The Gift that Waiting Brings to Your Heart
Waiting seems discouraging, depressing, and detrimental. I want an answer now, yesterday, and three minutes ago. I want the shortest line at the grocery store, the shortest drive from Point A to Point B, and the shortest wait time for an answer to my prayers.
But, when I rush through life, I miss the beauty of it.
I miss the opportunity that waiting in line affords to connect with another person over the price of hamburger. Or the opportunity to share a knowing smile with a mom of young children because I remember what it was like to have four kids eight years old and under.
Waiting affords us the opportunity to remember. And remembering is one thing that God wants us to do. He wants us to remember His goodness to us, His faithfulness to us, and the way He gently leads us to the next step.
It’s in the waiting that we ponder the goodness of God and how He comes through for us time and time again.
David of the Psalms knew waiting. While he waited and watched his sheep, he penned songs of adoration to God. The waiting gave Him an opportunity to study the natural world around him in order to understand the intricate faithfulness of God.
Do you look on waiting as punishment or possibility? When you’re waiting on God for something do you frantically examine yourself for remnants of sin that could possibly be blocking God’s blessing? And then take every condemning thought that comes your way and receive it as truth? Do you throw up your hands in defeat and decide to fix the situation yourself? And, in the doing, declare that God is unreliable and undependable?
Waiting on God is an opportunity for possibility. Possibility is that wonderful place of hope and wonder where dreams just might come true. Delight fills us when we place our hope in God. We get to do as the Psalmist says and taste and see that the Lord is good. But before we get to this kind of waiting, we must wrestle.
We must wrestle with our own ideas of how things should work out and then let it go. God knows best and He loves you best so we must trust His heart for us.
After we wrestle, we accept. We accept that God’s ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are higher than ours, and His vision is clearer than ours.
We risk peace when we insist on our ways as the best ways. And that, my friends, is precarious.
“Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken, but endures forever.” Psalm 125:1
Wouldn’t you love to stand stalwart like a mountain the next time one of life’s waves broadsides you?
I won’t deny that I’ve been swept off my feet when unsettling news hits me or un-dealt with issues of forgiveness knock me over. But one day, I just got tired of being shaken. I decided that I was either going to stand firm in the fullness of Christ or continue to let my circumstances dictate my belief in God’s faithfulness.
Waiting as a Gift
This is where waiting became the gift that it is.
Waiting protects my heart from panicking.
Waiting allows my heart to catch up to what my head knows to be true about God. My mind is in a constant state of renewal, and it’s my mind that reminds my heart of what it already knows to be true.
God is true, faithful, good, kind, merciful, gracious, and loving. He will not let your foot slip; He is your refuge, your rock, and your redeemer.
Somedays it might seem as though the answers to your prayers are elusive and far off. But God is near. And it’s in the waiting that we find him. He’s tenderhearted towards you, and has good thoughts about you. Turn to him and receive Him.
The Takeaway
I pray that you would be so filled up with his peace and joy that your waiting turns into a secret garden where the most wonderful fruits grow. Fruits like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control so that as you encounter life’s difficulties you have what you need to navigate them.
How to Have a Holy Spirit Controlled Life
Imagine a wee little spring bubbling and gurgling, laughing and splashing life giving water on it’s surroundings. We see beauty in the rock’s hidden treasures that only wetness can bring. Our eyes caress the little mountain wildflowers and we wonder at that perfect shade of lavender. The little spring accomplishes so much as it feeds life into it’s environment.
“But whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be more thirsty again. The water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:14
The Holy Spirit lives within those who receive Jesus as Savior and Lord. Transformed and made whole hearts happen because of the up-springing of the Holy Spirit within us. The Holy Spirit is the spring within us that gives us victory over our old life, makes real the things of Christ, and helps us realize the Fatherhood of God.
When the Holy Spirit can flow through our lives unquenched and ungrieved, he takes up our troubles and fears and settles them for us according to God’s will. The Holy Spirit makes a way for our outer lives to be the unforced reflection of an inner life which is pure, full of tenderness, looks on humanity with a heart of love, and watches for opportunities to offer a helping hand to lift up the oppressed and weary.
The power of God lives within us like the little spring in the woods. Sometimes we wonder if it will ever run dry, but then we hear the whisper of the upper spring assuring us that we’re connected to a much bigger source that will never run dry. It’s only risks are blockages to the flow. Muddy leaves or falling branches will prevent the grand-daddy springs from feeding the little spring.
What blocks the flow of the Holy Spirit in our lives?
Grieving the Spirit
“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.” Ephesians 4:30-31
Bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and malice grieve the Holy Spirit. Every time we justify one of these by saying, “God made me with a quick temper, it’s just the way I am, he’ll understand.” It might be the way you are, but have you considered the consequences to the person you took your quick anger out on? We don’t live as isolated islands, but intertwined and inter-dependent on one another.
All the things we keep in our hearts, defended, hidden, petted, and justified choke the inlet and outlet of the Holy Spirit in our life.
Quenching the Spirit
“Do not quench the spirit.” 1 Thessalonians 5:19
Is it easy or hard for you to say yes to God? When God says to pray, do you? When he says be still, do you get busy? When he says give your time or money, do you find ways to get out of it?
Each time we say “no” to the command to pray, give, or serve, we block the flow of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Say yes with your whole heart.
The Takeaway
My beautiful friends, it’s not about getting more of God in you by praying harder or doing more, it’s about taking into account the fact that you have him already. As C. I. Scofield states, “If you really believe that the Holy Spirit of God dwells in your mortal body, a transformation of life has begun.”
We don’t base this God-life on feelings but by receiving the facts by faith. God lives within you, you are seated in the heavenly realms with Christ, and the Holy Spirit lives within you. Those are facts that you can receive by faith.
Perilous Freedom
What does freedom look like?
When I think of freedom I think of jubilant dancing, arms lifted high, lots and lots of chocolate and comfy spaces with a great view. I don’t think of deserts or cliffside trails or enemies.
Freedom leads us into some pretty lean places, spacious places, and scary spaces. But through it all, God is with us. In fact, He is the one who leads us into these not so friendly, seemingly freedom stealing journeys.
But that’s the thing. Wouldn’t life get boring if all we did was sit around drinking sweet tea and nibbling on carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (did I mention it’s 3 layers of yummy goodness)? Wouldn’t it get a little bland and we’d go looking for adventure?
Usually when I go looking for adventure, I walk into some trouble that I need rescuing from. But walking in freedom with God means He leads us on adventures that can be fraught with danger and safety all at once.
He is our safety and life with him is our adventure.
But it doesn’t seem that way when we’ve been wandering in the desert and we’re desperate for drink.
It seems scary when we’re on a narrow trail with our backs pressed to the rocky cliff and our toes hanging over a precipice, and God calls us to keep walking.
We wonder if we’ve been left to die when we look up and see we’re surrounded by our enemies.
But.
We can echo the psalmist in Psalm 18:30, “As for God, his way is perfect, the word of the Lord is flawless. He is a shield for all who take refuge in him,” when we find ourself on a seemingly narrow passage with sheer cliff face on one side and the depths on the other because verse 33 states, “He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights.”
We will find ourselves in death defying heights or the depths of despair in this freedom journey, but also in the presence of the living God who calls the stars by name, knows every hair on our heads, and who holds us close to his heart.
We need not fear when God calls us to the desert, or waters, or fire because he is with us. He guides us with his staff and protects us from enemies. The question is, will you give up your idea of freedom and exchange for a life of freedom adventure.
Our idea of freedom is perilous because it places us on the sidelines, nibbling on bonbons while life is lived around us. And pretty soon, those bonbons become like a chain and we’re back in bondage.
Freedom is a gift so that you can walk confidently in all that God has called you to, whether it’s raising your kids, managing your employees, serving your customers, or loving your neighbor.
In Psalm 23 we have the perfect description of a life of adventurous freedom. God leads us beside still waters and through the valley of the shadow of death. He guides us in righteousness and spreads a table for us in the presence of our enemies.
He is with us and goodness and mercy follow us.
The Takeaway
Trust him to guide you, never take your eyes off him, and listen for his heartbeat.
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