Skip to main content

Wait for It!

            I seem to always be in a hurry for God to do what I want Him to do.  It seems that what God wants to do for me is teach me how to wait.  I find myself waiting for it over and over again. 

            After years of waiting I thought I got good at it.  I can see that there is improvement in my ability to wait on God, I still plan far more than He knows is good for me. 

            WAITING is vital to spiritual maturity.  I’m learning God’s purpose for waiting is the way He  focuses my soul.

            A pregnant woman thinks about her baby her whole pregnancy, but she is willing to wait to hold her child in her arms because she knows that before 36 weeks, the baby is not completely mature to live in the world.  That is why God asks us to wait for our spiritual maturity.  No matter how fast and furious we try to make spiritual progress, most of our spiritual growth takes place while we are waiting.

            Isaiah 30:18 proclaims the promises for those who wait on the Lord! Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him! God doesn’t ask us to wait for Him so He can receive more glory, rather He asks us to wait on Him so we can receive more blessings.  God is just and though it appears that what you are waiting on is unjust, God has good reasons that we can’t understand.

            Just because I know the value of waiting doesn’t make it easy on me.  One of my tricks to waiting is to choose an arbitrary year eight to twelve years away and determine to wait until that time.  So far, I have never waited past that year to see my prayers answered and receive, in God’s perfect timing, the answer to my prayer.  The reason for the waiting isn’t always perceived, but the weariness of waiting is never the focus.  The joy of what God has done is all that I can focus on.

            In the meantime I have gleaned some of the blessings of waiting—learning to trust God more, letting go of my expectations to receive a better answer than I could have ever considered on my own.  I also discover a spiritual strength that I didn’t know I had.

            Are you growing impatient with God’s answer?  Wait for it.  Waiting on God brings our His blessings.

Copyright © 2014.  Deborah R. Newman  teatimeforyoursoul.com  All Rights Reserved.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Pilgrimage that Started with Tears

                Who would think I would shed tears deciding to set out on a wonderful journey that I have longed to take for many years?   Before I was ready to fully accept God’s invitation for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I had to journey to a place of agreement between what my soul wanted and what the Lord wanted for me.   For years I have been declining opportunities to travel to Israel—not because I didn’t want to go but because I wanted to go with my husband by my side.   I know that God could have arranged that for me, but instead He asked me to accept that He wanted me to be willing to go and leave everything behind.   When I was asked to make a decision about going on a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, God gave me this verse in answer to my prayer -- Debi, observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess (Deuteronomy 11:8).   I decided through tears that I would go on

Day Nine - Journey's End

    I didn't think I could write today, but do to bad weather we now have extra time at the airport. Today we looked over the model city and I can't believe all I have learned. Some of the excavations since the model was completed reveal differences in what they built in the model. What amazed me was that I could see what wasn't where I expected based on what I experienced. Here is a wide view of the Model City which is 1:5 scale.  It was created by a Jewish man who wanted his son to understand what Jerusalem was once like.  Someone said that if you didn't see Jerusalem during the time of Herod the Great, you have never seen a beautiful city.  Do you understand what I mean about how grand this Temple was?            Next we saw the Dead Sea Scrolls.  I learned a lot about the Essenes.  They lived like monks today.  Like Jesus, they were not happy with the way the Temple was being run and they came to the desert to offer truly holy sacrifices, untainted by the mismanage

Not Treating Others as Their Sins Deserve

            Turning the other cheek has become a Christian cliché.   These beautiful and penetrating words of Jesus are minimized when we humans try to apply them without God.   The best we can do to achieve Jesus’ description in our power is repress our anger about the way someone sins against us.   This only serves to make us look stupid to the world, creates ulcers, or causes an unplanned, embarrassing, public explosion of anger.   Jesus spoke these words and many others like them to invoke the spiritual understanding that it is impossible to live out His directions for our lives without Him.   He has no intention of our trying to take His work on in our flesh.             It happens all the time in marriages and other relationships where one person who thinks they need to be a certain way to please God centers his or her relationships around keeping peace.   I don’t believe that kind of turning the other cheek is very pleasing to God.               No, God is inviting us