I know that I’m in the middle of a series on “trust,” but since the topic is pretty much synonymous, I decided to include this bit on “waiting.” I wrote the following article for a prayer site that I’ve been developing:
Waiting is something synonymous with being human, and something that has been a muse for my creativity for some time now. I actually wrote a song entitled “Waiting” that is on my CD Depravity, Grace and Reckless Abandon. The lyrics go:
This road is dusty
And it’s getting to my eyes
So that I can’t see where I’m going
Or even the time
But I’ll trust in You
Though it feels hurtin’ to me
And though I can’t see
Job, Abraham and Sarah
We could talk for hours
About wishing that Your timing
Was a little closer to ours
But I’ll toast to You
With my rusty heart
And my cup that’s full of tears
Chorus:
Lord, I’m waiting, I’m waiting
For You to save the day
For You to hold this heart (repeat)
Walking for miles through mud and rain
Looking for the sun to rise
On a field so dry, I cannot feel
It’s as if something has died
So I’ll wait for You
With my hands tied
So that I can feel the joy of Your touch
And they that wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength
They will mount up with wings as eagles
They will run and not grow weary; they’ll walk and not faint
So teach me Lord…to wait
Lately I’ve been meditating on how waiting is God’s tool for developing character and fruit in the lives of His people.
::Coming to the end of ourselves::
It seems that (looking at Scripture) one common thread that ties every person to another is the fact that everyone waits.
Fact: no one (that I’ve met at least) likes waiting.
I’ve never once seen a person excited to go to an amusement park for the purpose of waiting in line. No, they go for the rides, the fun, maybe the food, but definitely for the pleasant memories. People tend to remember the fruit of their waiting, not the process itself. One may remember, “Oh, yeah, the line for that line was horribly long…but, the ride was awesome! It was so worth it!” We have technology so that we can get what we want, as quickly as we possibly can. Our food, our news, our communication (the internet, cell phones, etc.) – we live in a fast-food, information infused world with technology accelerating at an exponential rate. Things that make us wait are things that don’t survive the competitive market – the market for your attention.
It seems that this has affected our prayer lives. Maybe the truth of the matter is that many Christians (especially in the West) tend to live a prayer-less life because of the waiting. We want to talk to God, and hear from God, but don’t want to wait for the answer. The tendency has been to have mindsets of spiritual consumers, and God and His blessings are the commodities. The only problem is: it doesn’t seem that that is how God chooses to work. The consumer mindset seems to make us think that we inhabit crucial roles that God alone truly rules: Lord and provider.
In God’s graciousness, he is so kind to break us of our selfishness, when we yield to Him. The result? Trust, faith…joy. Frederick Buechner masterfully captures this in his book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as tragedy, comedy & fairy tale (1977)
And who are the few that hear it? They are the ones who labor and are heavy-laden like everybody else but who, unlike everybody else, know that they labor and are heavy-laden. They are the last people you might expect to hear it, themselves the bad jokes and stooges and scarecrows of the world, the tax collectors and whores and misfits. They are the poor people, the broken people, the ones who in terms of the world’s wisdom are children and madmen and fools…Rich or poor, successes or failures as the world counts it, they are the ones who are willing to believe in miracles because they know it will take a miracle to fill the empty place inside them where grace and peace belong with grace and peace. Old Sarah with her China teeth knows it will take a miracle to fill the empty place inside her where she waits for a baby that will never come, so when the angel appears and tells her a baby is coming she laughs and Abraham laughs with her because, having used up all their tears, they have nothing but laughter left. Because although what the angel says may be too good to be true, who knows? Maybe the truth of it is that it’s too good not to be true (p. 70-71).
Waiting often gets painful, lonely, and desperate, but it is a landscape for a miracle. God answers prayer, and as He does, it changes us, softens our hearts, and will redeem situations that we may have given up on.
::A call to voluntary weakness::
“We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield.” (Psalm 33:20)
“I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121:1-2)
Waiting is often a choice, we can choose to do it or we can try to concoct our own solutions to situations. However, if our desire is to see God move in power – the way He wants to – then our choice is already made up for us: we must wait. A quip that I would share in concerts before my song Waiting is, “When we wait until the last moment it’s called ‘procrastination,’ but when God does it it’s called ‘perfect timing,’ and I don’t think that’s fair. However, if I wanted what was fair, I’d be dead, because the wages of sin is death…so I guess I’ll wait…” Waiting goes against the fiber of a humanistic, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps society, however, it is still a tool that God uses for our transformation. Not only choosing waiting, but learning how to embrace it, is crucial for our lives – and a non-negotiable for our prayer lives. This doesn’t mean we have to necessarily enjoy the process, but we can find hope, joy, and strength in the fact that the outcome will be the Lord’s plans for us – and not our superficial solutions (which at the end of the day won’t satisfy the longings of our hearts).
Bob Sorge wrote in his book Unrelenting Prayer (2005), “Delayed answers by nature tend to cause us to lose heart. ‘Hope deferred make the heart sick’ (Proverbs 13:12). This heartsickness is a natural human response when we are waiting on God for a long time” (p. 4-5). In Psalm 130:5-6 the psalmist wrote, “I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.” There is a certain longing in our voluntary weakness that does not go unnoticed by God. He answers, He is faithful, and He is changing us – and our situations – in the process. Our heartsickness and our tears are not ignored either, they are acts of worship as we choose to wait, put God first, and declare that He is Lord and our provider.
The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD (Lamentations 3:25-26)
Reference:
Buechner, F. (1977). Telling the Truth: The Gospel as comedy, tragedy and fairy tale. N.Y.: HarperCollins Publishers.
Sorge, B. (2005). Unrelenting Prayer. Greenwood, M.O.: Oasis House