Patiently Waiting on God

The Mundane Becomes the Magnificent

I have a little calendar of quotes on my desk that I get to enjoy every morning. And yesterday’s quote was: “Time is a very precious gift of God; so precious that it’s only given to us moment by moment.” – Amelia Barr

And something struck me….that quote resonated deep within my heart. Not in the way it might have in the past where although I may have appreciated the meaning of the quote, there would also be a slight irked feeling where I would challenge the author to walk in my shoes and all the time I spent waiting.

But yesterday was different. I appreciated the quote. I savored the quote. The quote from Ms. Barr reminded me that time is precious, and it’s a precious gift…even the time spent in waiting.

I don’t know why God has asked me to wait as long as He has for the deepest desires of my heart to be fulfilled. But I trust Him. I don’t know why I have received promises from my dear Heavenly Father that remain unfulfilled up to this point in time. But I love Him.

And in my waiting, the mundane has become the magnificent. I am appreciating every second of every day and trying to literally suck the life out of each and every second I have, living life to its fullest…..even while I wait…especially while I wait.

The Gift of Waiting

I have come to a pretty huge revelation in the last 24 hours that I simply have to share. Now mind you, I have been patiently waiting for one of the most important desires of my heart for YEARS! And I don’t mean a few years, I mean many, long years. And those years have been hard years fraught with more suffering than joy.

I have questioned many things, and my faith at times has been shaken to the core.

But the Lord revealed something to me this morning that answered the question that has plagued me the most: Is the suffering in the waiting worth it? When all is said and done, and the promise you were given has been delivered, when the prayers for the desires of your heart have been answered, when the prodigal child finally comes home, was the suffering worth it?

I had to ask God this question because I have examined Job’s life in detail, and in my opinion, he appears to have suffered more than any other individual in the Bible other than Christ Himself. He LOST EVERYTHING – his children, his animals, his home, and his friends. EVERYTHING. And it was all taken in one fatal swoop of a day that Job didn’t think he would be able to make it through. The suffering that man felt in that one day is simply beyond my comprehension. Thankfully, the Lord didn’t end the story there, and we know that God blessed the latter years of Job’s life more than the former part (Job 42:12), and Job was a wealthy man in a number of different ways before this tragedy.

But did all those blessings really take away the pain and the suffering that Job felt on the one worst day of his life? I would say no. It simply isn’t possible, because the ache of what he lost, although dulled with time, was still there. Perhaps a family dinner would remind him that there were faces missing from the table. Perhaps a wayward child from the children God blessed him with after the tragedy, reminded him of one he lost that acted the same way.

So, I go back to my question and I ask it in a different manner…Is the suffering in the waiting, worth what we are waiting for? Hear me out as I answer no and explain why. The suffering in our waiting is never justified by the receipt of what we were waiting for, because often times that suffering is soul deep. It cannot be understood by anyone but our Savior. And the gift for which we were waiting – that long desired spouse, that baby to hold in our arms and love, that prodigal child returning home, that repentant spouse who asks for a second chance, that restored friendship we long thought was beyond salvaging, that long-awaited dream job – will at some point disappoint us, hurt us, and make us question what we suffered through.

Now, I don’t take away for one second ALL THE JOY that will come when our promise has been delivered or the desires of our heart met….but I believe there is FAR BIGGER GIFT in the waiting.

The gift of our suffering, and patiently waiting on God for the promises and desires of our heart, is an intimacy with the Lord that is indescribable. It is a relationship, that without the suffering, we would NEVER know. It is a dependency on Him and a craving of even the simple whisper of the Holy Spirit.

And that is the true gift of the suffering in waiting. It is not having the promise fulfilled. It is not the answer to the desires of our heart. It is FAR GREATER. The true gift of our suffering in waiting is a relationship with our Lord that leaves any other gift paling in comparison. It is a gift that will not disappoint, that will not fail us, and that sustains us no matter what our circumstances are.

The Requirements of Waiting

While we are waiting on God’s timing for our heart’s desires, there are some very real and sometimes difficult requirements of waiting. I have found in my own personal waiting, that I have come across five:

1. Faith

Isaiah 55:8-9 makes it very clear that God’s ways and timing are not a thing like ours. Often, from our very human perspective, God’s timing is not what we expected, when we expected it, or quite honestly, what we would like. But His love for us is boundless, and because of that, we can trust that His timing is perfect.

2. Humility

To wait for the Lord’s very best requires humility as we acknowledge that He knows what we need far better than we ever could. And it gets kind of hard to charge ahead with our own plans in mind when we are fully surrendered to His plans for our lives.

3. Patience

Waiting on God, and for His perfect timing, requires a super human patience. (I keep looking for my Super Girl patience cape to help me out with this one, to no avail.) However, when we ask for it, God gives us the strength to stay when we want to go, and helps us grow and stretch into a patient person that we just may not recognize when the process is done.

4. Courage

Who would have thought that waiting takes courage? But it absolutely does, and it requires it in abundance. When those around us are pressuring us to move on, to act, to give up dreams, to let go, courage helps us stick to what we know is God’s chosen path for us. And the hardest valleys we encounter in our own doubts, questions, and fears, when all seems beyond bleak and dark, require an even deeper courage.

5. A Thick Skin

And lastly, I have found that waiting requires a thick skin. Sometimes strangers, friends, and even family may have the best intentions when they are talking to us and trying to encourage us in our periods of waiting, but they can say things that just bring us to our knees. And sometimes, the most innocent of statements from a well-meaning person, can be what Satan uses to hit straight to our hearts.

Waiting is for Warriors. It requires Faith, Humility, Patience, Courage, and a Thick Skin. So, let’s put on our armor of God and stay strong in the battle until the war has been won. And it will be won.

Faithfully Praying in the Waiting

A very hard thing we encounter as we continue to faithfully pray in our waiting, is that we start to feel like our prayers are pointless. Our emotions begin to take over and the questions abound: If God hasn’t answered my prayers yet, is He really going to? It’s natural and human to ask that question. And Jesus answers that question very clearly – continue to ask, seek, and knock. Matthew 7:7 says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”[i] He is specifically calling us NOT to give up. In fact, in Luke 18:1, we are told that “Jesus told His disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.”[ii]

Not only are we called NOT to give up, we are also called to pray without ceasing. I Thessalonians 5:17 says, “Pray without ceasing.”[iii] Rather to the point right? Again, here is where I wish God gave us an asterisk with this verse that gave us a specific timeline, but He didn’t. He wants us to keep praying without ceasing until the prayer has been fulfilled. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Why does He call us to do this? In the first place, as long as we are praying, we are far less likely to worry about our current situation. We move our eyes off our situations that so quickly drag us down, and onto the Lord who is the only One who can bring our waiting to an end.

In the second place, we see that delayed answers to our prayers are trials of faith used to grow us into more mature Christians. Delays are not refusals of our prayers, but rather evidence that God has a fixed time and ordained purpose for everything in our lives – especially the things for which we wait. So, we let the delays teach us how to be ever more steadfast and persistent in our prayers, letting each prayer build upon the last until we are triumphant.

By the way, the impossibility of our situation means absolutely nothing to the Lord, so we can’t use that as an excuse to give up our praying. God loves to bring answers when all we see are obstacles. Can anyone say “Red Sea”? He is looking at our situation through omnipotent, omniscient eyes while we see them only through human eyes. The impossible situations we are praying for faithfully represent the perfect time for God to do His work.

And the best time for Him to do His work is when we have done everything humanly feasible to solve our problems or change our situation of waiting, and there is still no change. In fact, too often in my own life I have believed that after I prayed, it was then my responsibility to do everything I possibly could do to help the answer along. “Yet God taught me a better way and showed me that self-effort always hinders His work. He also revealed that when I prayed and had a confident trust in Him for something, He simply wanted me to wait in an attitude of praise and do only what He told me.”[iv]

The answers I seek won’t be a result of my actions, and neither will yours. Our big problems require big answers, and that thankfully, is God’s specialty. In Mark 10:27, “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.’”[v]

I recently just asked the Lord if I need to continue to pray for the promise and the person that He put on my heart as I have been doing so for many years now. Interestingly enough, my devotions on back to back days, after asking the Lord that question, were on continuing to pray even in the midst of my unanswered prayers. So, my plan is to keep on praying. And I hope yours will be too.

[i] NIV Matthew 7:7

[ii] NIV Luke 18:1

[iii] NAS I Thessalonians 5:17

[iv] Streams in the Desert 4/18

[v] NIV Mark 10:27

Downshifting

I just recently bought a hybrid bicycle, and am in love with this new-found sport. The speed (I am a total adrenaline junkie), the freedom, the quiet…..all so exhilarating.

But it’s funny how you think you are in shape until you try a different sport. And then all of a sudden, after one big hill, your lungs are on fire, your legs are burning, and your heart is about to burst out of your chest. (I will reserve my conversation about the whole topic of spandex for another post!)

So what have I learned? I have to downshift. My bike has different gears, and when I am full of energy and feeling great, I can push hard on my higher gears. But when I am working to get up a hill, and my body is drained of energy, it is time to downshift until I regain my energy and momentum.

I have found the same to be true in waiting. There are some days I am rolling along in my “higher gears”…..a picture of waiting well….a stalwart of patience….a testimony to God’s love and grace and strength. But then I hit a hill, and it’s a big one, and my energy starts to slip away. It may be that the constant praying for a loved one to finally surrender to the Lord has just drained me. (The Lord said these were intense battles!) It may be a couple of untimely comments from people who don’t know what I am battling every day or the trials that I have faced that have tested my soul and my very faith.

Just like cycling, when I hit these hills in my personal life, it is time for me to downshift. It is time to find those things which energize my soul. It is time to find a respite from the hill until I regain my energy to hit my higher gears again.

And that will come, and I will be flying like the wind again before I know it. And so will you. But we have to give ourselves the grace to rest and downshift.

God’s Appointed Time

God has an appointed time for everything in our lives. Everything. Every situation, every promise, everything….has a God appointed time. Yes, this also includes the end of our waiting. In fact, Habakkuk 2:3 tells us, “For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.”[i]

As we wait for God’s appointed time of our promised revelation, there is a myth that we need to strike from our hearts, and some points of fact that we need to ponder. So let’s dive right into the myth. I believe that there is a key myth that Satan bombards us with during our time of waiting – That God has forgotten about us. I can just hear Satan whispering in my ear, “God has sadly forgotten about you. I mean, look at the time that has elapsed between when He gave you the promise and the godly desires began to well up in your heart, to today. It’s been a long time. I mean a really, really long time, and He has so many incredibly important things going on that He just forgot your little issue.”

These are nothing but lies. Our God who loves us enough to know the very number of hairs on our heads, and who catches each and every tear drop that falls from our eyes, has not forgotten about us. Deuteronomy 31:6 reminds us of this when it says, “Be strong and courageous…for the Lord your God goes with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you.”[ii] Although Satan would love us to believe differently, our God will never leave us, never forsake us, and never forget about us. He simply can’t. He loves us too much. We are imprinted into the very palms of His hands.

[i] NIV Habakkuk 2:3

[ii] NIV Deuteronomy 31:6

Burning Brightly in Our Waiting

For me, one of the hardest things about waiting is feeling like I am not DOING anything. I am a doer by nature. I have To Do Lists for my To Do Lists. And waiting makes me feel like I am doing nothing. Absolutely NOTHING.

But then I look at the Bible and how the Lord took so many of His children away to do what seemed like nothing to prepare them for what He wanted them to do next. The list is long, but just a few that quickly come to mind are Moses, Joseph, Paul, and even Jesus.

And some days the pain of waiting for the promise can be crippling at worst, and just a constant dull hurt at best. That alone is frustrating to me as it seems pointless when God could bring the waiting to an end with the blink of His eye or the nod of His head.

So, as I struggle with my own need to do, and the pain that waiting for something so anticipated causes me, I was much encouraged by my devotional the other morning. Hopefully it will be as encouraging to you.

Streams in the Desert – April 26th Devotional:

“Light is always costly and comes at the expense of that which produces it. An unlit candle does not shine, for burning must come before the light. And we can be of little use to others without a cost to ourselves. Burning suggests suffering and we try to avoid pain.

We tend to feel we are doing the greatest in the world when we are strong and fit for active duty and when our hearts and hands are busy with kind acts of service. Therefore when we are set aside to suffer…when we are consumed with pain, and when all of our activities have been stopped, we feel we are no long of any use and are accomplishing nothing.

Yet if we will be patient and submissive, it is almost certain we will be a greater blessing to the world around us during our time of suffering and pain than we were when we thought we were doing our greatest work. Then we are burning, and shining brightly as a result of the fire.

The glory of tomorrow is rooted in the drudgery of today.”

Tired of Waiting

If I am going to be real and honest, then today is one of those days I am just tired of waiting. Some days I am filled with excitement and the knowledge that victory is coming! And then days like today are just hard. I am weary. I am tired. I want to give up.

But God has given me a promise. Granted, today is one of those days I would really like to get a promise exchange or a promise refund. 🙂 This promise just seems to be taking forever.

Don’t promises come with expiration dates too? No, not in God’s time economy. Even when Abraham and Sarah were well beyond child-bearing years, God delivered on His promise of a son, an heir, a future for the nation of Israel.

Quite honestly, some days I question whether it is all really worth it. The pain, the hurt, the trials. It just seems like too much to bear.

But then I realize that I have a Heavenly Father who loved me enough to sacrifice the one thing that meant the absolute most to Him….His Son…..so that He could spend eternity with me. With me. Lowly, messed up, and wanting to quit me.

So, although today I want to give up and throw in the towel, I won’t. Because I KNOW THAT I KNOW THAT I KNOW that:

– God is the Promise Maker and the Promise Keeper

– His timing is perfect

– All that I am going through has been filtered through His Hands of love for my good and His glory.

And I am fighter. So, I will press on, even on the bad days.

He will do this…..

I was extremely encouraged by this “Streams in the Desert” April 18th devotional and thought I would share it.

He will do this. (Psalm 37:5)

“I once believed that after I prayed, it was my responsibility to do everything in my power to bring about the answer. Yet God taught me a better way and showed me that self-effort hinders His work. He also revealed that when I prayed and had confident trust in Him for something, He simply wanted me to wait in an attitude of praise and do only what He told me. Sitting still, doing nothing except trusting in the Lord, causes a feeling of uncertainty, and there is often a tremendous temptation to take the battle into our own hands.

We all know how difficult it is to rescue a drowning person who tries to help his rescuer, and it is equally difficult for the Lord to fight our battles for us when we insist upon trying to fight them ourselves. It is not that God will not but that He cannot, for our interference hinders his work.

Spiritual forces cannot work while we are trusting earthly forces.

Often we fail to give God an opportunity to work, not realizing that it takes time for Him to answer prayer. It takes time for God to color a rose or to grow a great oak tree. And it takes time for Him to make bread from wheat fields. He takes the soil, then grinds and softens it. He enriches it and wets it with rain showers and with dew. Then He brings the warmth of life to the small blade of grass, later grows the stalk and the amber grain, and finally provides bread for the hungry.

And all this takes time. Therefore we sow the seed, till the ground, and then wait and trust until God’s purpose has been fulfilled. We understand this principle when it comes to planting a field, and we need to learn the same lesson regarding our prayer life. It takes time for God to answer prayer.”

What are you doing while you wait?

What are you doing while you wait? Ohhhhhhhh, that question cuts right to the core doesn’t it?

Because the reality is we have 2 options:

1. We wallow in our waiting and what we are waiting for.

2. We make the most of our waiting and we live in the present.

Now, these options seem pretty straight forward, and the right option seems pretty clear. BUT…..WE ARE HUMAN! And sometimes, the wallowing just sneaks up on us. We get tired of the waiting. We get weary of having to persevere. We get frustrated that God is asking us to wait so long with no end in sight. We get asked hard questions that make us think about what we are waiting for, and honestly, sometimes we wanna just kick what we are waiting for in the head. 🙂

But wallowing is really just a pity party with Satan as the host. He beckons us to join him, to throw the towel in on our hopes, and to stop praying for all that God has promised. So, today, I am rejecting that pity party invitation! I just happen to have RSVPed at another party.

And that party is option #2…..LIVING IN THE PRESENT…..and making the most of my waiting ! Easy? Heck no! But is it what Jesus wants me to do? Certainly! Will He bless my obedience? Most definitely! Will I grow because of my perseverance? Undoubtedly!! Those are party favors that I want to take home.

I don’t know what you will do today to live in the present…..but I just scheduled my next vacation…..and my heart is just bubbling over with JOY!

And when the pain hits, and it will, JUST WAIT…..’cause this too shall pass!