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I must be honest with you. Ever since I was a little lad, I hated to wait. I had to wait to get a big boy's bike, wait to be a Cub Scout, wait to enter Boy Scouts, wait till I was old enough to have a paper route, wait till I was 16 to drive, wait till it was time to date, to marry, to vote, to own a business. Wait-Wait-WAIT!
Now that I've become a Christian, I'm waiting on God. Like Peter, I'm ready-now, today! But are we? If the truth was really known, I believe it is God that is waiting on us.
A lot of us try to make things happen quickly. We look for the fastest, easiest way to get things done, because we just don't want to deal with the true preparation that God is waiting for. One of the surest ways to know if you're operating in the flesh, is if you're frustrated much of the time.
We need to get a new mindset. Plan to wait. Expect our desires, plans and prayers to take longer and cost us more than we ever thought. We need to get into our thinking, that God is more interested in our character development than in our special requests. Our God is waiting to be our LIFE and our JOY!
It doesn't sound complicated, but we make it complicated. Why? Because instead of God being our real LIFE and JOY, we allow clever counterfeits to come in as substitutes that displace God and put Him on hold. Substitutes like focusing on our churches and church work instead of Him. Promoting our doctrines and our unique theology without Him as the center. Letting our evangelism and outreach become more important than our in reach. We even allow worldly things to carry a higher priority than our oneness with God. Our homes, our social life, our businesses and occupations, our recreation and entertainment all these varied diversions create a scenario in which God's real program for us becomes STALLED. He wants to walk side-by-side with us. So now He has to get our attention.
Luke says, "In patience possess your souls." Because God does not at once, or as soon as we wish, do our bidding, it gives us the divine opportunity to become impatient or inquire of God the reason for the delay. It is in this, "Waiting upon God," talking with God, that our eyes become open to His wise and sovereign will for us. Hopefully, to see that the sooner and more completely we yield to His program for our lives, the more surely His intended blessing can come to us.
This waiting is to teach us our absolute dependence upon God's mighty working, and to make us, in patience, place ourselves in His will for our lives, under His direction. In the meantime, God tolerates our slowness and bears long with us. That's why James says, "Let patience have its perfect work."
This letting, "patience have its perfect work," takes faith, courage, trust, rest, belief, obedience, surrender and dependence. All of this is compressed into the one-word, "WAITING on God." Because so few of us have found God as our true LIFE and Joy, that's why we are found waiting. Waiting in developing a saving faith, a living-active trust, a Godly rest and a perfect acquiescence. This is what our waiting is really all about. This is what God wants us to get in tune with. That's why most of us seem to be in this holy exercise of waiting.
Don't feel bad. Moses waited 40 years, David some 16 years, Joseph I believe was 13 years waiting and what about poor Abraham. Talk about waiting, he was 100 years old before the promise child appeared. God was weaving the same golden thread into all these men's lives. God and God alone must become their LIFE and JOY! They all had a future, but God had the plan. Each needed to wait in anticipation, in hope, not taking matters into their own hands. So also with you and me. We each have a future, but God has our plan. "Therefore I will look to the Lord; I will WAIT for the God of my salvation; My God will hear me." Micah 7:7. God hears us and He's trying to tell us to live in total reliance on Him. Are we willing to go through the process??? Yes, it's going to take much longer than we'd like. But when we get on board with His real program, then, "I the Lord will hasten it in its time." Isaiah 60:22.
Father, teach us all how to wait. We all need a direct divine teaching from His Word and His Holy Spirit for our lives. In the common course of everyday life may we look to You to teach us our path. May we wait for instructions. May there be a habitual looking upwards all the daylong. So let's give God His glory by resting only in Him, by trusting Him fully, by waiting for Him. This honors Him; it leaves Him as God on the throne of our hearts, to do His work in and through us; it yields our, "in chargeness," wholly into His hands. It lets God be our God.
"My soul, wait thou only upon God,"
Jim & Sally
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