Use Your Power for Good: Your Words MatterSample

When You’re Waiting

When my youngest son was about to graduate from college, he had all sorts of decisions to make, just like most young people do after high school or college. He had been praying and asking God for direction for the next step in his life. But as the last term drew closer, he still didn’t know what to do. He was in what I call “waiting mode.”

Of course, well-meaning friends and relatives asked him all the time, just like we all ask a pending graduate: “What are you going to do after graduation?“ And he just had to keep saying, “I don’t know.” It was bugging him. He didn’t want to say he didn’t know—after all, he was praying and believing that he would know. But while he was waiting to hear from God, he didn’t want to keep speaking words that went against what he was believing for. He wanted what he was saying to agree with the Bible.

One day he finally hit on the answer. He was excited when he told me, “Mom, I know what to say now when people ask me what I’m going to do after graduation. I’ll just answer them, ‘I’ll know when the time comes.’”

I thought that was a brilliant solution! It was a truthful answer that kept his words in line with what he had prayed and kept his faith on the answer. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he called for what he wanted, not what he had. And, lo and behold, by the time graduation came around, he had gotten a job offer from the university he attended. He knew it was the direction God wanted him to go, and he went to work for them as a recruiter for two years.

When you’re in waiting mode, waiting for God’s answer, it’s a crucial time to speak words of faith over the situation as my son did. You can say things like, “I’ll know when the time comes” or “I know God is working in my situation” (see Romans 8:28), or “By His stripes, I am healed” before you see it. That is faith. That is using the power of your words to agree with God’s Word.