What are you waiting for?

 

We hate to wait.  Whether sitting in traffic, holding for a customer service representative, sitting in a crowded waiting room, or standing in a long line, we hate to wait.  What a waste of time!  We much prefer now to later.  Most of us would agree that waiting is both passive and negative.  Its byproduct is often impatience, frustration, and even anger.  We end up muttering things like, “Who hired this idiot?” or “Don’t they know my time is valuable too!”

What about waiting on God?  Do we experience the same range of emotions?  If so, these verses might just help transform your next trip to God’s waiting room.

Even youths shall faint and be weary,
 and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
 they shall mount up with wings like eagles; 
they shall run and not be weary.  Isaiah 40:30-31 ESV

Did you see our favorite word sandwiched in there?  It’s important since it’s the very “action” that leads us to where we want to go.  That word “wait” is translated from the Hebrew word qavah that literally means to “to collect or bind together; to twist or weave.”

So how do the weak grow strong?  How do the fallen begin to soar?  How do the prayerful endure?  By “waiting” on the Lord.  By twisting and weaving your life around the Lord like the braiding of a rope – like the uniting of multiple strands of fiber to create strength.

Unlike our customary earthly experience, biblical waiting is highly active and positively charged.  It flourishes in expectancy, hope, faith, and dependence.  It perseveres in prayer, remembers God’s faithfulness, and clings to His unwavering promises.  It rests in the very sovereignty of God and rejoices in what He is doing during the time of waiting as much as in the anticipated outcome.  It knows that the joy of the Lord is our strength.  It senses the abiding Presence of God and hears the reassuring voice of the Good Shepherd.

Easy?  Hardly.  We don’t like to wait, remember?  But if you will keep putting the fragile strands of your life into the hands of the One who wove you in your mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13), you will discover the miracle that awaits in God’s waiting room.

© 2012 Tim McKenzie – www.OnEveryWord.com