Waiting on the Lord
Greetings KIC Lubowa!
Lately I have found myself constantly telling my one-year-old son to wait – to wait as we dress him up after a bath because he wants to go play, to wait as he nags ‘we go, we go voom’ when he’s excited about an opportunity to get out of the house and go for a car ride, to wait as we prepare his meals because the boy loves his food and so on. As I told him to wait for the umpteenth time recently, the Holy Spirit seemed to draw my attention to this word ‘wait’. Consequently, I have spent a great deal of time pondering my own experiences with waiting – for the fulfillment of a particular dream, a prophetic word spoken over my life or for deliverance from some negative circumstances of life – and it has occurred to me that perhaps I am not that different from Zion during the seasons of waiting especially when the waiting drags on, well, save for the emotional outbursts! I too want what I want, and I want it now!
We live in times where the pace of life is frantic and consequently, the concept of waiting has taken on a negative connotation. We have become more and more impatient as a generation, and technology has not helped our plight – why take a flight of stairs when I can hop into a lift, why bother to brew a cup of coffee when I can have instant coffee, why save money for something I can get on credit etc. You get the point! Unfortunately, we assume we can adopt this same attitude in our relationship with God and the fulfilment of His will in our lives. We want what we want from Him, and we want it now! Yesterday would have been better!
As I reflect on my own walk with the Lord over the years or the lives of several Biblical characters, I see this tension between waiting on God and making things happen in one’s own strength play out over and over again. In Genesis 12:1-3 God asks Abraham to leave his country and his father’s house to a land he would show him with a promise of making him a great nation. After several years of waiting, mind you, interspersed with God affirming His promise to them, Sarah hatches a plan to birth God’s promise: she tells Abraham to lie with her maid servant (Hagar) that she may have children through her. We all know how the rest of that story plays out. Saul’s impatience that led him to make an unlawful sacrifice before the battle with the Philistines cost him the kingship in 1 Samuel 13:8-14. David is anointed King by the prophet Samuel at about 17 years and it is another 13 years before he is King over Judah (2 Samuel 5:4). Joseph is probably 17 years too when he receives the dreams that would alter the course of his life and just like David, He is 30 years when his dreams come to fulfillment (Genesis 41:46). And in Joseph and David’s stories, we perhaps have some notable examples of waiting on God’s timing over long periods while not taking matters in our own hands.
Let us look at what scriptures have to say on the value of waiting on God:
For since the beginning of the world men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, nor has the eye seen any God besides you, who acts for the one who waits for Him. (Isaiah 64:4)
Therefore, the Lord will wait that He may be gracious to you; and therefore He will be exalted that He may have mercy on you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all who wait for Him. (Isaiah 30:18)
But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)
The Hebrew word for wait is Qavah and it means to look for, hope, expect, look eagerly for or in anticipation. It also means to bind together such as in the process of making a rope where 3 or more cords are woven or bound together depending on how strong the rope is intended to be. We tend to associate waiting with passivity – for example as you sit at the reception area waiting for your doctor’s appointment or as you sit in the lobby waiting for your flight – but waiting in the Biblical sense is active. This idea of weaving or binding together introduces another dynamic to waiting that is often neglected – waiting on the Lord involves inclining ourselves towards Him through prayer, worship, meditation on the scriptures, listening intently for his instructions and walking in obedience to His voice. Biblical waiting is therefore demonstrated through active dependence and obedience to God, and through that, our faith is strengthened for the very purpose and plan He has for our lives.
In the physical realm, we can see this concept of active waiting demonstrated often: a farmer prepares the ground and sows the seed, and then after sowing, he doesn’t go home and wait for the harvest time but rather continues to pay careful attention to his crop by getting rid of weeds, watering as necessary, applying manure, spraying to deal with pests, and also prepares the storage area. How about a pregnant woman? She attends her antenatal appointments religiously, watches her diet, exercises appropriately, dreams about the nursery, makes her husband turn that dream into reality, reads baby books and blogs all the time, buys baby clothes etc. Both the farmer and the woman are waiting, one for a harvest of crop and the other a baby, but they are anything but passive! They both understand the concept of seedtime and harvest (Genesis 8:22) or like Joyce Meyers likes to say, “seed, ti-------------------me, and harvest!”
As long as we continue to live in this physical body, there will be times in our lives when waiting is inevitable but how we wait is critical. Scriptures encourages us to wait:
Patiently – Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him (Psalm 37:7a). That you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises… And so, after he (Abraham) had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. (Hebrews 6:12,15) God should be the focus, not the things we want or need – the healing, provision, deliverance, fulfillment of vision etc. The more we focus on God, the ‘bigger’ our view of Him gets thereby diminishing the magnitude of our problems or needs and the temptation to get impatient and try to make things happen in our strength.
Quietly – The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul that seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. (Lamentations 3:25-26). Truly my soul silently waits for God; from Him comes my salvation. My soul, wait silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him. (Psalm 62:1,5) Our waiting can be marked with complaining and murmuring all through or with a quiet confidence that God will come through.
Courageously – Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the Lord! (Psalm 27:14) Charles Stanley writes, “The quality that enables us to endure suffering, opposition and the challenges of life with a steadfast and fearless confidence in God’s provision and protection is courage.”
With hope (anticipation) – I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His Word I do hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning – yes, more than those who watch for the morning. (Psalm 130:5) Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord until He is gracious to us. (Psalm 123:2)
Perhaps, you have these big dreams or prophetic words that have been spoken over your life so many times, and yet they seem like a million years away from reality. Maybe you are going through a very difficult season marked with loss of a loved one, a job, a treasured relationship or the collapse of business venture. It could be that the past 20 months of the pandemic have brought you such loneliness like you had never imagined possible, maybe it’s a medical condition or a prodigal child that is keeping you on the edge and you are wondering about all these promises in the Bible that seem to be true for everyone else but you! And perhaps, hopelessness and despair are starting to creep in and you are asking those questions many of us ‘spiritual giants’ won’t publicly admit we have asked – where are you God? When will this end? Do not despair, don’t give up hope, hold on. Keep waiting on the Lord. Keep anticipating His deliverance.
Here’s some encouragement for any of us who might identify with what I have just described, even as you continue to navigate your season of waiting:
God has not forgotten you nor is He neglecting you in anyway. He has promised never to leave you nor forsake you (Isaiah 49:14-16), He has promised to be with you when you go through the fires and deep waters of this life (Isaiah 43:1-2) etc.
Don’t just sit around doing nothing, anticipate God’s intervention and keep an ear for His instruction. Spend time in the word, in prayer and worship, keep doing the last thing God told you to do until He gives you the next instruction, invest yourself in easing someone else’s burden, support another’s vision etc. David, fully anointed king of Israel, continued to serve and honor the then evil king, Saul who was also persecuting him. Of Joseph, in Potiphar’s house and in prison, it was written, “He exceled in all he did because God was with him!”
Consider how the Father might want to develop your character in preparation for your next season – I am challenged by the truth that God is as interested in meeting my needs and fulfilling His promises towards me as He is in my spiritual growth – and that maturity is not determined by how long the waiting process is or how tough the trial is but rather by my attitude in the season of waiting. (James 1:2-4)
Consider the testimonies of so many others who have experienced these long seasons of waiting and how God worked through their circumstances. The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1) – Abraham, Joseph, David, friends, family members, individuals within our church community who endured hardships over long seasons and yet against hope, trusted God and counted Him faithful who promised.
Prayer:
I pray that the God of hope will fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. I pray that you will be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy. Amen.
Discussion:
Share a current area of struggle with waiting on God’s timing. How might active waiting look like in your situation? Have communion together if possible and then pray for one another.
