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Hello, Fearless One.

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Have you ever gone into McDonald's or your favorite fast food chain

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and ordered something simple?

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A cheeseburger and fries.

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Nothing unusual.

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It is one of the most common orders on the menu.

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So you expect to receive it fairly quickly, right?

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They already know how to make it.

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The ingredients are within reach.

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In a busy period, they may even have several ready to go.

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But what happens when you change the order?

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Do you want the cheeseburger and fries, but no pickles, extra mayo?

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Maybe you need a bun without sesame seeds.

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Now someone has to stop and pay attention.

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They cannot simply hand you what has already been prepared for everybody else.

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They have to make your order according to your specifications.

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You may watch three or four people who ordered after you received their food first.

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They are already sitting down and eating while you are still standing by the counter.

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Nothing has necessarily gone wrong.

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Your order has not been forgotten.

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It is simply not a standard order.

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Special orders take time.

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We understand this when we are ordering food.

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We understand it when someone buys a car with specific components,

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chooses a custom built house, or commissions a piece of furniture.

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We expect something made for a particular purpose to take longer

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than something mass produced and sitting on a shelf.

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But when it comes to our lives,

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our prayers,

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and the promises we believe God has given us, we often forget this principle.

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We see other people receiving what we have been waiting for.

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Their opportunity arrives.

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Their business grows.

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They get married.

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The door opens.

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The answer comes.

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Meanwhile, we are still standing at the counter wondering whether anybody heard our order.

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Today I want to remind you that delay is not always evidence that something has gone wrong.

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Sometimes it is evidence that what God is preparing in you and

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for you cannot be taken off the shelf.

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Sometimes the answer is taking time because it is a special order.

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Daniel 10 gives us one of the clearest biblical pictures of an answer

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that was delayed but not denied.

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Daniel had been mourning and seeking God for three full weeks.

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When an angel finally reached him,

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he said in Daniel 10 verse 12,

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Fear not, Daniel,

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for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand and

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to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard and I am come for thy words.

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From the first day, Daniel's prayer was not sitting unopened in heaven for 21 days.

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God had heard him from the beginning.

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The angel then explained in verse 13 that the prince of the kingdom

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of Persia had withstood him for 21 days until Michael came to help him.

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We're talking about angels here.

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There was activity Daniel could not see.

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There was resistance he did not know about.

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The apparent silence did not mean that God was absent or indifferent.

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I need you to pay attention to this because when we cannot see movement,

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our minds often create an explanation.

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I am so guilty of this.

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Maybe I heard God incorrectly.

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Maybe I missed my chance.

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Maybe I did something wrong.

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Maybe I'm just not qualified.

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Maybe God has changed his mind about me.

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Daniel's experience challenges those conclusions.

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There may be more happening around your answer than you can see.

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Heaven's silence is not proof of heaven's inactivity.

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The answer may have been released,

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but there is still a process between prayer and manifestation.

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And sometimes the process is not only about what God is bringing to you,

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It is also about what he is developing within you.

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We live in a world of immediate results.

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AI can produce in seconds what once took hours.

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Social media gives us news while events are still unfolding.

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We can order something from our phones and track it from the warehouse to the front door.

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We are living a microwave life on steroids.

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Speed has become so normal that we can interpret anything slow as broken.

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If the page takes too long to load we close it.

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If a video does not capture us immediately we scroll.

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If a business does not grow quickly enough we assume the strategy has failed.

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If God does not answer within our preferred time frame,

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we begin questioning whether we heard him at all.

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But some things cannot be microwaved.

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Character cannot be downloaded.

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Judgment cannot be automated.

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Wisdom cannot be copied from someone else's prompt.

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You can receive information quickly,

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but becoming the kind of person who can use that information responsibly takes time.

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You can learn someone else's theory.

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You can read their book, take their course, and study their framework.

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That may save you from avoidable mistakes,

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but there are lessons that only become yours after you have lived them.

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Experience moves truth from something you can repeat to something you can embody.

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That is the fruitful stage of the failure's framework.

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God has placed seed within you.

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But seed does not become fruit merely because you have identified it.

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It must be planted, watered, strengthened, and given time to mature.

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Then, once the lesson has been tested and embedded, you can multiply it.

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You can transfer practical wisdom to your children,

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your teen, your clients, or another generation.

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You are no longer only telling them what somebody told you.

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You are giving them something that has taken root in your own life.

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Liverpool Cathedral is a powerful physical example of this.

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Its foundation stone was laid in 1904.

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The cathedral was not completed until 1978.

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That is 74 years.

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Think about that.

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There are stories of families who had several generations who contributed

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to building the cathedral.

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The original architect, Giles Gilbert Scott, died in 1960, 18 years before the

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People walk into that cathedral and experience the scale and beauty of a vision

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that required multiple generations to carry it.

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Here in Liverpool,

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the International Slavery Museum and Maritime Museum closed in 2025 for major work.

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The approved redevelopment has been targeting a reopening in 2028.

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Nobody expects work of that scale to happen over a weekend.

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Collections must be protected.

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Buildings must be repaired.

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Stories must be researched and retold with care.

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A museum carrying painful,

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complex history should not be rebuilt with a careless urgency simply

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because people dislike waiting.

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We recognize that important buildings and cultural institutions require time.

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Yet we can become angry with ourselves because our own rebuilding is not happening overnight.

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Perhaps God is not renovating one room.

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Perhaps he is strengthening the foundation for what must stand after you.

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Perhaps the work is taking longer because it is not only about your comfort.

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It is about the people who will enter through the doors you are building.

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When my children were young,

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I used to say that God gave me four children because it took me four times as long

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to learn things.

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I was always surprised when an experience I thought I had mastered

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with my first child appeared again with my fourth.

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I thought I had already learned that lesson.

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Why was I dealing with this again?

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But learning something once does not always mean it has become embedded.

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Sometimes repetition is practice.

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The lesson returns at another level, in another relationship, or under different pressure.

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Not because you failed,

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But because what you know is being tested until the response becomes part

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of your character.

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Think about any skill you have developed.

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You did not become competent because you got it right once.

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You practiced until you could respond correctly without having to rethink every step.

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The same is true spiritually.

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You may have trusted God when the stakes were small.

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Now you are being asked to trust him when more is at risk.

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You may have learned to be patient for a week.

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Now the answer has taken a year.

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You may have learned to forgive one offense.

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Now forgiveness is being tested in a relationship that matters deeply to you.

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You may have learned to manage one client, one project or one employee.

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Now God is increasing your responsibility.

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The pressure does not automatically mean you are out of position.

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The repetition does not automatically mean you failed the previous test.

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It may mean the truth is taking root.

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It may mean God is establishing your response before your next level of stewardship.

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Jesus says in John 15 verse 2, Notice which branch gets pruned.

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It is the branch that is already bearing fruit.

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Pruning is not necessarily evidence that you have been doing it wrong.

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It can happen because you have been fruitful and the Father intends for you to bear more.

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Pruning can feel like reduction.

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Something that was growing is cut back.

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A method that worked in the last season stops working.

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Our relationship changes and opportunity closes.

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Your capacity seems smaller just when you expected expansion.

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If you judge the process only by appearance, pruning can look like failure.

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But the gardener is not punishing the branch.

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He is directing its strength towards greater fruitfulness.

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If you believe every difficult season is proof that you have disappointed God,

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you will spend the season trying to earn your way back into a place you never left.

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You will strive when you should be abiding.

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You will panic when you should be paying attention.

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You will call yourself a failure while God is preparing you for more fruit.

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Process does not always mean you are wrong.

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Sometimes process means you are right where you need to be.

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In Mark 4, Jesus and the disciples are crossing the sea when a great storm arises.

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The waves are beating against the boat until it begins to fill with water.

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And where is Jesus during all of this?

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He is asleep in the stern of the boat.

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The disciples wake him up and ask, Master, carest thou not that we perish?

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Their question reveals the story they have attached to the storm.

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If Jesus cared, surely he would not be sleeping.

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If he were paying attention, surely they would not be in danger.

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But Jesus was in the same boat, in the same storm, surrounded by the same waves.

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His rest was not denial.

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It was not carelessness.

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It revealed a different posture.

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Jesus trusted the Father in conditions that terrified everybody else.

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He is our perfect example.

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His posture shows us that faith does not always look like staying awake all night,

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monitoring the wind, and trying to calculate how far we are from land.

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Sometimes faith looks like sleep.

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Sometimes you have done what you can do.

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You have prayed, obeyed, prepared, and taken the next available step.

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Remaining awake to worry will not move the boat any faster.

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You have to trust that the one directing the journey can get you where you need to go.

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Psalm 127 verse 2 says,

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Rest is not always the absence of responsibility.

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Rest is evidence that you know the outcome does not depend entirely on you.

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We see this care for the body in Elijah's story as well.

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In 1 Kings chapter 19, Elijah is exhausted, afraid, and he's asking to die.

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God's first response is not a lecture.

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An angel touches him and tells him to get up and eat.

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Elijah eats, drinks, and lies down again.

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Then the angel returns with more food because the journey he told him is too much for him.

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Sometimes you do not need another strategy.

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You need food and sleep.

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You are not losing your faith.

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You are exhausted.

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Often when we are afraid,

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We hold on so tightly that we cannot rest,

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but your refusal to sleep does not prove that you care more than God does.

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If sleep is what you need, sleep.

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The storm is not proof that God has abandoned the boat.

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God is not constrained by our experience of time.

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We count minutes,

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days, and years because time helps us understand the relationship between events.

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But God sees the beginning and And the end.

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That does not mean our waiting is painless.

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It does mean that our deadline is not his crisis.

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Our attitude cannot always change the number of days a process requires,

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but it profoundly changes what those days produce in us.

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We can frustrate a season by resisting every lesson within it.

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We can extend patterns by refusing to change our response.

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We can also cooperate with God, remain present and receive what the season is offering us.

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When my children were small,

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there were days when it felt as though they would be under five forever.

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I was barely hanging on.

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The needs were constant and the season felt overwhelming.

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Now I'm on the other side, looking at four young adults and wondering how it went by so quickly.

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I find myself asking whether I gave them all the tools they needed for where they are today.

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The days that felt endless were not endless.

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The season moved whether I enjoyed it or resisted it.

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That is why learning to be present matters.

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Joy does not necessarily shorten the calendar, but it changes our experience of the journey.

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It allows us to notice what God is doing before the season has passed.

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Do not become so consumed with escaping this stage that you fail

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to collect what you will need in the next one.

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The question is not only, how quickly can I get this?

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The question is, what must I receive, learn, and pass on before this season is over?

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If life were a video game, we would understand that each new level brings stronger opposition.

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You do not reach level five and continue facing only level one challenges.

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The bigger battle is not proof that you have become worse at the game.

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It appears because you have developed enough capacity to enter a more demanding stage.

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David understood this progression.

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Before Goliath, there were the lion and the bear.

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In 1 Samuel 17,

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David tells Saul that when a lion or a bear took a lamb from his father's flock,

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he went after it.

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Those private victories developed courage, skill, and confidence in God.

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Then came a giant.

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David did not meet Goliath without preparations.

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The preparation simply did not look like a public leadership program.

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It looked like protecting sheep where few people could see him.

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Years later, 2 Samuel 21 records other battles with descendants of the giants.

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David was no longer the only one confronting them.

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His men fought and defeated them.

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Scripture does not give us every detail of how David's example shaped those men.

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But we can see that his victory did not remain an isolated story.

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He led a community in which other people also learned to face formidable enemies.

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This is multiplication.

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God develops you, then what has been embedded in you becomes transferable.

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Your private process can become somebody else's practical wisdom.

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Your children, team,

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or community can May face their giants differently

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because they watched you face yours.

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The special order is not always only for you.

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Fearless one,

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if you find yourself facing something you thought you had already overcome,

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do not rush to call yourself a failure.

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Ask a better question.

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Is this punishment or is this pruning?

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Am I repeating the same mistake or am I practicing a new response at a higher level?

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Is nothing happening or is there movement I cannot yet see?

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Have I been forgotten or is God building the capacity I will need to steward the answer?

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Remember our fearless framework.

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You are blessed.

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Your identity is not canceled by delay.

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Waiting does not make you less chosen, less loved, or less aligned with God.

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You are being fruitful.

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Development often happens beneath the surface before visible fruit appears.

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You are called to multiply.

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What becomes embedded through experience can be transferred to others.

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And you are being prepared for dominion.

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Greater influence requires greater capacity, sound judgment, and mature stewardship.

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You may not be behind.

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You may not have missed God.

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You may not be paying for failure.

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You may be exactly where you are supposed to be and right on time.

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Special orders take time.

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So do people who have been called to carry something significant.

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Before we close, consider these questions.

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Where have I interpreted delay as rejection, failure, or punishment?

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What lesson may God be embedding through repetition?

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What would it look like to adopt Jesus' posture of rest in my present storm?

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What is being pruned because God intends for me to bear more fruit?

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Who may eventually benefit from the wisdom I am gaining in this season?

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Do not only ask God to end the process.

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Ask Him to show you what the process is producing.

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Do not spend the entire journey watching the counter and comparing your order

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with everybody else's.

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Receive the work God is doing in you while you wait.

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Your words may have been heard from the first day.

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The answer may already be in motion.

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And the time between the prayer and the manifestation is not empty.

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God is present there too.

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If this episode encouraged you,

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share it with someone who has been wondering why their answer is taking so long.

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Follow or subscribe to the Fearless One podcast so you do not miss the next episode.

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And if you are ready to understand how identity shapes the way you live, build,

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and lead,

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Get your copy of Live Fearless,

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a Christian Entrepreneur's Guide to Life and Business.

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Until next time, remember, you are blessed.

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You are created to be fruitful.

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What God has placed in you is meant to multiply.

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And you have been called to exercise dominion with wisdom.

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This is Nerissa Golden, Live Fearless.

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Thank you for listening to Fairless One with Nerissa Golden.

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For more resources or to get in touch, head to nerissagolden.com.