I don’t know of anyone who enjoys waiting when waiting is not their choice!! The difficulty about waiting is that we don’t know how long the waiting will take. Sometimes we’re not even sure if we are waiting for the right thing!!
Waiting is a difficult spiritual discipline with a great potential to build our character, help us to get to know God better, and allow our faith to grow. The enemy can also use waiting as the battleground to bring discouragement, confusion, jealousy, and discontentment.
Unbelief and the insecure areas of our lives can get exposed through waiting. Waiting causes us to face self-preservation head on and choose it or trust God!!
Waiting Protects Our Integrity
Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, For I wait for You. Psalm 25:21
There are times that we will be tempted to take a short-cut to get our way, however as followers of Christ, we know a short-cut will jeopardize our integrity. When a famine came, Abraham quickly rushed to go to Egypt, but that wasn’t what the Lord had asked him to do. Then he was faced with the possibility of getting killed because Sara was so beautiful. So he asked her to lie about him and tell the king that Abraham was her brother. Not waiting upon the lord, opened new dangers for him that caused him to compromise his integrity and made Sara to fall into sin as well.
If we have a resolve to stay people of integrity, many times it will keep us from making haste decisions because haste decisions can pressure us into lying or telling half-truths!!
Waiting Helps Us Overcome Fear
Wait on the Lord; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord! Psalm 27:14
There are times when fear is pressing in against us. “Fight or flight” is the natural reaction, but waiting is the supernatural response . We cannot overcome fear unless we wait on the Lord and allow him to strengthen our weak and fearful hearts.
Every time we take the matters into our own hands, and we fight or flee we just aborted God’s process!! We may relieve fear, but the opportunity for us to grow in courage and strength is taken away. Sometimes the Lord may lead us to fight or flee, but many times it comes from our natural, familiar mode of operation and not from the Lord!!
When we wait on the Lord and don’t react by fighting or fleeing, we can get delivered from fear in that area!
Waiting Helps us Listen Better
My soul, wait silently for God alone, For my expectation is from Him. Psalm 62:5
Wait-Hebrew439: to be silent, be still, wait, be dumb, grow dumb
There are times that waiting is just being quiet before Him. Sometimes the Lord just wants our full attention, and the only way He gets our attention is to tell us to wait. This, at times can feel like a time-out but the purpose is not for punishment. It is for developing intimacy with the Lord and slowing us down from whatever has distracted us from Him. It’s good to take advantage of that time, slow down and listen to the Lord.
Those times of waiting are good times of recalibration!! Thinking about where we’re spending our time and energy will help us cut off things that are not important to Him. Waiting on God and being silent is not a waste of time. It’s a blessing, and it will produce good fruit in our lives.
Ask the Lord, “How am I doing with waiting on you, Lord?”. If you’re not doing well, ask Him to show you what the obstacles/issues are that hinder you from waiting well!! Pray for freedom and deliverance in those areas!