SCRIPTURE: Psalm 40:1
(TM)
I waited and
waited and waited for God. At last he looked; finally he listened.
STORY:
Jim Reapsome shares: “Teenage prostitutes, during interviews
in a San Francisco study, were asked: ‘Is there anything you needed most and
couldn't get?’ Their response, invariably preceded by sadness and tears was
unanimous: ‘What I needed most was someone to listen to me. Someone who cared
enough to listen to me.’"
OBSERVATION:
Isn’t our need just like the teenage prostitutes… someone
who cares enough to listen? The Psalmist expresses the universal feelings of
all of us… “finally he listened.” But
there are many who feel that God somehow doesn’t listen to them. They’ve waited
and waited and waited… and heard nothing. There was just silence… deafening
silence. Where did God go? We desperately needed someone to listen, thought God
would, but the silence over takes us.
Maybe if we are honest enough each of us could admit
to being overtaken by the silence of God at one point or another in our journey
through life. And then comes this advice from G. Campbell Morgan: “Waiting for God is not laziness.
Waiting for God is not going to sleep. Waiting for God is not the abandonment
of effort. Waiting for God means, first, activity under command; second,
readiness for any new command that may come; third, the ability to do nothing
until the command is given.”
We are not patient people. We want what we want and we want
it now… even a response from heaven. Our lives are marked by the word fast.
Fast food, instant this and instant that, microwave meals, eating on the run …
hurry here and hurry there. Do we have time to wait, especially waiting on God?
Maybe the silence from God is a result of our inability or
lack of desire to pause long enough for God to answer. We do not like to wait…
unless it is in a line for a ride at Disney World. We just do not like sitting
and doing nothing. We are busy people. Our days are overly scheduled. The lives
of our children are so orchestrated so that they have little free time. We are
training them to be impatient people.
God moves at a different pace. We (or at least it is true
for me) have to slow down and take the time to wait. Often I run ahead of God.
He has revealed what he wants to see happen, but I don’t wait for him to say…
NOW. It is on my schedule in my time which is usually immediately. But, God
didn’t tell me to start and most often the result is failure.
When will we learn the valuable lesson that we need to
simply wait? Waiting is a spiritual art form. It takes spiritual discipline to
wait. It requires spiritual insight to realize that God will speak when the
time is right. Waiting is preparation time. Waiting is hard, but necessary to
make sure that everything is in place. Just look at how long Jesus was in the
dessert before starting his ministry. The Bible is filled with stories of
people waiting for God to instruct them to begin to move in this direction or
that. It is also filled with people who didn’t wait and failed.
Waiting on God to speak demands more from us then actually doing
his divine will. Waiting is hard, probably the hardest thing we will be asked
by God to do, but wait we must.
PRAYER:
Give us the patience to wait. Give us the spiritual insights
during the waiting periods. Show us what we are meant to do during those long
waiting periods. Help us to attune our hearing to your voice so that when you
do speak we will be prepared to move.
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