Waiting

Waiting


Have you ever given much thought to how much time we spend waiting? We wait on the alarm clock in the mornings. We wait for the meeting to start. Children wait for birthdays and Christmas to roll around. We wait for our spouses or friends so we can get on the road. We wait for our vacation to roll around and we wait to get to our desired destination. We wait at the drive through. We wait in line at the supermarket. We wait in lines at the amusement park for a thirty second ride.
How many times have you found yourself waiting on God for something? They say patience is a virtue but it has never really been mine. Because patience does not come easy for me guess what God has continually orchestrated in my life? You guessed it. I was given continual opportunities to learn patience by waiting on Him.
The frustrating thing about this is that what seems like forever to us as we wait on Him to speak or intervene may only be seconds or minutes with God. One day is a thousand years and a thousand years is as one day with God. [II Pet 3:8] Time seems to drag by so slowly when you are waiting.
Last week I had to drive over to Fort Worth. When I came to I-35 from Highway 287 I hit a traffic jam. It took me thirty minutes to drive about three or four miles. Everything in me wanted to GO and I could tell I was not alone. We crept along at less than ten miles per hour. I thought we would never get moving again.
That’s how it feels at times when you are waiting on God. Everything seems to come to a grinding halt and we find ourselves staring at our watches wanting time to speed up so we can get on with our lives. Think about it. Right now there are people waiting to get married. They may not even be dating but they cannot get wait to get married. There are on the other hand people who have been married and suffered through fights, affairs, abuse, and neglect and they cannot wait to be divorced. There are people with money jingling in their pockets that cannot wait to spend it while there are others who are dirt poor and can hardly wait to the next pay day in order to make ends meet. Students wait on the bell to ring to release them from the prison of class while prison inmates eagerly wait for the next class to begin to help pass the time while incarcerated.
Waiting and learning patience seems to have a great deal more to do with perspective than it does with our circumstances. In this life there are no shortage of circumstances that try our patience and force us to find ways to pass the time while we wait on the Lord. The Psalmist wrote in [Ps 37:34] Wait for the Lord and keep His way, and He will exalt you to inherit the land; when the wicked are cut off, you will see it. [Ps 40:1-2] is also good medicine for the soul. I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay; and He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.
Of all the verses on the waiting on the Lord in the Bible I think my favorite two are found in [Ps 27:13-14] I would have despaired (or quit and given up) unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord.
I remember preaching these two verses at FBC Brock after they lost their pastor. The church was in a good deal of turmoil which also mirrored the turmoil in my heart as not being able to find God’s appointed church for Brenda and I. My great friend Eric Adcock served as the youth minister in that church and had invited me to come preach months before. As we drove up from East Texas I kept sensing I was to preach about waiting on the Lord as well as believing the goodness of the Lord. In mind I began to entertain the thought of possibly serving as the pastor of that church. I had been waiting and now as a church they were waiting on the Lord to provide them with a new pastor as well. Little did I know about that same time in a town about forty five minutes away they were in the beginning stages of going through an intentional interim pastor to heal some wounds and to prepare for the future. Brock never asked for my resume and I was forced to learn to keep on waiting patiently.
Now, that I can see from the perspective of hindsight I am so glad the Lord had me wait because He was preserving me for FBC Paradise. At times during that waiting period I grew extremely impatient and thought I would never see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. During that waiting period, God build enduring trust in my soul. It was a painful and often I fought every lesson kicking and screaming but now I can see God was at work in my life during the waiting period preparing me for my destiny.
When the Lord is forcing us to patiently tarry with Him, we think He is not doing anything on our behalf. Nothing could be further from the truth. He is building character in us during those seasons. We want the character but want to skip the process. It doesn’t work that way. There are things that can only be built in us through the painful process of refining and the stripping of dross from our lives. It hurts and cuts us deeply but during this waiting period God is actually working for our good.
Many people give up in the waiting period. Their faith wanes and they grow impatient and take matters into their own hands which never honors God and often leads to devastation. Courage is lost and resilient strength fades. How many times have you and I been right there. The Psalmist tells us to do just the opposite. In our times of waiting we are be strong. That word means be alert and steadfastly minded. If we are to be steadfastly minded we must take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. [II Cor 10:5] In doing this we do not give into the thoughts of despair and gloom planted by Satan. We refuse to dwell on thoughts that breed unbelief and doubt. We resolutely determine to be steadfast in our belief that we will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. The word goodness means; the best, beauty, and welfare. When we steadfastly set our minds on the belief that God is going to bring something beautiful and bring His best to us even if we have to wait on it, doesn’t that give hope?
In God preserving me to serve as the pastor of FBC Paradise I can testify that God gave me His best and I have seen His beauty all over this congregation and community. But it takes courage to believe that. It takes guts to look at circumstances and not give into defeat when you have been praying and praying, waiting and waiting, trusting and trusting and nothing seems to change. The word courage means to be obstinate and to fortify. That is what should be happening as we wait on the Lord. We should become obstinate that what we have been trusting God for will come to pass in His time and according to His purpose.
This was all brought home to me in a very real way yesterday. As many of you know I feel a deep sense of call to write as I do to preach. I believe it is a calling God instilled in my heart even before He called me to preach. Over the years I dabbled at writing but about twelve years ago I took that calling seriously. I wrote and published a book entitled Only Believe. I wrote it out of my real life experiences and the Lord used it to touch many people. A couple of years later I wrote another book Life on the Altar. It was a much harder book than the first one but people seemed to be challenged by it. In both cases I had asked God for the money to publish the books and God supplied the money.
Not long after writing Life on the Altar I busied myself with starting a new church and did not have the time or the inspiration to write another book. During this period the Lord began birthing the thought of another book with a title; Behold the Faithfulness of God. I worked at it off and on and eventually completed a manuscript only to lose the disk. Later I tried to rewrite it but gave it part way in because I did not feel God’s inspiration on it. Several years later I started work on that same book for the third time. While I wrote I prayed. I prayed and prayed that the Lord would open the door to publish that book as well. I asked the Lord to do however He wanted. I actually sent the completed manuscript to two different publishers. No doors opened. I made pleas in my No Compromise Ministries newsletter for help to publish the book but there was only one response to that appeal for $500 in eight years. I waited and wrote other things while begging the Lord to publish that book. One month turned into six and six months into a year and a year into two and so forth. All that time I was waiting and at one point I lost heart. I quit writing and thought my books would not be published until after I was dead and gone.
One day a few weeks ago I became obstinate in my faith and looked at that mountain that stood in the way of my getting the book published. The Lord challenged me to do something. First, I was to give all the profits from the sales of that book to our church building fund. Secondly, I was to ask the church to believe with me for $10,000 to publish the book. I spoke to the mountain and obeyed the Lord in a Sunday morning service. I was encouraged to find that someone began giving $150 here and $125 there over the next several weeks.
While waiting I became even more resolute in my faith and steadfast in my belief that God wanted my book in print. I spoke to my mountain and asked that it be moved. Yesterday, the Lord allowed me to see His goodness in the land of the living. I received an email from our church treasurer telling me that someone had been giving to publish that book over the course of several weeks as I mentioned above. The total of those gifts was $925. The email went on to read that someone had made an anonymous gift of $9,000 to publish that book. I was stunned. All I could think was the long years of waiting on the Lord was finally over.
God was not finished though. Less than an hour later a lady dropped by my office and wrote out a check for the amount of $525 to No Compromise Ministries which will be used to publish the books. In one day the Lord gave $10,500 to make that long awaited dream a reality.
I write this to encourage you to keep waiting obstinately on the Lord in your circumstances. He will come through in time. You may have to wait and wait for a long time but He will come through. Take courage and be of good strength and believe that you will see His goodness in the land of the living as you wait.