Waiting Well
Are you good at waiting on God and His timing?
Verse of the Day
“Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”
Today’s Devotional
It’s happening. My patience is being tested. It started in some small ways the day I started writing about patience. The first test, which was that my computer decided to stop working, made me laugh. Today, I’m not laughing. I’m having to wait on God for an answer. My first response was to be grouchy. But as I spent some time with Him this morning, and wrote to Him in my journal, and chose to be grateful, and chose to be useful, my heart posture started to shift.
I love and I hate today’s verse all at the same time. (Hate might be too strong of a word when talking about God’s Word.) Waiting on God is hard. But, if God didn’t know it was hard, He wouldn’t tell us to be strong and take heart in the same breath as telling us to wait on Him.
Waiting is not a passive activity in my opinion. If I am waiting for God to move in a certain area, or waiting for an answer from Him, I am not just sitting around doing nothing else. I need to be seeking God constantly. I need to be active in my life loving God and others. I need to be searching for things to be grateful for in the midst of the waiting. I need to be spending time worshipping Him. And I need to be actively looking for the answers I need, knowing those answers may not be what I am expecting. I need to be faithful and hopeful that the answers will come. I need to be asking God what I need to be learning in the time of waiting, and then move in that direction.
We are called to wait on God because His timing and His will are so different from our own. I tend to want things fast. Delayed gratification is not my jam. Now, please. I think the longer we are asked to wait, the more grateful we are when the answers come. Maybe that’s one of the reasons we have to wait.
So how can I be strong while I’m waiting? Ummm, I can’t. Not by myself, anyway. I must acknowledge my weakness for God’s strength to flow into my life. I must acknowledge my need for HIS strength, and ask for that strength to flow in and through my life. In God’s world, my weakness is an asset. Or…my knowledge of my weakness is an asset. Pretending that I can handle things, or legitimately thinking, “I got this!” is where it all goes wrong for me. I get strength from the truth. And the truth of my life is that I am weak and I need Jesus.
How do I take heart? My first thought was, “I don’t really know.” Maybe to choose to be hopeful? So I asked Google. According to YourDictionary, to take heart means, “to be courageous; to regain one’s courage; to know that help will arrive shortly and everything will be fine.” Wow, I needed that in this moment. Help will arrive shortly. Everything will be fine as long I keep my eyes on Jesus.
In my times of waiting, I confess that my attitude is often like a child on a car trip asking, “Are we there yet?” As a parent, we all know how irritating that can be. So today, in my times of waiting, I am asking for a sense of wonder. God, help me to enjoy even this part of the journey. Help me to see the beauty of Your hands as I wait. Help me to find joy without needing all the answers first. Help me to wait well, by acknowledging my weakness to gain Your strength, and by knowing in my soul that help will arrive as soon as You declare it to be time. Everything really will be ok.
Journal Prompts
Answer only the questions that seem relevant to you today.
What are you waiting on right now?
How can you be strong today?
How can you take heart?
How can you wait patiently?
How can you show God that you trust His timing?