Why Wait?Намуна

“Why wait? Call now!”

The commercial’s message was clear. If you didn’t call in the next 30 minutes, you were going to miss out on a great deal. You needed to act NOW, credit card in hand!!

The Christian life rarely works like infomercials. We rarely get what we want NOW, and treating our relationship with God like He should ACT NOW will only frustrate and confuse us. We must remember that God’s ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9)!

Why does it seem like God often makes us wait on Him for the answers to so many things? I heard a teacher recently say that we wait on the Lord because He is 1) doing a greater work OUTSIDE of us during a period of waiting, as He did in coordinating the world stage while Joseph waited to be restored to his family, 2) He is doing a greater work INSIDE of us during a period of waiting, as He did in David as he waited on God for deliverance from Saul, or 3) both. Thus, each season of waiting has a great purpose, one that we may not like but that nonetheless is working in us (2 Corinthians 4:17).

But what are we doing while we wait? Today’s passage is instructive. In it, we read, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I do hope” (Psalm 130:5). As we wait for God to answer things only He can change, we must encourage our hearts DAILY in His Word. There, we can take heart as we read how He worked in the lives of people who waited on the Lord, like Abraham, Sarah, Job, Paul, and countless others.

In Luke 2, we read about Anna the prophetess, “a widow of about eighty-four years, who did not depart from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day” (Luke 2:37). Anna waited her ENTIRE life to see the promised Messiah, and what she did while she waited speaks volumes. She served God with fastings and prayers night and day. While we may not be able to fast and pray every moment of every day, our hearts can be marked by a posture of reverence and worship while we wait on God.

Do we wait on God with expectation, as Anna did? Do we trust Him while we wait? Are we meditating on His Word, knowing He is faithful to do what He has said?

To answer the question, “Why wait?” I say we wait because our God, and all that He is doing inside and outside of us, is well worth the wait!