Wait on the Lord
Recently, in my downtime, or what I like to call my thinking time, I felt a prompting from the Holy Spirit to wait on the Lord. Honestly, I haven’t thought about waiting on the Lord for quite some time.
If you are anything like me, waiting doesn’t always come easy.
In today’s climate, waiting on something has become more of second nature. Our daily lives have sped up. From ordering online, to Instacart’s, to our apps to receiving immediate comments and likes on our social media posts, we no longer have to wait long for connection and interaction. Many of us, myself included, live a sped-up pace in life.
There is this phrase called instant gratification. Instant gratification tells us that we can experience instant pleasure and fulfillment without waiting. Instantly we can receive or even achieve what we desire quickly. Instead of waiting or going through a process of waiting, we get what we hope for now instead of down the road. You may be thinking, what is the problem with this? I like that I can have everything at the drop of a hat.
If we dig a little deeper into our personal lives, why we love instant gratification so much, maybe what you and I can find out is that there is something internal and psychological in us that feels not okay with waiting. Perhaps we are afraid of delay. Maybe we don’t like living in uncertainty, and we would rather not go through the process to find out what is down the road. Maybe we have become so accustomed to how fast life works, that we believe this is the way to live our lives.
Here is what I learned with waiting: When we wait, we must go through a process that causes discomfort. The hard part about discomfort is that you and I must embrace being uncomfortable.
If we are being honest with ourselves, who likes to be in a place of feeling unsettled?
When I was younger, adults like my parents, teachers, coaches would often remind me not to rush into adulthood. Of course, I didn’t think they knew what they were talking about. How foolish of me! Now I find myself sharing the same messages with younger people that I know. There is something wise about not getting through something fast, not skipping steps to get to an end goal.
This takes me back to my original thoughts that prompted this post… Wait on the Lord.
There are some prayers and desires that sit in my heart today. I’m waiting on God. I am seeking God. I am posturing my heart to hear from God. As I am waiting, I am uncertain, anxious even, and finding it hard to trust. I even find myself questioning. Not questioning God but questioning what this waiting process looks like and truly mean for me. Maybe you find yourself in a similar place.
At the end of Psalm 27, the psalmist David ends the chapter with these words:
I am certain that I will see the Lord’s goodness
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD;
be strong, and let your heart be courageous.
Wait for the Lord.”
These two verses encourage me that I can wait in confidence. The waiting you and I are invited into is a place of hope, anticipation, and assurance. Waiting doesn’t mean being stagnant in our faith. It doesn’t mean to be stagnant in our daily lives. In our waiting, we can still be a people of action. Meaning we can continue to pray, we can continue to trust, we can continue to share, we can continue to hope, and we can continue to wait with the presence of God.
In our waiting, what often happens when we don’t get the response we want or get the answer when we desire is we begin to take matters into our own hands. This is where I find the waiting to get tricky. We can start to make decisions thinking and even hoping this is what God wants. When we do this, we stop the process of waiting on God.
(Stay with me as I wrap this up.)
Perhaps our waiting on the Lord is God desiring to produce patience in us. Perhaps our waiting on the Lord is God desiring to grow in us a deeper level of intimacy and dependency.
Family, we don’t have to wait on the Lord in isolation. We can share with trusted people in our lives what we are waiting on, what we are praying and seeking God for.
Wherever we find ourselves today, we don’t have to go the instant gratification route. We don’t have to try and run and get ahead of God. We can wait with hope and know that God responds to our petitions and prayers in His time. If we know anything about God’s time is, His time is the best time!
Would you join me in praying and asking God why we often have a hard time waiting on Him?
Is there something He is trying to show you and teach you about yourself?
Would you take the time to slow down, pray, journal, and share with someone what He is teaching you?
Will you help others see how you are waiting on the Lord and how they too can wait on the Lord?
I hope you will join me in waiting on the Lord. Let’s continue to be a people of hope and trust.
God is faithful regardless of how impatient we get in our waiting process.
Josh Samarco 