Waiting

We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.  And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Romans 5:4-5

God lets us wait, not to punish us, not because He has forgotten us, but because our waiting is the crucible He uses to purify our hope for Him.

Dan Allender

The American lifestyle does not affirm the value of waiting.  If anything, it trains us to avoid it whenever possible.  We “drive through” restaurants to get food, never even getting out of our cars.  We binge watch TV on Netflix one episode after another without commercials.   We buy into Amazon prime so we can have our purchases shipped in a few days.  We text and email.  Hardly anyone hand writes a letter anymore.  So much in our world is geared to give it to us now.  “Now” is a hot commodity.

This makes it easy to assume that waiting is a negative thing.  It feels very passive, but to the Lord, active, faith filled waiting, is saying, “I trust You.”  It is worship, praise and affection directed at the One on whom we wait.  When we resist or avoid waiting, it is often because it feels like nothing is happening or it is not happening fast enough.  What we don’t understand is that waiting is a state of mind and heart that He calls us to, not something that happens because God is silent, absent or uninvolved.  The wait for what we need or desire is an ordained time that He uses to bring us to maturity.  The Bible is full of stories where God’s people were made to wait:  Abraham and Sarah waited a very long time for a child.  Joseph endure years as a slave before he was raised up to a position of great power.  He waited longer for reconciliation with the brothers who betrayed him.  The righteous Job was subjected to a period of confusing heartache, loss and suffering.  Simeon waited for the “consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25), the birth of the Messiah.  These are not stories of God’s absence but of His faithfulness and His power to fulfill His promises.

There are also times when we forget that we are waiting because the longing, disappointment and pain that comes during the wait distracts us.  It consumes our attention and if we are there for long, in the ache and pain, doubt can creep in and then the fear that we will never have what we long for is added to our pain.  We think we have been forgotten and abandoned.  Intentional waiting on the Lord requires us to keep our focus on the His’s faithfulness, not our circumstance.  When we wait on the Lord we affirm our confidence in Him and His ongoing love.  This active faith actually welcomes and cooperates with His work (1Thess 2:13).

Failure to wait reveals something else:  our own efforts to work outside the providence of God to get what we want.  I’ll go into that more next week.

Peace and patience to all of you.