By: Fernand D. Peralta / 28 April 2019
KEY TEXTS
ISAIAH 40:31 (NIV)
31but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
ISAIAH 64:4
4Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.”
JAMES 5:7-8
7Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop. Patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. 8You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.
God’s Idea of Waiting
The apostle Peter wrote, “that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years.” An economist once read those words and got very excited.
“Lord, is it true that a thousand years for us is just like a minute to you?”
“Yes.”
“Then a million dollars to us must be a penny to you.”
“Yes.”
“All right. WAIT here a minute.”
WAIT. This is one response from God many of us Christians would less likely want to hear when we inquire of Him. If we get a “YES”, we can’t wait to proceed to the next stage. And if we get a “NO”, we tell ourselves “Let’s go to Plan B. It’s time strategize.” [So we beg. No we really really beg…with tears. If it’s still a “no”, we take out our best weapon—we negotiate!] However, if we get a “WAIT” (or silence, NR as in “no response”), we see our time table starting to lose meaning, our goals starting to lose their flicker as they fade away one by one like fragments of distant memories, and our dream dying before our very own eyes. Then we hear that little voice saying, “All is lost. #waitingforever Life ends here.”
The hard truth is that often times we don’t see eye to eye with God when it comes to waiting. With God the word “wait” takes on a whole new level of meaning…not found in our human dictionaries or foreign to our human concept of waiting. And this makes it a bitter pill for us to swallow. [When you tell someone ‘wait a minute’, it’s like getting a glass of water or receiving a phone call. When God tells you ‘wait a minute’, we sense trouble.] We struggle, wrestle, and grapple. Unless we accept God’s concept and purpose of waiting, we will easily miss the great blessing that comes with it. What’s worse is we might wake up one day realizing we’ve been stuck in Life’s Waiting Room, having failed to learn over and over again one of Christian life’s essentials—WAITING ON GOD.
Today, I’d like to share with you a familiar message entitled Working While Waiting. Do you feel recently God has given you one of His wait-here-a-minute replies? Do you feel you have been ushered into God’s waiting room?
I’ve realized that many of us believers are actually afraid to wait or being told to wait. But, today you and I don’t have to fear and fret when God tells us to wait or leads us to His waiting room.
How can we make life’s waiting moments work for us, not against us?
I. THE CALL TO WAIT
How is God’s view of waiting different from ours?
Sometimes it’s hard to understand God’s perspective. He sees our lives differently than we do. In general, we’re a fast-food, soft-on-suffering, high-on-anxiety society. We want what we want now and we want to avoid discomfort and delay. We expect God to work on our plans and stick to our time tables.
However, Christians, you and I, are also called to a life of waiting. The call to wait on the Lord is one of the most important teachings of the Bible, but it is one of the most difficult. [We are prone to take matters into our own hands and to follow our own schemes. And this is where we get into trouble.]
Waiting has always been a part of God’s plan for His choicest servants.
1. Abraham and Sarah waited 20 years for Isaac to come.
2. Noah waited 120 years for God to fulfill His promise.
3. Moses waited 40 years on the backside of the desert, thinking God had forgotten about him, before God chose to use him again.
4. The apostle Paul, after his miraculous conversion, spent three years waiting in Arabia before God made him a light to the Gentiles.
5. Our Lord Jesus also waited till he turned 33 years old before he started to do his ministry.
6. [Let’s not go far.] Our church ETAB waited more than 20 years for the fulfillment of the promise of having our own land and church building.
Apparently, there is no short cut to the fulfillment of God’s promises or answers to our questions. The way to God’s promise is still God’s waiting room. We want to get to the promise, then let us be willing to be taught, molded, and changed in God’s waiting room.
BIBLICAL WAITING
How do you wait when you say you “wait”?
A quick study of the word “wait” can help us clarify and correct our view of waiting. Webster Dictionary provides the following definitions:
(a) to stay in a place until an expected event happens, until someone arrives, until it is your turn to do something
• Signifies the posture of waiting. It implies a sense of readiness (keen and eager to move when God says so) and restedness (trust on the knowledge of who God says he is).
(b) to remain in a state in which you expect or hope that something will happen soon
• Signifies the mental attitude of one who waits—expectant and positively hopeful.
(c) to attend as a servant (heart attitude)
• Signifies the heart position of one who waits—a servant who works or serves (or ‘waiting on tables’)
Often times, we say we wait and we take the backseat and just watch from a distance with an uninterested look. This is far from what God has in mind when He asks to wait. Our act of waiting isn’t supposed to be spent sitting around passively hoping that something will happen sometime soon. We need to be SERVING actively, aggressively, intentionally, and expectantly.
John Stephen Piper, theologian and founder of desiringGod.org, has this to
say about waiting:
“Waiting on the Lord is the opposite of running ahead of the Lord, and it’s the opposite of bailing out [abandon, leave] on the Lord. It’s staying at your appointed place while he says stay, or it’s going at his appointed place while he says go. It’s not impetuous [rush, unthinking, reckless], and it’s not despairing [hopeless, miserable, desperate].”
Sometimes the biggest mistakes of our lives happened because we get ahead of Him. We just want to help Him out a little.
Here are some truths to remind ourselves when the waiting gets tough and rough. When we wait–
1. We sometimes make an idol out of the good for which we are waiting.
2. We should be careful to follow God’s timing and relinquish control to Him.
3. We are invited to trust in His goodness today and His faithfulness tomorrow.
4. We ought to understand that the process of waiting is just as important as the end result.
Come to think of it. Waiting is not just something we have to do while we get what we want. Waiting is designed by God for a very important purpose. Waiting is the process of becoming what God wants us to be. What God does in us while we wait is as important as what it is we are waiting for.
Waiting is hard work. For most times, waiting can test our faith, test our heart, test our real motive. But we need to keep waiting on God and trusting Him with a simple faith just like Abraham, Joseph, Moses, and David who had to wait for many years for God’s promises. Everything that happened as they waited was used to prepare them, inwardly as well as outwardly. Then, when they reached their promise, they were blessed beyond measure.
As you can see, waiting on God is interwoven with every moment of our Christian journey, with every word of God’s promise, and with every single milestone of life.
II. WORKING—THE OTHER SIDE OF WAITING
We see a clear connection between waiting and working.
Isaiah 40:31 They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up on eagles’ wings; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.’
Isaiah 64:4 Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.”
Andrew Murray explains the inseparable relationship that exists between
waiting on God and working for Him. First, in Isa. 40:31 waiting brings the
needed strength for working. Waiting on God makes us strong in work for God.
Second, Isa. 64:4 reveals the secret of this strength: GOD WORKS FOR
THOSE WHO WAIT FOR HIM. Consequently, the waiting on God secures the
working of God for us and in us.
The one great lesson we can learn here is that waiting on God lies at the
ROOT of all true working for God, so working for God must be the FRUIT of
all true waiting on Him. All true waiting involves the surrender and the
readiness to be wholly fitted for God’s use. We Christians need to understand
that it is only in working that waiting can attain its full perfection and blessedness
(serve its purpose).
However, the problem is many Christians today have very little sense of what a
HOLY THING it is to work for God. We do not see that GOD’S WORK CAN
ONLY BE DONE IN GOD’S STRENGTH, BY GOD HIMSELF WORKING IN US.
We can do nothing but as God works in us. If we depend upon Him, his power
can rest in us.
Understand this: CONTINUAL WAITING ON GOD IS ONE OF THE FIRST
AND ESSENTIAL CONDITIONS OF SUCCESSFUL WORK.
Many Christian churches suffer terribly today not only because so many of its
members are not working for God, but because so much working for God is
done without waiting on God.
We should ask the Holy Spirit to show us how SACRED our calling is to work, how ABSOLUTE our dependence is upon God’s strength to work in us, how SURE it is that those who wait on Him shall renew their strength.
Have you been waiting for God to intervene on your behalf? Have you been waiting for that job? For physical healing? For a relationship to patch up? For that long promised scholarship (like my case)? For that much awaited baby? For your delinquent son/daughter to change? For that breakthrough in finance? For that house to be built? For that freedom from bondage? For another touch of God to fire up your waning passion and commitment for God and His work? But, the waiting seems endless? Remember, while you are waiting and doing His work, God is working. God is doing something on your behalf. He has your situation under control.
Lamentations 3:25,26 “The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”
It’s important, therefore, to surrender everything to God and purpose in your heart to wait for His absolute best. And believe by faith that He will make all things beautiful in His perfect timing.” (Ecc. 3:11)
III. LEARNING FROM A FARMER
How to be good at waiting?
One very important thing you can do as you wait is to practice being patient,
both with God and with each other.
Patience takes practice. The farmer is patient because he’s had practice cultivating soil, planting seeds, weeding, and waiting on the rain and the harvest. So also you and I can practice being patient as we wait.
James 5:7-8 7Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop. Patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. 8You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.
While James specifically refers to the second coming of Christ, he uses the image of a farmer who waits patiently for rain and the harvest.
Patience is a must for a farmer, because even though it takes a lot of hard work to produce a crop, a farmer has to wait on it to grow. A farmer works in faith, believing all his hard work will pay off in the end.
James says in vs. 8 You also be patient. Stand firm [or establish your hearts],
for the coming of the Lord is at hand.
‘Establish your hearts’ means ‘strengthen your hearts.’
Don’t worry or fret; practice staying calm, because the long wait is going to be over soon when the Lord comes. This is our blessed assurance. As surely as the farmer knows the harvest is coming, you and I know Christ is coming.
YOU AND I ARE GOD’S FARMERS
Galatians 6:9 “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
Now isn’t the time to stop preaching the gospel, sharing biblical truths, or spending time with people, or extending the goodness of Jesus to the community.
If we cease from work/ministry (as a church leader or worker), we would be like a negligent farmer NOT doing two things:
1. Protecting their seeds
While waiting, we have to protect the seeds we planted in the lives of the people God had sent our way. We need to protect the seed of God’s word that we have laboriously sown in the field of their hearts “against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph 6:12).
2. Preparing to reap a harvest
Instead of sitting on our backs and watching the weeds grow, we have to
prepare to reap a harvest. We need to set our mind on the harvest.
We continue to spend time with our people, know what’s going on in their lives, and most importantly, continue to share the gospel and point people to Jesus.
Patience is an act of the will to claim ground for the Kingdom of God, and is rewarded richly by Him.
1 Corinthians 15:58 “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain”.
Today, if you are doing God’s work, then your work is not in vain. God didn’t call you to serve this church alone. He called you to participate in his work with Him.
Practically speaking, there’s no way we can do our spiritual work without God’s strength. Serving in the ministry without God would be like trying to drive a car without gas. This strength we need is spiritual more than physical. The only source of spiritual strength from is God.
When we draw strength from God daily, we’ll receive INNER STRENGTH and a RENEWED COMMITMENT to keep pressing on daily. The Psalmist encourages us,
Psalm 27:14 “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart”.
We should keep up our courage while we wait, not grow hopeless, and be strong in faith for God will not fail. For there is one thing we can’t stop doing while waiting: working.
Let us take to heart this truth: Those who wait are those who work for they know their work is not in vain. Remember the farmer who can wait all summer for his harvest because he has done his work of sowing the seed and watering the plants. As we wait on God, we can go about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and conclusion to our lives as well as the harvest to our toil. Waiting is the confident, disciplined, expectant, active, and also painful clinging to God.
CONCLUSION
Do feel you are in one big waiting room of life? How do you use your time?
Are you a sleeper or a sigher? Do you run amok or do you use the waiting time wisely?
Waiting on God has a great purpose. If done God’s way, it can make us patient. Patience puts us on the road to being mature…mature in knowing God and dealing with life the way He wants us to. The best way we can sit in God’s waiting room and use our time wisely is—always do things God’s way.
Psalm 37:34 “wait on the Lord, and keep his way”
Let us serve the Lord just as truly as though conditions were ideal and all our desires were satisfied.
Let us not try to get out of the wait by sinning. God has put us in the waiting room to grow us and if we wait on Him, He will show us His plan for our life. It may or may not be our kind of best, but it will ALWAYS be God’s best for us!
