Waiting by the Brook: Learning to Wait Patiently on GodParaugs

Punishment or Preparation?

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Hebrews 12: 11, NIV

Is your waiting experience punishment or preparation? Our ability to get the most out of the experience is dependent on the perspective we bring to it. If we come to view waiting seasons as punishment, we will continue to suffer through them. We will be at risk of squandering the time we have been given, lamenting the challenges and difficulties of our current situation, feeling sorry for ourselves and not being able to focus on the lessons. That would be tragic.

The Bible illustrates for us with story after story how for those individuals, God was able to use to accomplish great things; He allowed them to go through a time of waiting. We need no better example than that of God’s own son, Jesus. For the first thirty years of His life, not much is recorded about His life in any of the four Gospels. Do you wonder what Jesus must have been thinking, feeling, or doing during this time? He knew the call His Father had on His life, and yet He had to wait. Did he grumble? Was He suffering through this time as a form of punishment, or was he making the best use of the time to prepare Himself for ministry?

We find evidence in the Gospels that it was the latter. At the age of twelve, Jesus remained in the Temple conversing with the elders, “listening and asking them questions,” long after his parents, Mary and Joseph, had left Jerusalem. When they came back to find Him, we read:

“After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers” (Luke 2:46-47, NIV).

Later, we see him just before his public ministry in the wilderness, prepared to stand up to the devil's temptations and be victorious. He had stored the word within His mind and heart so He could call it to remembrance and resist the Enemy.

The early period of Jesus’ life and His time in the wilderness was preparation for three years of effective and compassionate ministry. To be successful in ministry, He needed to make good use of the gift of time in the early years.

Waiting experiences can be our breaking point, or they can be our making point.

Reflect: How can you reframe your perspective about a past or current waiting experience to view it not as a time of punishment but of preparation? What might God be preparing you for during your season of waiting?