Waiting

 "The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeks Him." Lamentations 3:25...."Today, no one has time to wait." Leonard Ravenhill

Just about everyone reading this will agree that waiting is difficult. Humans have always been an instant gratification race, but never to the degree we see today. Waiting doesn't come naturally to us, and for His people, it requires His grace to do so. However, there is an aspect to waiting that few of us really notice. I expect that's because in the waiting, we're focused upon His giving us that which we're asking for, praying for. We think it's all about what we're seeking coming to pass. In short, we think it's all about us, and what we believe God should be doing for us. Because of that we miss most of what He's really seeking to do in our waiting. It's also likely that it's the main reason that so much of what we are waiting for never comes to pass.

Leonard Ravenhill said that "we need to wait so that we can take a Holy Spirit conducted tour into and around our own hearts." Who has ever entered into such an aspect of waiting? David's plea that the Lord would "search me, and see if there be any hurtful (sinful) way within me," may be known, but we miss the truth that few of us would ever invite Him to do so unless He had gotten us still before Him. I think the times of waiting He calls us into are designed to do just that. Most of us miss His design.

So much of what we seek from Him, pleading for Him to do or give, is not nearly so needed as we think. We're like children before Christmas who badger their parents relentlessly for certain gifts, and then shortly after getting them, set them aside and forget them. They didn't want them nearly so badly as they said, and so often, neither do we. We'd find that out if we ever allowed the Lord to take us on that "tour" that Ravenhill speaks of.

The Father means for the waiting times to also be our growing times. As we wait upon Him, He works upon and in us. He explores with us what's really in our hearts. Much of what He uncovers isn't pleasant. Wrong and selfish motives, various degrees of greed and lust. As He leads us around our hearts, we can find a lot of things we didn't think were there, or wanted to hide. Waiting on and with Him will bring them all out of the dark.

This process is needed even in our good and pure requests. As He searches us He'll not only reveal blockages in our heart that need cleansing and keep us from all He desires for us. He will also use that waiting time to reveal to us, as Scriptures promise, "great and mighty things that we have not known." Most of all, we enter into a deeper knowledge of Him then we ever believed possible, which is His foremost desire for us in the waiting. There are so many riches to be found in our waiting, but sadly, we discover so few of them.

If you find yourself in a "waiting pattern," take heart. He has purposes for you, for us, that go deeper than we know. We may start out thinking we're waiting for answers, but He's purposing that we come to know that we're actually waiting for a deeper revelation of Himself, a deeper intimacy than we thought possible. In Scripture we're told that those "those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with the wings of eagles." As we wait, we seek, and as we seek, we lay hold of Him. For the believer, waiting is not a passive thing, but an active one. Such waiting is based upon hope, and our hope in Him will never be disappointed.

Blessings,

Pastor O