What You Must Do In The Waiting 

The way to make the most of the waiting season is to get a grip on what we must do in the waiting season. This lesson will help you navigate some of the soul building strategies that will give you joy in the waiting.

There’s plenty to do in the waiting. Most of us treat the waiting season like the waiting room in the ER. We think that if we’re not careful, we’ll miss our turn. But waiting is more like going to a restaurant and getting one of those buzzers to hold. When it’s our turn, we’ll get beeped. In the meantime, we get to enjoy life. We get to walk around and chat people up. We can read, or we can shop. Yeah, there’s plenty to do in the waiting.

My favorite verses on waiting are in Psalms 27:13-14 “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord!” They help sum up for us all the awesome things we should do in the waiting: hope, stay strong, settle your mind on who God is. The list is long. But lets’ get practical. There are three simple things that we must learn to do in the waiting:

1. Surround yourself with balcony people. Balcony people are people who will cheer you on. They’re encouraging you with truth. They remind you of who you are and to whom you belong. Balcony people don’t have to be large crowds of people, but they should be people you connect deeply with on a regular basis. They sometimes look like sisters or old friends, and other times look like a small Bible study group at your church. They are real people, not just virtual ones. They’re part of the body of Christ. 

2. Saturate your soul with God’s promises. One of the reasons I love Psalm 27:13-14 is because it grounds me and reminds me of who God is. It turns my attention to the truth of God’s character and to His goodness. It’s hard to count how often I’ve turned to these verses for encouragement. The point of reading God’s word and meditating on it is to learn to turn to it when you’re afraid and frustrated and overwhelmed. One of the biggest gifts of singleness is the time we have to spend in God’s word and truly let it grab a hold of our hearts. It’s the best way to make it through the waiting.

3. Surrender your heart completely to God. Every season of waiting in my life reveals to me more clearly the idols that take hold of my heart. It’s seasons of waiting that propel me out of complacency and put me back in a posture of humility on my knees confessing sin and repenting of my own self-sufficiency. Either you’re in control of your life or God is.  Your feeling of dissatisfaction in the waiting might just be an indication that you have not fully surrendered an area of your life to the Lord. You can do it right now. You can let go of all what’s holding you back from true joy. 

The goodness of the Lord is not some future event. It’s ours for the taking right here in this life right now, and it happens when we bow our knees to the Father and trust in His promises completely.