WAITING ON THE LORD

 

 

One of the most puzzling things about the Bible is the promised blessings for obedience and the curses for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28,29). Well, what’s so puzzling about them? Often, the Psalmists lament at seeing that the evil are blessed and the righteous cursed:

 

·       For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind. (Psalm 73:3-5)

 

He therefore was tormented by what he had been observing:

 

·       All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. (Psalm 73:13)

 

Are the promised blessings for the righteous a vain hope? Should we instead live like the unrighteous do? The Psalmist finally was comforted by a divine revelation and enabled to see the big picture:

 

·       When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. (Psalm 73:21-24)

 

What made the difference? God had enabled him to see the eternal reward. The promised blessings would be fulfilled in heaven. Therefore, the Bible instructs us to have patience and wait:

 

·       Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices! (Psalm 37:5-7)

 

One source claimed, “The word “wait” appears 139 times throughout the books of the Bible.” Clearly, patience and waiting are thoroughly Biblical:

 

·       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 40:31)

 

Therefore, we shouldn’t be discouraged if our prayers seem to go unanswered, and we are afflicted as Paul had been (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). Meanwhile, we are required to persevere in well-doing:

 

·       And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. (Galatians 6:9)

 

If we receive immediate blessings when sowing our good deeds, do not expect to receive an immediate payoff in the future:

 

·       Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains… (James 5:7)

 

Waiting is the norm, despite the claims that we should expect immediate prayer results:

 

·       Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame; they shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous...Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long. (Psalm 25:3, 5)

 

We are required to suffer as Christ had (2 Corinthians 4:10-11). Therefore, our Reward is not to be found in this world. Instead, like Jesus, we endure by looking to the next world:

 

·       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. (Hebrews 12:2)

 

Nevertheless, along with the painful trials, our Savior will also deliver us, in due time, to teach us to trust in Him:

 

·       No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

 

But God often doesn’t provide the “way of escape” on the next block. He has His own timetable (1 Peter 5:10).

 

If we are prepared to wait, we will not so easily become discouraged. If we expect immediate results, we might think that something is terribly wrong with what God had promised or even our faith.

 

Why do we have trouble waiting? I think that one big reason is that we fail to understand the need for it. Therefore, we grieve when we have to endure “needless” suffering.

 

Perhaps we are relying too much on our own limited reasoning, but we are warned against this:

 

·       Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding…Be not wise in your own eyes. (Proverbs 3:5, 7)

 

Sometimes, I am wise in my own eyes. I had to endure four setbacks due to lower back spasms, and I could see no purpose in it! Result—anger and despair. Instead, I had to remind myself that my Savior has a blessed purpose for it (Romans 8:28) preparing me for heaven:

 

·       For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. (2 Corinthians 4:17)

 

We might not be able to see it, but we must praise Him for it (Romans 5:2-5). We must grow in the appreciation of how little we know (1 Corinthians 8:2). Then, we will be more willing to trust in what the Lord knows.

PATIENCE, ENDURANCE, AND THE NATURE OF FAITH

Faith often tells us to wait, to endure without seeing the prayed-for results. Abraham had to wait for 25 years to receive the promised son, Isaac. Although he had been commended for his faith (Rom. 4), he often despaired and crashed. After several years of residence in the Promised Land, he despaired of having a son and made his servant, Eliezar, his heir. However, God renewed His promise to Abraham that he would have a son.

Although he believed God (Gen. 15:6), he again despaired and jumped on his wife's suggestion to sleep with her Servant girl, Hagar, to have their son by her. 

Once again, God had to reaffirm His promise of a son to Abraham. However, at this time, Abraham was 99 and his wife no longer had her period. Therefore, he laughed in disbelief (Gen. 17).

However, the next year, both Abraham and his wife Sarah were able to laugh in joy at the birth of their Isaac, meaning "laughter."

We too are made to endure discouragements that place our faith at the breaking point. We, therefore, clutch at our "Eliezars" and sleep with our "Hagars," anything to fill the aching void. We pursue our goals by placing our hope in all the wrong things - secular therapy, unbiblical lifestyles, and mindfulness meditation. 

However, life's discouragements are all part of our Lord's program:

·       “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:6-7)

Our Lord is always in the process of refining our faith so that our hope will be invested in Him alone. Moses became so discouraged with God. He had risked everything for the sake of liberating his people, Israel, and lost it all. He fled to Midian where he became a lowly shepherd. He was so discouraged with God that, when God encountered him in the midst of the burning bush 40 years later and instructed him to return to Egypt to perform the very task that had been in his heart, Moses refused God.

However, God has a blessed purpose for what He makes us endure. During these painful 40 years, God had made Moses into the humblest of men (Num. 12:3), so humble that he understood God beyond what others understood (Num. 12:8). 

We too need to understand the ways of God, lest we despair and lose hope. However, even when we do, our God remains faithful. He restored Abraham, Moses, and even the most righteous Job, who had brought many ignorant indictments against God in the midst of his suffering. However, God humbled him and then restored him.

We too will be humbled through the trials we must endure. However, this is only preparation for something far greater:

·       “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” (Hebrews 12:11)

Therefore, let us brace ourselves for what might be a long wait!

Waiting for God, even through the Tears

Thirty five years ago, a young man made an altar call. He was very troubled about his new life in Christ and prayed:

• Lord, I’m willing to serve you, but I just don’t see how I can. I don’t have any desire to serve. It all seems too burdensome to me.

He made this same altar call on numerous occasions. Not only didn’t he have the desire to serve, but he also felt entirely alienated from other Christians. They seemed to think differently than he. Their experiences didn’t match his own. It felt as if he occupied an entirely different world from theirs.

This also contributed to his sense of isolation from Jesus and his doubts that he was even saved. All of this tormented him, and he wondered why his new found Savior wasn’t answering his prayers. Was there something irremediably wrong with him?

He was sure that there was. He had suffered from years of depression and panic attacks, and it therefore seemed that either God really didn’t love him that much or that He couldn’t do anything about his weaknesses.

However, imperceptibly, things began to change. Jesus told a parable about growth. He compared it to seeds that grow by themselves without the knowledge and assistance of the farmer (Mark 4:26-28). It didn’t matter whether the farmer remained awake or asleep, this mysterious growth would continue. And it has!

Surprisingly, now there is nothing I’d rather do than to serve my God. I am consumed by this endeavor. Every joy I have is somehow connected to this occupation. Every hope is enslaved by it. However, this doesn’t mean that I no longer have struggles. In fact, He continues to give growth to His seed through my weakness (2 Cor. 12:9-10), even my incomprehension (2 Cor. 4:1-11).

Consequently, I remain a man of many weaknesses. I struggle with my highly negative, irritable, critical, anxious and angry nature. This hasn’t made me easy to live with; nor has it made me the ideal husband. For years I’ve prayed that I wouldn’t be so negative towards my wife and instead cherish her as the precious gift God had given me.

Oddly, I’d feel very tender and warm towards her when we were apart, even for a few hours. She would appear so lovely to me. But when we’d reconnect, I’d find that the spell had been broken, and I was helpless to change this.

However, the seed of God’s planting continued to grow and the warm glow I’d experience when we were apart began to invade our times together.

How could such a thing happen? Certainly not by my manipulations! It happened as I sleep; it grew even as I doubted.

Why do I write about this now? To glorify our Savior and to pass onto you the encouragement of the Psalmist:

• As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, till he shows us his mercy. (Psalm 123:2)

Just wait for Him! Praise the Lord!

“Been There, Done That: Christ Didn’t Work for Me!”

In the course of blogging, I encounter many people who claim,

• Well, I tried Christ and it didn’t work for me!

Many are relieved that Christ “didn’t work.” Consequently, they are now free to live their lives in any manner that they want. However, for others, I sense that this had been a genuine disappointment. They might be angry and defiantly demand proof of God’s existence, but there also seems to be a genuine longing and recognition that their lives are incomplete without God. Many talked of a personal crisis insisting, “He wasn’t there for me when I really needed Him!”

What can we say? Their experience (and the interpretation they place on it) trumps anything we can say. Sadly, we – even Christians – wrongly interpret our experiences. We have wrong expectations about how God will work.

One of the most glaring examples of this comes out of the “prosperity gospel.” According to this heresy, we merely need to follow certain laws, and God will automatically empty His bank into our lap to satisfy our every need, right now!

However, He doesn’t always work this way, and this isn’t the true Gospel. Consequently, many walk away from such churches deeply disappointed, convinced that “God didn’t work” for them.

We all have to labor through our faulty expectations about our Savior and His sometimes mysterious ways. After battling against decades of depression, I was mistakenly convinced that, now with Christ on my side, depression would vanish into nothing more than a distant memory. It didn’t. It even found a new companion – panic attacks – which devastated me for years.

It was apparent that Christ hadn’t “worked for me” – that He even despised me. However, I had nowhere else to go. There was no other hope. I had tried five highly recommended psychologists and psychiatrists, each having terminal degrees, and each had left me worse off than I had been before.

I had never imagined that a person could experience so much pain. I became dysfunctional and found it difficult to even carry on a conversation. I saw death as the only escape from my suffering, since God, evidently, was indifferent to my prayers. My faith was no more substantial than cloths on a line during a tornado. However, there was no other place where I could turn.

During many sleepless nights, I couldn’t even pray or read the Bible. I would simply lie in bed with the Bible on my chest, hoping, against all reason and experience, that somehow this God would have pity for me.

I would try to read the Bible, but it was just words. However, at other times, a simple phrase like, “And God heard him,” would suddenly come alive. No, it actually exploded into a burst of light, burning away all the cobwebs. In a mere second, all of the clouds of depression and panic were driven away – far away. As hard as I would look for them, they could no longer be found. For the day, at least, they had been driven away by a force that transcended anything I could understand.

The depression and panic would return, but so too would these Scripture-borne bursts of healing light. However, they were never at my beck-and-call. Instead, they came as directed by an invisible hand.

I no longer experience these bursts, but perhaps my Lord has deemed that I no longer need them. Perhaps He now expects me to walk by faith and not be sight.

Yet, I am still waiting for Him to address other needs – painful needs. However, I’ve learned some critical truths. Abraham had to wait 24 years for his promised son, Isaac. Along the way, he often despaired of the promise of God. Moses had to wait 40 years for God to equip him to lead His people out of Egypt. Moses had so thoroughly given up on God, that he resisted God’s plan for him to deliver Israel out of bondage.

Waiting in darkness builds character. Passing through the “valley of the shadow of death” is a requirement for spiritual maturity, and it’s going to hurt. Paul warned:

• But we have this treasure [of God and salvation] in jars of clay [our sordid lives] to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. (2 Cor. 4:7-11)

Sometimes, God does answer our prayers immediately, but most of the time, He doesn’t. We therefore need to wait patiently. This is a central theme of many of the Psalms. King David even had to lecture himself to wait patiently:

• Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. (Psalm 42:11)

Waiting doesn’t come easily or naturally. It usually brings out the worst in us. It brought out the worst in Job. He had lost everything and couldn’t understand why. He therefore wrongly charged God with injustice. Finally after much waiting, Job had a private, yet humbling audience with God. Afterwards, the humbled Job was blessed with far beyond anything he had had previously.

We need the right expectations or else we will despair. Peter warned:

• Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. (1 Peter 4:12)

Suffering and the waiting for God to respond is clearly not “something strange.” It is God’s modus operandi.

However, it is also His MO that, “any who come to Him, He will in no way cast them out.” (John 6:37)

I wish I could say more to those who have despaired of God. I guess this essay is just my feeble attempt.

Our Pain and His Promises: How to Bridge the Gap

Have you experienced that seemingly impassable divide between your present circumstances and God’s promises of love, joy, peace, healing and deliverance? I certainly have. For years, I was unable to experience any of my Savior’s promises. Depression and panic attacks tore so violently at me that going to church was a torment.

It seemed to me that everyone else was a spiritual winner and I was the biggest looser. They were realizing God’s blessings in their lives and I wasn’t, or so it seemed. Compounding my problems, I was convinced that there was something horribly the matter with me.

Similarly, a friend informed me that he had been experiencing the unceasing torment of same-sex attraction. He had become a sex-addict and found himself unable to escape the cycle of shame and guilt followed by praying for the Lord’s deliverance. His life was entirely removed from God’s unreachable promises of deliverance.

Unfulfilled hope grows faint, and many seek greener pastures elsewhere. How, then, can we grasp hold of the reality of God’s promises when they seem so far off – so ephemeral like a desert mirage? First, we need to realize that we are not alone:

·        No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. (1 Cor. 10:13)

In fact, the burdens that we bare are the same ones with which the Psalmists also struggled. In a typical lament, the Psalmist lays out the problem. He begins by citing the promises of God in God’s own words:

·        I will maintain my love to him [David] forever, and my covenant with him will never fail… I will not violate my covenant or alter what my lips have uttered…that his line will continue forever and his throne endure before me like the sun; it will be established forever like the moon, the faithful witness in the sky." (Psalm 89:28-37)

Once the Psalmist recaps God’s glory, faithfulness and promises, he then brings his angry indictments against God:

·        But you have rejected, you have spurned, you have been very angry with your anointed one. You have renounced the covenant with your servant and have defiled his crown in the dust. You have broken through all his walls and reduced his strongholds to ruins… O Lord, where is your former great love, which in your faithfulness you swore to David? (Psalm 89:38-40)

He charged that God has failed to fulfill His promises – that Israel is now in ruins, seemingly contradicting God’s promises of unabated future glory. This raises a related problem. Is there a contradiction in God’s Word? Is it therefore untrustworthy? Are the Psalms no more than an expression of the human struggle and not completely the Word of God?

Indeed, we are faced with what appears to be a bold-faced contradiction: The Psalmist cites God as saying, “I will not violate my covenant or alter what my lips have uttered,” but the Psalmist charges, “You have renounced the covenant!” Contradiction, right?

Not necessarily! Scripture often contains errant human statements to make its point. Job’s three friends had stated many things that were wrong. Besides, when God appeared to correct Job, He charged that Job had stated many things wrong about God!

Does this mean that we can no longer trust Scripture? Well, no! However, we first have to determine the overall purpose of the book. The Book of Job demonstrated that we all have our breaking point, even the most righteous of men. In Job’s case, his suffering brought his self-righteousness to the surface. He eventually repented of his wild charges against God.

Likewise, in the Psalms, in an inerrant manner, God brings to the surface human errant sentiments and statements. In the case of Psalm 89, the Psalmist concluded his indictments with a simple statement of trust: “Praise be to the Lord forever! Amen and Amen.”

This is perplexing! How can the Psalmist conclude with praise to a God who he knows to be unfaithful? He can’t! Instead, at the end of his diatribe, the Psalmist reaffirmed his faith in God despite the tremendous chasm between God’s promises and Israel’s present disappointing reality.

However, despite the apparent contradiction, the Psalmist reasserts his faith in the God of Israel and reassures himself that there is a resolution to the tension, albeit obscured by his God.

In another Psalm, the Psalmist receives the answer to his dilemma – a divine revelation. He too had experienced the seemingly impassable chasm. While Scripture clearly taught the blessedness of those who followed their God, the Psalmist perceived that it was the other way around – that the evil were receiving all of the blessings! He temporarily concluded that he was wasting his time serving God:

·        Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence. (Psalm 73:13) 

However, after God had bridged the impassable chasm between reality and promise, by way of revelation, everything was then changed for the Psalmist. He was enabled to see the big picture in which God resolved everything - the puzzle fit together and every mountain and impassable chasm became a highway into His presence:

·        I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:22-26)

We are all ‘brute beasts” before God. We are all so undeserving of His mercy. Our Lord uses the tension between our painful and humbling present reality and His promises of glory to reveal this to us. He uses this protracted waiting period to kindle within us a knowledge and a longing for Him alone:

·        Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12-13)

If life is too comfortable here – if there is no tension between reality and promise – we will not “be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” Instead, we would probably apply for a time extension – “Come back in a couple of months. I’m not ready yet!”

My friend had to persevere in faith for years, but finally he was delivered from the torments of same-sex attraction. Sadly, many have not persevered. Perhaps they had the false expectation that reality and promise would immediately come together and therefore became overly discouraged.

In the midst of my many-year struggle with depression and panic attacks, I had forsaken any hope of deliverance. It just didn’t seem that the gulf between my reality and His promises could ever be breached. Fortunately, I had tried everything else out, and everything had proved an unmitigated disappointment. Therefore, I had nowhere else to go and continued to camp out at God’s doorstep. The door was closed but perhaps it might open. It wasn’t much of a hope, but it was my only hope. Meanwhile, the Psalmist counsels, “wait!”

·        I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. (Psalm 27:13-14)

How then do we bridge the gap? Sometimes, the only thing we can do is wait. (But sometimes, it might also be “Repent, and follow Me!”)

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