Louis Giglio – The (Not-So) Newlywed Lefebvres

Waiting. Not one of my favorite things. And really, is it anyone’s?

But, as we mentioned in yesterday’s post, currently, we are in a season of waiting on the Lord…So, I thought I’d talk a little bit today about what exactly that means…

Joyce Meyer explains waiting on God well when she tells us:

Once we’ve asked God to answer a question or solve a problem, we need to be eagerly awaiting His answer. We need to be serving actively, aggressively and expectantly. When our hearts are eager to hear from God, He loves to rush in suddenly with His solution. In many cases this waiting period actually serves as a time of preparation for the answer. If God answered right away, many of us would be ill-prepared to handle His solution.

Sometimes we find ourselves in such horrible messes that it’s hard to imagine waiting one more second. But we need to keep waiting on God and trusting Him with a sweet and simple faith. Then, in a way we never could’ve figured out—God moves suddenly!

When waiting on the answer to a prayer or for a promise to be fulfilled, I feel that so much of the ‘waiting room’ is about how you use your time. Waiting expectantly rather than passively is key.

Many examples in the Bible show expectant waiting, and the subsequent reward of answered prayer from the Lord: Hannah’s continuous prayer for a child; Paul & Silas praying and praising God in the midst being held in a jail cell; and Noah building the ark in expectation of the promised floodwaters – just to name a few.

In our time(s) of waiting, Craig and I have certainly fostered stronger relationships with the Lord – both individually and together. We have tried to serve Him by serving others. We have spread His Word, and continue to focus on putting Him first in everything we do. We have delved into reading and studying the Word. And above all, we have prayed.

Is it, perhaps, the case that our waiting on Him – yours and ours – is often more about developing our relationship with God than our answered prayer or promise being delayed?

Caroline MacInnes wrote an article several years ago for Boundless.Org, with this to say about how beautiful the Lord’s waiting room can be:

Somewhere in The Meantime, God changed my theme verse from “How long, oh, Lord?” to “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19, ESV). And I literally went to the desert of West Texas to find that “new thing.” I attended graduate school to study what I loved, mentored kids, traveled overseas, and overall, developed a fresh vision of God’s plan for my life…

…Each of us can choose how we spend our days, but God’s wish for us is clear: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

satan loves to discourage us in our time of waiting…but as the first part of John 10:10 reads, “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy…” Jesus is the one who came to bring us LIFE. And He doesn’t call us to live it out in front of the tv or with a box of tissues. He calls us to live BOLDLY for His glory – both in the waiting, and out. Don’t let the enemy bog you down by stealing your joy, killing your faith and destroying your opportunity! Use your waiting time wisely!

2 Timothy 1:6-7 ESV

For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

Hebrews 13:6 ESV

So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”

Have you ever felt God asking you to follow Him…and not wanted to go where He was leading? Have you ever silently prayed, “Lord, really?! This is not part of my plan!!”?

Sometimes we spend so much of our time focused on what we want and what we plan to do in the future that we dream up the most ‘perfect’ scenario…and then are disappointed when God ‘gets in the way’ of our plans and suddenly, things don’t ‘look like’ we assumed they would.

Isaiah 55:8-9 (AMP)

For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts higher than your thoughts.

Lucky for us, as Christians, God is the one in charge and He sees the big picture. ~~Sometimes~~ ~~Most of the time~~ The plans He has for us are always better than anything we could imagine.

Jeremiah 29:11-13 (NLT)

For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.

It’s such a comfort to know that when He interferes our plans, He always has something even better in mind.

If you’re feeling the Lord calling you to do something that wasn’t part of your game plan, maybe that’s all the more reason to be assured it is God leading you. As humans, we have a pretty strong and determined will. When we want something – from the time we are infants – we want it and we want it now. If God is tugging at your heartstrings to go in a direction that you may not have chosen for yourself, a completely unselfish direction, it certainly isn’t a worldly pull.

If you only follow Him, He will take care of you…and He may even have a few surprises in store along the way! As the book of Jeremiah tells us in the passage above, God has not only plans for us, He has GOOD plans. And when we pray to Him, He listens. His rules are there for a reason – to keep His children from harm. And when He guides you, it is to green pastures. He listens to His children. He hears our prayers and gives us a ‘future and a hope’.

Perhaps it isn’t exactly the future you imagined for yourself…but you can rest assured that if you are following the Will of God, it will be better than any plans you had for yourself!