Psalm 37:7 “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him….”
Waiting. For most of us, waiting is not our favorite past time. We rarely see it as valuable or instrumental in our spiritual growth. We’re more likely to view it as something to endure, a harbinger for worry and fear. Waiting from God’s viewpoint, however, offers a completely different picture.
We are admonished throughout scripture to wait. The psalmist encourages us to silence our worried minds and wait patiently. I think of waiting as an incubator for trust. If there was no time gap between God’s promises and his fulfillment of those promises, how would we ever develop trust? Only after we have had to wait upon God and experience him pulling us through, does our trust start to deepen.
A friend of mine recently faced a huge dilemma. Her decision would literally alter the course of her life. She made her lists of pros and cons, she pursued advice from respected friends, and she sought the Lord, and sought the Lord, and sought the Lord…. But nothing. Although she was doing everything she could to figure out God’s direction, she remained on the fence.
God was taking her to a deeper level of trust.
I encouraged her to just stop. Stop asking, stop searching, stop trying so hard. Put her confidence in who God says he is—her protector, her guide, her Father. If she could release all her expectations of how God would speak and simply trust that he would, not only would she find which way to go, she would have developed something even more valuable than the direction.
My friend never got the handwriting in the sky she was looking for. But as she continued to move forward, she sensed one overriding message from the Lord, do you trust me? Each time she answered yes, she moved a step closer to the answer. The waiting period proved to be exactly what she needed.
God could have given her clarity from the beginning, but he knew she was ready for something more. Maybe you are too. I pray the next time you find yourself on hold, you will let your waiting be an incubator of trust. There’s no greater adventure than what we find on the journey toward trust.