How often do we want to move to the next thing in our life? However, God’s ways are not our ways. God desires that we add patience to our life. God speaks to us and gives us hope and that hope is what enables us to wait on the Lord. He does not want just our minds to wait upon HIM but also our souls. We must lay down our own ambitions in order to receive the promises of God.
“I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, And in His word I do hope.” ~ Psalm 130:5
When we don’t see God intervening to fix our problems or answer our prayers in a timely manner, we begin to wonder if He is just too busy. We wonder if He is ‘overbooked’, with too many people with bigger, more important problems. We begin to wonder if maybe He cares about other people more than us, because it appears He is answering their prayers before ours, and that doesn’t seem fair. We begin to wonder if God is even in, because if He were, wouldn’t we have seen a glimpse of Him by now? We may even begin to wonder if we should try to handle or fix the problems on our own.
Unfortunately this game of idle spiritual waiting can lead to a lot of wondering. Wondering that can lead us away from God, as we focus on our expectations of timeliness, instead of His implementation of perfect timing. Waiting is simply not something any of us want, or like, to do. In fact, our minds are not even programmed to wait on anything anymore, due to living in this land of immediate gratification
Living in this age of instant gratification makes waiting on anything hard to do – especially waiting on God. As we pace around in God’s waiting room, waiting on Him to call our name, we can easily become frustrated with His perceived inactivity and silence, and His seemingly unhurried pace.
Maybe you find yourself in Gods waiting room today. Maybe it is a new place for you, or maybe it is a room you have spent a lot of time in, just waiting. Waiting to see the One who has the authority and the power to fix your problems, grant your wishes, answer your prayers, heal your hurts, ease your heartaches, fill you with peace and make your dreams come true. And that waiting – is hard – yet, during the wait, we can choose whether our minds wander to a happy place, or an ugly place. We can choose to wonder about Gods will and His timing, or we can choose to wonder whether or not His will and His timing matters. We can choose to wonder about how we can stand strong in our faith, or we can choose to wonder if faith is all its cracked up to be. We can choose to wonder about which verses in God’s Word may apply to our situation, or we can choose to wonder if Gods Word is really applicable anymore. We can choose to wonder about how God is going to act, or we can choose to wonder about whether or not He will act at all.
Waiting is not a matter of time, it is a matter of faith and trust. It is an opportunity for us to lay everything at the foot of the cross, and trust God, or to turn our backs on Him and walk away, assuming that since we do not see Him working, He is not really there.
Waiting is at the core of the Christian life, as we expectantly wait to see how He will carry out His will in our lives. It can be an opportunity to build our faith, trust and hope in Him, as we obey His commandment to wait on His timing, and His will for our lives.
Waiting requires trusting that God knows, even when we are feeling impatient. Are you in Gods waiting room today? If so, let your mind wander…..about the hope that can be found through Him; the trust that you can place in Him because He holds the answers to all things; the peace that surpasses understanding; the excitement that you will feel once you can see how God has been sitting right beside you in the waiting room all along; and most importantly, to the perfect timing of His answer when it does finally come.
A Safe Harbor is Jesus 