The Wait

The Wait

Psalm 27:14 "Wait upon the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord."

In the culture we live in, waiting is equated with futile and useless activity. We think that if we have to wait we must be resolving ourselves to nothingness and therefore it is a waste of time. We do everything we can to get into the shortest check-out line at the grocery store, we maneuver our cars at stoplights so that when the light turns green our wait will be shorter. We microwave everything! I even saw roast, potatoes, and carrots in the frozen food section of the grocery store a few weeks ago! The package had the audacity to have the words, "Slow Roasted", in bold print. To this cook, a roast in a bag in the frozen food section that can be on the table in seven minutes, is highly suspect! We microwave because we believe we don't have time to wait for normal cooking time. I think that often we have applied this same mentality to our spiritual lives, desiring to have a microwavable relationship with the Lord. When we realize, (like a good roast!) that it is going to be a slow cooker recipe, we decide on our own plan and agenda, then step out and ask God to bless it. I know that I have done this multiple times in my life. Still today, I am prone to my "come up with a plan", "work the plan", "get it done", mind set.


I am convinced that the biggest part of our lives are spent in waiting. In my own life I have waited for many things; for a season of life, for people, for answers, for direction, for a situation or circumstance to change, and the list could go on. Often, even after praying about these waits, I still found myself anxious and burdened. The problem has come when I make the object or focus of my wait, a phone call, a meeting, a change of circumstance or whatever it is I think I so desperately need. Scripture tells me over and over to "wait on the Lord". He is to be my focus and the object of my wait. I am told that in the wait He will allow me to gain new strength. This waiting is to have an expectation and hope tied to it. Not for some circumstance to change or someone to come through, but a hope and an expectation that is firmly rooted in the Lord Himself. The hope is that He is the blessed Controller of all things, that He has a plan, that He spoke the worlds into existence, so surely Kim's life is manageable! The expectation is rooted in the fact that He loves me, He is faithful, and He is always working things together for my good. I believe that He lovingly draws me into relationships and situations that cause me to seek Him and to wait on Him because I realize I am utterly helpless to change anything!

Presently, I am in a time of waiting. A "life waiting room", if you will. After 23 years of raising a family and following the Lord in ministry, we find ourselves back in the place where Jim and I were raised and most of our family lives. In June we left our place of ministry with only a few things in our pockets, a confidence that the Lord had said to go, a promise of His provision, and the knowledge we were to return to Oklahoma. In my mind I thought that it would be a short season and surely by August God would have spoken to us and given us an answer and direction. As the leaves are beginning to change and the north wind is blowing, I am reminded that our God is not confined by time or space and certainly not my calendar. I am choosing daily, really some days moment by moment, to not make the object of my wait, a meeting, a phone call, or an email that might have some determining factor in my future. But, to wait on the Lord, to make Him the focus of my wait, for He alone holds my present and my future. He alone gets to determine the length of the wait and the outcome. In the wait He reveals Himself! Everything else that I think I'm waiting for pales in comparison of finding Him in the wait.
My eyes are on You, My God, as a slave girl watches her master for the slightest of move and signal. (Psalm 123)

Isaiah 64:4, Psalm 25:3, Isaiah 40:28-31, Isaiah 26:8