Don’t Waste the Waiting

Waiting is hard.

Anyone and everyone will be eager to agree with that statement no matter the background they come from. Waiting has caused distress in us humans for as long as we’ve been around – since the fall of the world. It’s always the same story.

We want something but it eludes us for one reason or another. God tells us to wait – some of us do, most of us don’t. He gets us out of the mess we’ve created. Then we truly wait and find that He was right from the start.

And then we do it all over again because we quickly forget that God is faithful in the waiting.

In every story that requires a time of waiting, we witness God work in that time. As the reader, we have the advantage of third party viewing. We read example after example of God doing the most work in the waiting periods of people’s lives. Yet, when it comes to our own lives, we somehow get the idea that this tactic shouldn’t be used on us. We no longer view waiting as a blessing or gift from God, but as a frustration and a waste of our time.

We shouldn’t have to wait for anything – big or small, important or insignificant. We believe we are above having to wait on the Lord and what He is doing.

But sadly in doing so we sacrifice that ample time to get to know our God.

We waste our life because we choose to worry in the waiting rather than worship in the waiting. We choose to focus on what we do not have – on what is not yet ours – instead of the One who is sitting next to us while we wait. He does not stand idly by while we wait. He is not apathetic to this period of our lives. God uses the waiting to work in and through us. He does not waste our life. He enhances it by using this time to grow us and show us more of who He is.

There are lessons learned in the waiting that are not learned anywhere else. Waiting is not a waste if we allow the Lord to work.

Waiting is worship.