What are you waiting for?

My wise friend Jeanne Stevens once said "when God waits He always gives a promise & when God waits it's always with a purpose."

But what does it really look like to wait on the Lord?

Sometime we wait for answers. Sometimes we wait for reassurance. Sometimes we wait for an apology, for a job, for direction, for healing, for money, for love, for someone to change.  Sometimes we feel like we wait against our will. Sometimes we wait because we’re afraid to really go where we sense God leading us.

But how many times are we genuinely, truly, desperately from the depths of our soul waiting on the Lord…and how many times are we really just waiting on Him to give us what we want?

If we’re really honest, how many times do we actively wait on the Lord with confidence in His wisdom and love, trusting in His timing and promises…genuinely seeking His presence and sovereignty? And how many times do we merely impatiently pass the time until He finally gives us what we thought we should have already had by now anyways?

In the past 10 years I have found myself in multiple seasons of waiting where all I was really waiting on was for the season to be over.

I wanted clear direction for my life.

I wanted the hurt to be gone and the healing to begin.

I wanted to be out of the job that I dreaded going to every day.

I wanted to know whether or not I had a life threatening illness.

Looking back now, I think that some of those seasons may have been preparing me to actively embrace waiting on the Lord later on. Each season of waiting, in some form or fashion, has strengthened my confidence in who He is and in what He is doing.

There’s a key word in that sentence above…one that I’ve missed many times over in my seasons of waiting…

Actively waiting.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that God doesn’t intend for our seasons of waiting to be stagnant times where we’re sitting around fruitlessly twiddling our thumbs. He wants us to be actively seeking…actively praying….actively trusting that He will reveal to us our path when His timing is right, not our own.

“The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him.”

–Lamentations 3:25

So what are you waiting for?

Jamie