Waiting on the LORD in a Fast-Paced World

(31) 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;
they shall walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:31 (ESV)

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Hello Readers, hope all’s well. Time for another post.

Today’s post is inspired by a sermon from a missionary who came to my church recently. He does missionary work in rural Colombia, and came to tell us about that. He showed pictures of the church they built, some of the activities they do, and so on. It was a good presentation. God bless missionaries for what they do!!

But he also told us a few things about life in rural Colombia. He told us that when you go to a medical center, instead of waiting up to an hour for your appointment, you might have to wait as long as five hours!! (I guess this was due to a lack of doctors there or something like that.) While he was suffering this terrible wait, he remembered what the Bible says about waiting on the LORD. And there are quite a few verses to choose from!! The Bible actually has a lot to say about waiting on the LORD.

And in today’s fast-paced society, it’s a message we all need to hear. Especially me, Readers. I get anxious and have problems waiting on the LORD, so I was very pleased to hear this missionary’s message. It was something I needed to hear. Maybe some of You need to hear it too. I’m no expert at waiting on the LORD, but in writing about it today I hope I’ll learn something myself!!

New Strength

There are many, many, many verses in the Bible about waiting for the LORD. If you Google “wait for the LORD,” you’ll see what I mean. You can take your pick from dozens of verses!! But the most well-known verse may be Psalms 27:14 (I’m only guessing).

(14) Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!

Psalms 27:14 (ESV)

But the verse that the missionary picked out was Isaiah 40:31. Isaiah 40:31 adds another element, saying that those who wait for the LORD will renew their strength. They will have new strength.

(29) He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
(30) Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
(31) 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;
they shall walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:29-31 (ESV)

See, waiting is tough. It’s never easy.

When we’re waiting for something to happen, we can’t know with certainty that it will happen. Doubt begins to creep in, and our Faith is challenged. Meanwhile, we may suffer various mental and emotional pain as part of the wait. For example, we may feel boredom, or we may feel envy if we’re waiting for something other people in our life already have. A Christian marriage is a great example of that. I continue to wait on the LORD for that, like so many other Christians. Another great example would be having a ministry, a Godly mission to work on (though I’ll come back to that at the end).

We may feel incomplete without the thing—although that would reveal we don’t have a good relationship with Christ, because Christ should be all we need. Still, it’s not a sin for us to be honest with Christ and tell Him “I really feel pain at the lack of this thing I’m waiting for. I pray You will enter the pain of my wounds and soothe them. And I pray You will touch my heart and make me feel that You are all I need.”

We may feel unGrateful to God or even bitter toward Him for not giving us this thing we’re waiting on. Now this of course is a sin if we allow it to go unchallenged. But we can’t control what feelings arise within us, we can only control what we do with those feelings. Our feelings are our natural reactions to what happens in life, so a feeling isn’t good or bad in and of itself. If we have a feeling, we have a reason for feeling that way, because it’s a reaction to something.

So if we feel unGrateful to God for not having a successful ministry on YouTube, for example, it’s understandable we feel unGrateful because that’s our first reaction to this disappointment … but that still doesn’t make it correct. “Understandable” does not equal “correct.”

It doesn’t do us any good to deny to ourselves or God how painful the waiting is. Ignoring the pain is like lying to ourselves and God. And in the end it doesn’t make the waiting any less painful. We need to be honest with God about the waiting, while still staying respectful and Grateful to Him for all He has already done.

This is when we need to get with the LORD in prayer and tell Him how we feel. We need to tell Him of our disappointment and the other emotions that come with it. And we need to ask Him for new strength as we continue to wait on the LORD.

We already know waiting is tough. That’s why we need the LORD and His comfort to get us through it. But do you know what makes waiting even worse?? Our modern society, and the instant gratification we’ve grown used to.

I Want it, and I Want it Now

This was another excellent point the missionary made. You know what a big part of our problem is?? Our world, our society. We don’t live in a society where we have to wait for much at all.

We have high speed internet. If we want to know something, we can Google it and get thousands of results in a second (whether the information is quality or not is a different story). We don’t have to wait for it, it’s all right there, available instantly. And with smartphones, we don’t even need to sit at a computer to access these things. All kinds of entertainment is right at our fingertips. We can use internet on the phone and enjoy this instant gratification wherever we go.

Living in a world where so much is available instantly with no wait has conditioned us to not be able to wait. That’s what the missionary said, and he’s right. We aren’t good at waiting anymore, because we don’t have to wait in our everyday life.

This is a really big problem if we stop and think about it. We’ve made waiting on the LORD so much more painful than it needs to be, because we now expect instant gratification and can’t wait for anything. We need to grow out of this mistaken attitude, because the LORD is not about instant gratification. He wants us to wait, work, train, and prepare for the blessings He has for us. The devil is the one who gives things instantly, with no wait. The LORD is different, and from our perspective, He takes His time.

We must never forget the simple fact that we don’t experience time like God does. The Bible even tells us that with the LORD a single day is like a thousand years for us. The LORD is Eternal and He sees all time at once, like He’s outside of time. So He can see the big picture of our lives and what’s best for us. He doesn’t do things slowly, He does them in His own time. Which to our limited human perspective seems slow. But He always has a purpose for making us wait.

(8) Don’t let it escape your notice, dear friends, that with the Lord a single day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a single day. (9) The Lord isn’t slow to keep his promise, as some think of slowness, but he is patient toward you, not wanting anyone to perish but all to change their hearts and lives.

2 Peter 3:8-9 (CEB)

I’ve heard so many people say that if you wait on the LORD till the end, when you finally get your blessing you’ll see how the LORD’s timing was perfect all along. I don’t have much to say about that yet, because I’m still waiting on the LORD for some things … but I can look back at my life and see how God has been at work the whole time and I didn’t see it. So I know that when I get my blessing, it will be the exact right time for it.

The LORD gives us everything we need, when we need it. And if we don’t have something, we don’t need it right now. Which ties in to the final point.

Live on Mission

As I thought about what this missionary came and told us, I thought about other times in life when I’ve had to wait. Let’s think about working a 9 to 5 job, especially a kind of menial job we may have had as kids. Fast food, that kind of thing.

If we keep watching the clock, eagerly awaiting the end of our shift, the workday will take forever. Time will seem to be moving slower, because we’re constantly checking up on it. But if we’re having a busy day at work, with lots of things to do, the day goes by faster. We aren’t aware of the time, and each time we do glance at the clock, it’s much later than we expected—it’s a pleasant surprise.

The day goes by faster when we’re able to keep busy, and keep our mind off the time!! And I say it’s like that when we’re waiting on the LORD for a blessing too. If we stay focused on the wait and on not having whatever it is, the wait will feel like it’s taking forever. But if we focus on God and what we can do for Him, right now, then we can “get busy” and our wait will go by faster!!

We always have a way to Serve God, and usually we have many ways available to us. We don’t have to wait for this or that element to fall into place to Serve God and evangelize. We can do our Godly mission of evangelizing anytime. We can minister to people in our city, our world, anytime and bring them the Good News. We can always help the poor, who will always be with us. We can always follow Jesus’ Commandments and live out our mission.

Live on Mission. Get busy for God. There’s always a way to do it. My blog, for example, is part of the way I do it. I’m working on doing my mission in other ways too, to bring the Good News to others. Hopefully I’ll be able to share some more info on that soon.

Get busy for God!! Evangelize. Preach. Help the poor. We have ways to do these things, right now, without anything else falling into place. If we Live on Mission and focus on staying busy with the LORD’s Work, the wait will go by faster. The years will fly by before we know it. We will honor the LORD and make good use of our time if we stay busy doing the LORD’s Work. Soon enough we won’t even think about the pain of waiting for whatever blessing we want—our mission work will be too rewarding.

And once we’re totally content with our life without that thing, whatever it is … that is most often when that exact thing comes and finds us. So don’t just wait around in pain!! Get busy for God, and make the wait go fast!!

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Until next time, be strong and do good!

Your new best friend in Christ,

99:9

<<<EXALT THE LORD OUR GOD AND WORSHIP AT HIS HOLY HILL; FOR THE LORD OUR GOD IS HOLY>>>

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