It’s mid-morning on a February Saturday, and I’m sitting in the sunroom of our house looking at a dreary scene outside. The sky is grey and a raw and a cold wind is blowing. The trees and shrubs in the backyard are mostly bare, and the grass is brown and limp. The world looks like it’s hibernating and will be for at least another month or two – depending on where you live and on whether or not a certain rodent saw its shadow.
Unless you’re a northerner who prefers winter cold and snow over summer heat and rain, winter is depressing. It feels like it’s cold and dead, even though it is waiting for and anticipating spring – the arrival of new life.
Those dreary, dormant winter months are vital for nature to reset. It’s like a gestation period for new life. Beneath the surface, seeds are beginning to sprout, trees and flowers are preparing new buds and leaves. Animals are pregnant with their young.
Since I’m inclined to be thinky, the “dreary world in waiting” strikes me as a word picture of one of the hardest disciplines Christians must learn: waiting on God.
If you’re an action-and-task-oriented person like me, waiting is hard. I look back on periods of my life when no doors opened for ministry or work and it frustrated me. It felt like time was a-wasting when I could have been doing so many useful things for the Lord.
I’ve had to learn that waiting and wasting time are not the same thing. On the contrary. Waiting by God’s design is productive – just like winter as it awaits spring and prepares for new life beneath its surface. On the other hand, you can waste time by being busy with things that you weren’t meant to do.
The Bible mentions waiting on God a lot. We have no space to list all the verses that talk about it, but here is a smattering:
Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!
Psalm 27:14
And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father.
Acts 1:4
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
I waited patiently for the Lord; And He inclined to me and heard my cry.
Psalm 40:31
The all imply two things: waiting can be productive, and waiting has a reward. Just like winter when creation is productive preparing her grand return and gives us the reward of spring with new flowers, foliage, and baby animals that warm our hearts.
What is so productive about waiting on the Lord? There are several things that I can think of. Things I’ve learned to appreciate when I learned that waiting is not wasting time:
- Waiting teaches us to trust God’s timing, which is always perfect. Sometimes we have to wait for Him to prepare an answer to our prayers and at other times He has to prepare us for an answer to those prayers. Often, it’s both!
- Waiting is a time of consecration. When we wait, we think constantly about what we’re waiting for. As we wait for God to act or to guide us, our attention is constantly riveted on Him so we won’t miss anything He says or does. It’s a time for us to draw near to Him, shut out distractions, and listen to His voice telling us new things or old things anew.
- Waiting is a time of preparation. When Israel was camped at the river Jordan, ready to finally cross over to the promised land, they had to wait for God to work upstream to lessen the flow of water so they could cross. While they waited, they worshipped, consecreated themselves, listened to specific instructions, and prepared for the crossing. No sitting still, idling, or getting bored while waiting.
- Waiting is a time for introspection and pruning. When we get frustrated with having to wait, the Holy Spirit begins to point out why, and why our frustration is not good. We begin to see things in ourselves we need to confess and yield to His and purifying changing hand so that fruit of the Spirit like patience and self control can develop in us.
- Waiting is a time of growth. Anticipating as yet unseen things grows the patience of our faith in an always unseen God. The first time is hard but with each time we are more at rest knowing that our past experience of His faithfulness will be repeated.
- Waiting deepens our gratitude. A friend of our works for Disney and divulged that they purposely keep the lines for attractions long so people enjoy them more. When the lines get too short they even shut down some rides so the lines get long again. They know the psychology that prolonged anticpation leads to greater enjoyment once they finally get on the ride. The same goes for our waiting on God. When a new door opens, or a long-standing prayer is answered, we appreciate them more and are more grateful to God for the answer.
- Waiting is rewarded. “Good things come to those who wait,” goes the saying. God rewards our waiting with His best as He honors our faith. If we get impatient and take matters into our own hands just to do something and see some results, He will graciously step aside and let us, but it is never His best. “Apart from Me you can do nothing,” said Jesus in John 15:5. Complete dependence on God to work in us, for us, and through us leads to better and greater things we could ever have dreamed of.
We live in a world that hates waiting. We stare at the microwave because it takes too long to heat up our food. Everything around us wants instant gratification and tells us we’re entitled to that. What we get is quick results but it comes at a price: a fast pace of life that leads to stress, haste, anxiety, restlessness, and the inability to stop and smell the roses. I’ve been there – I’ve lived most of my life in a hurry – always running to the next thing.
What we miss is inner peace, gratitude, deeper faith, patience. And above all – the deeper joy of an unhurried experience with God, for Whom time does not exist.
As you look out of your window today and you think about winter as a cold, unpleasant time of waiting necessary to produce new life we get to enjoy in spring, ask God: what is it teaching me about waiting for You?
Photo credit: Joel Holland/Unsplash.com