“WAIT!” Few words are less welcome. We hate to wait, don’t we? You may have seen this. It used to pop right up with a google of “pizza delivered in restaurant.” But a guy is at a five star restaurant and it takes so long in his mind to get his order, he actually calls a pizza place and has the pizza delivered to his table. Upon receiving his pizza exactly everybody near his table does what? You guessed it – applauds. Refusing to wait too long for what you want in our day is the stuff of standing ovations. Why? Because we don’t like to wait. We shouldn’t have to wait. And so waiting – waiting even for God – is often a difficult thing for us impatient people.
But the very thing that we human beings can revile – is counted a virtue by our Jesus. Patient waiting is a quality he frequently commends in his Word. “Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD” (Psalm 27:14). “I wait for the LORD, more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning” (Psalm 130:6).
In Luke 14 Jesus tells us a parable about guests invited to a banquet. His point: wait for the host to give you a higher seat and don’t push yourself forward.
How might we own this Christ-like quality? How might the single person learn to wait for the spouse they have asked God to bless them with for years? What wisdom from above is there for an elderly person waiting alone, seriously ill, for the LORD to call her or him home? You see, we may not like waiting and we may find it difficult but waiting is our destiny in so many ways as fallen creatures in a sinful world.
Lewis Smedes writes, “Waiting is our destiny as creatures who cannot by themselves bring about what they hope for. We wait in the darkness for a flame we cannot light. We wait in fear for a happy ending we cannot write. We wait for a not yet that feels like a not ever. Waiting is the hardest work of hope.” So how might our gracious God inspire us to offer him patient waiting that reflects the heart of his Son?
- Ask God to help you remember what you are really waiting for.
“In that day they will say, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us.
This is the Lord, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation” (Isaiah 25:9).
In this life we will always wait for something: a spouse, a job, a prodigal, release from depression, or financial freedom. But for Christians, the rumblings of something greater beneath all our waiting is what we want to most anticipate. We are waiting for something better than this world can give or offer.
Children of God wait for a new world, the promised new heavens and the promised new earth, all landscaped with righteousness. (2 Peter 3:13). We wait for a new body, finally delivered from death and decay (Romans 8:23). We wait for a new power, when sin will lose its last hold on us (Galatians 5:5). But most of all, we are waiting for our King, Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 1:10). One sight of his face will banish sadness forever. One note from his voice will swallow every disappointment in this life. One moment in his presence will cast all of our pain into the depths of the sea. This is why Advent is an exciting season of waiting – waiting to celebrate again the coming of our infant King and his return as our fully revealed Sovereign, Savior, and Fulfiller of all our Father’s promises. Ask God to help you remember what you are really waiting for.
- Ask God to work in you while you wait.
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance” (James 1:2, 3).
Mike Breaux tells the story of a guy from Nicholasville, Kentucky. The guy was brought into an emergency room after a car accident. As they were examining his injuries, the doctor noticed there were some weird markings around his neck. So, the doctor asked him about it. The guy said, “Well my wife and I were sitting on the front porch talking and drinking… We had just gotten one of those electric shock collars for our dog, the remote control kind. We’re trying to train him not to bark, not to leave the yard, and so on. We got to wondering how far it would reach, so I said, ‘I’ll put it on and drive down the street a way.’”
This was his plan. It seemed wise to him. He had been talking and drinking. “I’ll put it on and drive down the street, and you take the control. When I honk the horn, you push the button. We’ll see how far it reaches.” So he put it on, started down the street, and honked his horn. She pushed the button and boom. Almost knocked him unconscious. Completely disoriented he started swerving all over the road going down the hill. What she couldn’t see was that there was a car coming up the hill toward him. The driver of that car honked his horn, so she zapped him again causing him to swerve again… which caused the other driver to honk his horn again, causing his wife to zap him a third time. That’s how he ended up having a wreck and landing in the emergency room.
You are smiling or shaking your head. So stupid. As the Duke himself said, “Life is tough but it’s tougher when you are stupid.” But how often aren’t our efforts to control ourselves also similarly brilliant. “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 14:12). So sometimes God makes us wait. Waiting is his gift to us, if you will. In waiting he sifts or forges the foolishness from our lives. In loving delay he seeks to shape, melt, and mold us more and more into the image of his Son.
How long did God lead Israel in the wilderness in his roundabout ways? Wasn’t he desperately wanting them to learn from their waiting? Some of the greatest figures in the Bible – Abraham, Esther, Joseph, Ruth, Moses, David – had to wait for years for God’s promises to come to fruition. Everything that happened in the meantime was used to prepare them, inwardly as well as outwardly.
Then, when they reached their promise, they were blessed beyond measure. My friend, waiting is our destiny as creatures here on earth but let the Creator work in you to will and do of his good pleasure while you wait. And as we remember what we are really waiting for while asking God to work in us in our waiting you can be sure in the end, with faith in Jesus, we will say, “Now that was worth the wait!” Jesus see to this in all our lives.
