Lincoln Brewster - While I WaitVoorbeeld

PRAY WHILE WAITING

Though I don’t understand it / I will worship with my pain / You are God / You are worthy / You are with me all the way

While worship should always be our natural response to waiting, prayer is another way we can actively wait. Although prayer is already an integral part of my life as a believer, my prayers tend to look a little different when I’m in a season of waiting, particularly when the wait is overwhelming. 

It’s taken me a lot of years (and a lot of waiting) to realize God wants our pain. In fact, He takes our pain and harvests it into something beautiful. Simply because that’s who He is. He makes beauty from ashes. He creates purpose from pain. 

So in my current season of waiting, I’m working hard through prayer to give Him my pain. I’ve learned to be more honest in my prayer life. God can handle our honesty. He can handle our anger. He can handle our doubts. He can handle our fears. After all, there’s nothing we can tell Him that will surprise Him, so we might as well give Him our uncensored prayers. He knows every thought before we even speak it.

The Bible says He hears our prayers, and He answers our prayers. “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us — whatever we ask — we know that we have what we asked of Him.” (1 John 5:14-15, NIV)

I don’t take this Scripture to mean that God always answers our prayers exactly the way we want Him to. On the contrary, often I think we wouldn’t be waiting if God answered our prayers on our timetable. But I do think we have to trust that He knows us better than we know ourselves. 

He knows us. He sees us. He hears our prayers. And that’s what keeps me motivated to keep at it. So while I’m waiting, I will continue to seek. I will continue to knock. And I will continue to trust, expectant for what He will do in the future.

I want Micah 7:7 (NLT) to be the verse I live out: “As for me, I look to the Lord for help. I wait confidently for God to save me, and my God will certainly hear me.”