Waiting

Waiting: the action of staying where one is or delaying action until a particular time or until something else happens

²⁷  Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel,

^h“My way is hidden from the Lord,

ⁱand my right is disregarded by my God”?

²⁸  Have you not known? Have you not heard?

The Lord is ^jthe everlasting God,

the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary;

^khis understanding is unsearchable.

²⁹  He gives power to the faint,

and to him who has no might he increases strength.

³⁰  Even youths shall faint and be weary,

                                                 and young men shall fall exhausted;                                                

³¹  but ^lthey who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;

they shall mount up with wings ^mlike eagles;

they shall run and not be weary;

they shall walk and not faint.

Isiah 40:27-31 ESV

   When we live in a society that has microwave dinners, instant coffee, Insta Pots, and drive throughs, we have come to embrace the mantra of waiting stinks.  Especially when we are waiting for an important answer or test result, waiting can be painful, heart wrenching and it just plain painful.  I would place a bet that we are all waiting on something, whether it is for a pandemic to be over, being able to gather with friends and family, a job that pays that actually pays the bills, or for a child to come out of a tough phase.  When we are in this stage of life, we often have a hard time seeing the big picture.  We are either so focused in the day to day or the moment to moment that we often become reactionary.  In essence we are responding instead of being proactive.  In essence we are to busy cleaning up messes instead of preventing them.  I think there could be a space and time between moving from being reactionary to being proactive and its called waiting.  Here are some ideas to remind ourselves when we are waiting.

   The first idea is our posture.  When I think of posture, I think about how we sit and our body language.  Body language is a big deal in non verbal communication and how people perceive us and how we interpret things.  If a friend is talking to us about something important and we are sitting on the couch, with our head down and our body slouched, we are portraying that we don’t care.  We also probably miss what is being said misinterpret what is being said on what we do hear.  Posture is about anticipation, and if we are not anticipating, we are likely to miss the opportunity, or to mess it up.  Just like an Olympic runner gets into their running stance in anticipation for the starter gun to go off for their race, we should be the same way.  Proper posture is preparing ourselves for the moment, so when it does come and the starter gun sounds, we can take off running.  The Apostle Paul tells is in 1 Corinthians 9 that we are to run the race with purpose and for things that are eternal.  The only way to do this is to be ready for what God has called us to do. 

    The second idea is laziness.  In essence holy waiting is not laziness is based on apathy or down right sin.  The apathy part comes in is that we know the right thing to do, but we don’t have the motivation or desire to do what is right. We would either have someone else do it for us, or we don’t care enough and if it does get done, oh well, because it was important.  In essence we would rather take a pill or have surgery to lose weight without doing the hard work of exercising and diet change.  This has disastrous consequences, because we ae digging ourselves a deeper hole and has serious consequences.  Those consequences keep compounding when we do not deal with them. 

   The second part is laziness as sin.  We know what we need to do, but we do something else.  If God commands us to wait, we get tired of waiting and then we come up with some thing to do that looks Godly but its not what God has called us to do.  The story of Abraham and Sarah come to mind.  God promises them a child in their old age and they get tired of waiting.  So Sarah told Abraham to sleep with her slave so that they could have their child.  This was culturally acceptable when the wife could not bear children, but this is not what God had in mind.  Gods plan was to use Sarah, not her slave and there were consequences for said action.  How much of our laziness is based on not wanting to take risk and wanting to be comfortable?  During times of waiting God is calling us out of our comfort zone and to take risk Godly and appropriate risk. In essence laziness is the antithesis of holy waiting

   The third idea is that waiting is preparedness.  What I mean by this is that during this time, God is preparing us for what is next.  This often means character refinement, whether it is removing something that is ungodly or installing something that is Godly or what is needed in the next phase of life.  This also could mean a time of healing and or rest.  There are times when as people, we need a break, not to do nothing, but to refuel and to recharge.  God knows our specific needs and to use a tech term, during this time, God is providing an update on us, and holy waiting is taking this update and putting it into practice.  Even the Apostle Paul did some holy waiting.  After his conversion in Acts 9, he disappeared for about three years, before he began his public ministry and missionary trips.  God was preparing him during this time to boldly proclaim the Gospel.

   The fourth idea of waiting is alienation.  During this time of waiting, we often feel that we are in the valley and God is nowhere to be found.  There are two truths I think we need to remember.  The first one is that God does not abandoned us.  Our faith is like a tree, the only way for it to grow and for the roots to grow deeper is for a dry season to come.  The lack of rain forces the roots to dig deeper to find water, and when it is found, the tree will grow.  The deeper the roots, the more sturdy the tree is and less likely it is to be blown over in a storm.  That’s the same way with our faith, the more sturdy or mature our faith is, the less likely we are fall to heresy and things that are false.  In essence, we learn who we are and what our purpose is.  The second part of this is that the valley provides grass and nourishment.  We all love the mountain top experiences, but here is the thing, the nutrition and air is rather thin up there.  If we stay up there to long, we will either suffocate or starve to death.  Basketball players like Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan are known for being two of the best and most decorated basketball players of all time with a work ethic that was really hard to match.  What got them there is spending time in the gym putting up the countless shots, running the countless drills, and spending time in the weight room.  What got them their awards, praises, and endorsement deals was during their time of waiting during the offseason was spent working on becoming better.  Our relationship with God and our growth and maturity is more important than any job.  This doesn’t mean we all should go live in a monastery and pray all day because our emotional, spiritual, and physical growth and maturity will affect who we become and how we live our life on a daily basis and how we interact with others and perform our duties. 

    The fourth idea is focus.  It allows us to find out what is important and what is enjoyable and needs to go away.  In essence, holy waiting is spring cleaning for our lives.  It is allowing God to find those things that are not so attractive or down right ugly in our lives and either remove them or do a total makeover.  When this happens, we tend to become focused on what is important.  This is where we start to develop a plan and how we are going to execute it.  It is learning to to thirst for righteousness and learning to seek God with everything we have. My hope and prayer is that our holy waiting can be summed up in the third verse of Matt Redman’s song Better is One Day

My heart and flesh cry out
For You, the living God
Your Spirit's water to my soul
I've tasted and I've seen
Come once again to me
I will draw near to You
I will draw near to You

    To finish up this blog, I will end with the passage I started with. For those who wait on God, our strength will be renewed and we will not grow weary or fain of doing good.  This time of waiting, we learn not to rely on ourselves but to rely on God.  To quote John the Baptist, He must increase and I must decrease.