work on our own schedule. We pray and expect immediate results. We want to ask on Monday, receive on Tuesday and give our testimony by Wednesday. When Wednesday comes and nothing has changed, we wonder whether God heard us at all.

Yet Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God makes everything beautiful in His time, emphasis on “His time“, not your or ours. That is a comforting verse when you are looking back at a prayer He answered. It can be a difficult one when you are still in the middle of waiting.

So, for this blog, I want us to call the waiting period the training mountain.

A mountain, because the climb can leave you breathless. Training, because while you are asking God to change your circumstances, He is most certainly also working on you.

We sometimes mistake waiting for punishment. We assume that because the answer has not come, we must have failed, or God must have turned away. But on the training mountain, things that were easy to ignore on level ground start to reveal themselves: a weakness, an old wound, a fear that controls our decisions, a pattern passed down through generations that we refuse to pass on any further.

God can bring these things into the light so we have the opportunity to work on them. He can stretch our capacity, strengthen what is weak and teach us how to carry what we have asked Him for. And even when we cannot understand the reason for a particular delay, we can still ask Him to help us grow through this season.

If you sit down, meditate on your life and look back honestly, you may realise that had God given you certain things the instant you asked for them, you might have mishandled them and lost the very things you prayed so hard to receive. You needed time to grow into them.

Psalm 23:1 says, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” And when Jesus taught us to pray, He said, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). Perhaps the thing you are asking for has not become part of today’s bread. That does not mean God has forgotten you. Perhaps today’s bread is the preparation you need to carry what comes tomorrow.

Imagine praying for a car when you do not even have a driver’s licence. You are crying, “Lord, where is my vehicle?” while God is looking at you like, “My child, perhaps we should start with driving lessons.” 😂

Has He turned His back on you because the car did not arrive immediately? Or could the training mountain be where you learn to drive, get your licence and become ready to receive the vehicle you asked for?

Your capacity needs to grow alongside the blessing.

Because imagine if life were as easy as “pray today, receive in less than ten minutes or it’s free,” like a Pizza Inn special. 🍕 How would we learn to trust God beyond the things He gives us? How would we grow into the lives our Creator made us to live?

But here is why the training mountain can feel so lonely: the enemy is most active and most vocal when you are waiting.

Satan does not need a microphone. The enemy waits for a quiet moment when you are exhausted, when someone else receives the answer you have been praying for, or when you look at your life and whisper, “Lord, how much longer?”

Then satan says, let me show you my talent, and begins to preach.

A gospel of loneliness: Nobody sees you. Nobody understands. God has left you here by yourself.

A gospel of emptiness: After all that praying, what do you have to show for it?

A gospel of nothingness: Nothing is happening. Nothing will ever happen.

A gospel of failure: You are the problem. You should stop hoping.

The enemy wants you to accept his words as the truth. He wants you to lose hope and give up. But the Word of God reminds us that where there is life, there is hope (Ecclesiastes 9:4). And when that gospel of loneliness gets loud, God says in Isaiah 41:10 that we should not be dismayed, because He is with us. He promises to strengthen us and uphold us.

You might feel alone on the training mountain. I will not dismiss that feeling. Some days the silence hurts. Some nights you may pray and hear nothing back. But feeling alone is not the same as being abandoned.

Psalm 91 speaks of dwelling in the shelter of the Most High. Notice that you do not have to come down from the mountain to dwell with God. You can make Him your dwelling place there, in the middle of the uncertainty. And First John 4:4 reminds us that He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. The enemy may be loud, but he is not greater.

When the enemy says, “God has forgotten you,” remember His promise: “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5).

When the enemy says, “You are nobody,” remember what God said to Jeremiah: He knew him before he was formed in his mother’s womb (Jeremiah 1:5). And when God’s people faced a long season away from home, He still spoke to them of a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11). Waiting did not mean He had stopped seeing them.

Now think back over your own life. Has God ever carried you through something you were sure would break you? Has He ever answered a prayer you had almost stopped praying?

Then ask yourself: has God changed? Hebrews 13:8 tells us that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. Is God a man that He should lie? Has His arm become too short to reach you now? (Numbers 23:19; Isaiah 59:1.)

You may not understand what He is doing yet. You may not even know what to pray for anymore. But your inability to see an answer does not mean God has reached the end of His power.

In Job 11:7–9, Job’s friend Zophar asks who can fathom the depths of God, describing them as higher than the heavens, deeper than the grave and broader than the sea. Zophar did not understand Job’s suffering, and neither you nor I can claim to know every reason someone has to wait. What we can remember is that God sees further than we do. Daniel 2:22 says He brings deep and hidden things to light.

So perhaps, alongside “Why, Lord?” and “When, Lord?”, we can begin to ask:

“What is required of me on this training mountain? What are You revealing in me? Which weakness needs Your strength? Which pattern needs to end with me? Teach me how to wait without letting the enemy take my hope.”

James 1:2–4 tells us to consider trials an occasion for joy because the testing of faith produces perseverance, and perseverance helps us become mature and complete, lacking nothing. That does not mean you must smile through every painful moment. It means that, even here, God can be doing something in you that the enemy cannot destroy.

If you are on the training mountain right now, please do not give up. Pray with tears if you need to. Pray with trembling hands. Pray the same two words again and again: “Help me.” Rest, then take the next step you can see.

God is with you on the mountain.

So ask yourself: Do I have the capacity to carry what I am praying for, or is this training mountain preparing me to receive it, and keep it?

Have a blessed week. ❤️

Alexa, play “Praise” by Elevation Worship. We may still be on the training mountain, but we are not waiting to praise God until we reach the top. 🙌🏾

And yes, this is some of the good stuff you could be reading more often… but you still do not want to subscribe. Cheapskates, I see you. 👀😂