PATIENTLY WAITING FOR THE LORD

Patience was once considered a virtue. However, many voices within our right-now culture are claiming that there is something that matter if you have to wait.

The mystic and author of Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster, claimed that if you have to wait to receive your requests from God, you are not praying properly:

·       Often we assume we are in contact [with God] when we are not…Often people will pray and pray with all the faith in the world, but nothing happens. Naturally, they are not contacting the channel [of God]. We begin praying for others by first centering down and listening to the quiet thunder of the Lord of hosts. Attuning ourselves to divine breathings is spiritual work, but without it our praying is vain repetition. Listening to the Lord is the first thing…(34)

Often, “nothing happens” for many years. Abraham had to wait 25 years for the birth of his promised son, Isaac. Moses had despaired of waiting for God. However, 40 years later, God appeared to him in a burning bush to call him to do the very thing that Moses had wanted to do 40 years earlier.

More recently, Jay-Z taunted us:

·       “Hands up, how many Christians here have prayed to God for years and aint gotten nothing back, just silence and emptiness? Be honest. It’s OK.”

·       “I’m telling you this because I know you guys look up to me and want to emulate me. I will give you this one guarantee, if you start following the doctrine of Lucifer, you will taste success. The secret of the universe opens up to you. It is immediate and glorious.” https://newspunch.com/jay-z-jesus-fake-lucifer/

Jay-Z and Foster hit us in a place of vulnerability. Many of us have become discouraged with waiting and suspect that there must be something wrong. We pray, but it often doesn’t seem as if anything is happening. Sometimes, we are suffering so much that we are desperate for an answer, any answer. It is at these times that we must remind ourselves of certain truths:

We are expected to wait. It’s part of God’s plan. Here are just several of the Biblical expectations about this:

• For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. (Hebrews 10:36)

Even the Psalmists had problems with waiting and had to reassure themselves that the Lord would fulfill His promises:

·       I believe that I shall look upon 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! (Psalm 27:13-14)

The Lord hears us even when we feel that He doesn’t and resolve to take matters into our own hands:

·       Do not say, “I will repay evil”; wait for the LORD, and he will deliver you. (Proverbs 20:22)

There are reasons that the Lord causes us to wait:

·       He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:29-31)

All of this depends upon waiting for the Lord. I would like to tell Jay-Z and Foster that waiting is an essential part of God’s program.

God accomplishes much as we patiently endure suffering for His sake:

·       Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:3-5)

Patience in suffering also produces Christ-like-ness:

·       We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. (2 Corinthians 4:8-11)

Our affliction doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love us but that He does:

·       It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. (Hebrews 12:7-8)

Meditate on verses about His love. We tend to feel like failures as we suffer from pain or deprivation. This is why we need to change our focus onto His love. Paul therefore prays that we:

·       …know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:19)

If our Savior had died for us when we were His enemies, how much more now:

·       but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Romans 5:8-10)

When we know that He truly loves us, we can endure the rejections of the world. He actually hears our cries for help:

·       When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. (Psalm 34:17-18)

Our Savior is working all things together for our good (Romans 8:28). As we wait, we need to reassure ourselves of this fact. Why? Because it doesn’t feel that there is any value in waiting! Just think about the doubts that Job had to experience. When we understand that waiting is a positive and not a negative, we can better endure.

By ourselves, we can do nothing to solve our problems. However, we obsessively feel that we should be able to alleviate or overcome our problems. Instead, Jesus counsels us about our helplessness:

·       “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:4-5; 2 Corinthians 3:5)

Accepting the fact of our helplessness allows us to more readily rest in Him as we wait. Sometimes struggling can be like fighting to get free from quicksand – the harder we struggle, the quicker we sink. Instead, we just have to float.:

·       “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. (Psalm 46:10-11)

We endure by looking beyond our present circumstances to our assured hope:

·       looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. (Hebrews 12:2-3)

Don’t be tempted to think that you don’t have enough faith. You only need the smallest measure (Luke 17:5-6).

I too will be meditating on these verses tonight.