Waiting

Waiting is something I don't do very well - in fact, I really don't know very many people who can wait well. We live in a microwave world where if it takes more than 30 seconds - it's too long to wait.

If I have a question for Brian while he's at work, I email him. If I have to wait more than 2 minutes to get a response, I wonder "What's the hold up?" - what's he doing working? How quickly I forget that I used to have to wait until he called me on his lunch break or, worse yet, until he got home from work to talk to him.

Waiting on the Lord is hard too. It is easy to get tired of waiting on God to provide a need or want, answer a prayer, or open up an opportunity to serve. In the middle of waiting it is tempting to provide the need or want our self, come up with our own answer, or give up on serving - thereby robbing our self of the blessing that would have come from waiting on God and allowing him to provide our needs and wants, answer our prayers, and open up opportunities of service.

We are told to wait on the Lord - and not waiting is disobedience.

Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him . . . Psalms 37:7a

At church on Sunday night, I had the church kids downstairs. One of the things we did was listen to the tape White Fangs in a Dark Hole. I love this tape - it has such a clear message of salvation, in fact, it was after listening to this tape several years ago that Joel got saved.

The theme of the tape is obedience and the high cost of disobedience. After we listened to the tape, I was talking to the kids about obedience. We talked about how the boy in the tape was disobedient and how this almost cost him his life and the lives of others. We talked about how the rescue dogs in the tape were obedient to their master and followed his every command.

I asked one boy in particular if he was obedient - his answer to me was, "Well, not all of us are obedient." When I asked him why he wasn't obedient he said, "Well, you know, all we like sheep have gone astray."

Disobedience has a high cost - not waiting has a high cost. Not waiting for material things results in debt. Not waiting for the right relationship results in heartache, unhappy marriages, and broken homes. Not waiting for God to lead results in going the wrong direction.

True, all we like sheep have gone astray. However, I don't want this to be an excuse for me, but rather a reminder that it is my nature to want to go my own way.

I need to daily surrender my will and obey God - which includes waiting on Him.