Nothing is Wasted

There's a phrase in John 6 that jumped off the page at me last year.  It's the miracle of the feeding of the 5000.  A little boy's 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish fed over 5,000 men.

John 6:12-13 says "When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, "Gather the pieces that are left over.  Let nothing be wasted."  So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten."

I feel like this could be the theme of my life right now.  I feel like we have prayed and prayed about our adoption.  We have fasted again and again.  I have cried and cried.  I have prayed and fasted some more.  If you were to find my prayer journal, you might be quite disappointed in me.   My conversations with the Lord in the past weeks have been brutally honest (I figure He already knows my thoughts).  The great thing is that the Lord is kind and compassionate.  He lets me complain and lay all my burdens on the altar.  He takes my wounded heart and wraps His arms around me and fills me with peace and hope.

We don't have any update on our adoption.  But this much I know, nothing is wasted.  All those prayers, all those tears, all those days of fasting, not any of them are wasted.  There is a song by Elevation Church that says "Nothing is wasted, You work all things for good."

In Steven Furtick's book Greater, he says "Sometimes as your faith is getting greater, your situation is getting worser."  p. 92

But "not an ounce of faith was wasted.  Even when it seemed as if He was deaf to their prayers, He was collecting their faith and making a plan to use it in a greater way."  p. 106

I honestly don't know about our adoption.  But I know that none of my prayers and that none of my tears are wasted.  He will use them all for His good in a greater way than I could even imagine.  And I know the same is true for all of His children.  We don't understand His ways or His timing.  But if He collects 12 baskets of leftover food from 5 small bread loaves and 2 small fish, then I believe that He can take my prayers and my faith and turn them into something beautiful!  Let nothing be wasted!