Have a little faith

As I finish writing in my notebook, I can't believe it's finally finished.  It's massive.  And I've been writing in it for 2 years.  
It's filled with so much hope, vision, dreams along with the bleak, drier moments as well.  
Where faith was tested.  Where faith was produced.
The wait.  The process.  It's all there.
It opened on a high note and ending on a hopeful one.  
This week God has given me the verse, "Faith is the thing hoped for; the conviction of the thing not yet seen" Hebrews 11:1.  My friend sent it to me after I had read it on a coaster at my kitchen table earlier this week.  There it was and there I needed it to be.  
Faith is being strengthened in this final stretch of what I'm hoping will usher in a new season of bravery, breakthrough, boldness and living out of the promise land. 

I felt that the Lord have me revisit a lesson in faith this morning.  I have a little Yorkie pup (not really pup, she's 8 but I believe if I tell her she's a pup and treat her like one, she'll never age) whom I love dearly.  I have learned so many invaluable lessons through her.  This morning she happily, giddily danced to in front of the garage door because she knows what's on the other side of said door.  Her bones.  She loooves them.  She lives for these things.  She can't see them, but she knows they're there.  So today, I decided I'd give her a bone.  However, not without waiting and working for it a little bit first. 
I open the door, take down the bag, and set the bone on the floor.  She goes through the steps pretty fast.  She knows she must sit, shake and go down before getting it.  But then she has to wait.  As she waits I've noticed she doesn't take her eyes off of me.  She hardly even blinks.  The few times she's ever messed up and grabbed the bone before I said "okay" were the times she looked down...at the bone.  When she keeps her eyes locked on mine, I can repeat "wait" a dozen times and she waits.  When I finally tell her to grab it, she dashes off with it, so happy yet also must be feeling pretty good because the wait made the reward all the more sweeter.  
It may be a silly connection but it has helped me so much as I wait on the Lord.  For answers. For the good stuff.  Not that what I have now isn't the good stuff.  It's just the big things.  The things He's been readying me for...testing me in, producing patience and diligence and consistency and a whole lot of other things while I wait so that when He finally says "okay" it will be all the more sweet.  Simply because I waited.  And my faith strengthened.  
God knows what He has to give us, it's right there in between us.  Just like the little Whimzee bone.  He sees it.  I can see it too through faith and if I choose to dwell on it, I might miss what He wants to teach me in His gaze, in the final wait.  

What are you waiting for?  Are you tempted to give up hope?  Has the process felt too long, too hard?  Or the promise so far out of reach you can't see it and you don't believe it's really something God's waiting to give you? 
Faith.  Ask Him for an extra measure of it.  
Faith.  Write the word or dream or the promise on a stone and carry it in your pocket if you must.  So you can hold it, feel it, believe it.  
He's good and He's God.  
He knows what He's doing. 
He knows why you're having to wait.  

And thank Him when He does finally say, "Okay, go. It's yours..." as you happy dance away with the promise. 
The thing hoped for,  now the thing had.