5 Important Reasons We Should Embrace the Waiting

It’s been described in various ways. Dark night of the soul. Burn-out. Depression. Mid-life crisis, to name a few. These are times when we seem caught in an unending period of transition. God is mostly silent. Our lives seem to have little purpose. Not in control, we search for it, but can’t seem to find a way to end these lonely, frustrating times. So, we wait. Hoping that somehow, God will bring us out of them.

And He will. He always does…in time.

Wilderness times are exceedingly difficult. The loss of control makes it seem like we have lost ourselves…or our way. This is not bad. It is a good thing for our soul to be trained to rest in God alone.

Whether it is a “dark night” time in your life or an extended transition, don’t resist. Ask God for the grace to receive, even welcome, this time. Don’t fight the constant transitions our nomadic, missionary lives bring. Instead, in the uncertainty lean in to receive all God has. As you do this, your life will yield fruit. One day, the transformation God brought through those difficult waiting times will have a great impact.

Richard Rohr in his book, Everything Belongs, says it well. “We have to move out of ‘business as usual and remain on the ‘threshold’ (limen, in Latin) where we are betwixt and between. There the old world is left behind, but we’re not sure of the new one yet. That’s a good space. Get there often and stay there as long as you can by whatever means possible. It’s the realm where God can best get at us because we are out of the way. In sacred space, the old world is able to fall apart, and the new world is able to be revealed.”

Reading this, I was struck by the phrase, “it’s the realm where God can best get at us…” I want Him to be able to get to me, to be able to transform and change me. The only hope I have of godliness is if He has access to my soul to shape and form it.

Are You Waiting for Normal to Return?

The pandemic’s brought many changes to our world and to our individual lives. Almost everyone’s been affected in some way. One effect has been a dramatic increase in our need to learn how to wait.

• We wait for quarantine to finish so we can go outside again.
• How much longer before they get a vaccine?
• When will global travel restrictions lift?
• We long for a time when we can gather in conferences and large meetings again,
• or go back to church without a mask on.

My husband and I have waited nine months to return to our home in Thailand. One after another ticket has been changed or canceled, visa options have fallen through. It’s disappointing. There is grief involved in the loss of the old. These are stressful and hard times for all.

Here in America, we waited for the election results to be finalized. This took far longer than anyone anticipated.

Embrace Today

When we came to the USA in March, we had no idea we would be here this long. I admit. There are days I greatly long for things to go back to “normal.” There were things about my 2019 life I miss greatly!

Each day I try to embrace what God has for me today. He is in control of my life, my future, and my transformation. His purposes are greater – far better than what I can imagine or achieve.

When those feelings, that longing for the way it was, rises in my heart, I give it to Him. Letting go of my desire to determine my own future, to be in charge of when this waiting ends, I whisper the words, “I trust You. Your purposes are good. Father, I want Your will not mine. I’m so glad You are in control.”

And I surrender.

In response, He gives me the grace to embrace this waiting time with joy. I receive new manna for that day.

How do you willingly submit to the season of waiting in your life?

And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you.

Ps. 39:7 ESV.

Don’t Fight the Waiting Because…

1) God is forming you.

As Rohr said in the quote above, this is a good space. God has access to you in unique ways in the waiting periods when you are not in control of your life. We want to become like Him. Yet we resist.

Our brokenness is exposed to His healing touch.

Would you ask a heart surgeon to rush an operation? Of course not! God is deeply at work in our inner beings. Stay still and let Him do what is needed for as long as it takes.

2) God is training you to trust Him more deeply.

The things God wants to release through you in the next season require a greater level of dependency on Him. We want to see greater fruit from our lives, but don’t like to let go of control. The more we let Him be in charge, the more powerfully He can use us. Choose to let God determine if you need to grow your trusting God muscles in this season, or your ministry skills.

3) God’s purposes and ways are higher than yours.

We can trust Him because we know Him. His Word is true.

Isaiah 55:8 says, ““My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.” Say it out loud – right now. “Your thoughts are nothing like mine Jesus. Your ways are far beyond what I can imagine!”

Do you believe that to be true? Sometimes we have to convince our own souls to believe the right things!

4) God’s character and promises haven’t changed.

In the waiting times, we remind ourselves of His promises. We meditate on His character.

“He is good. He is faithful. He has called me to bear much fruit,” we declare.

What has He personally promised you? Spoken to you about as far as your calling or destiny? Review and meditate on those things.

Remember who He is.

Times have changed but God has not.

5) There are blessings to be received in the desert.

Jesus endured many things in the desert. Temptation, hunger, attack from the enemy. Yet when He came out of the desert, His ministry began with great anointing. Having gone through those trials and overcome them, there was new strength.

In wilderness seasons, I’ve found my walk with Jesus grows sweeter…more intimate. It’s as if the chaff has been burned off, and my soul purified afresh. The most powerfully transformative moments in my spiritual life have come in the deserts.

Receive the blessing. Watch for it. Wait, but not in hopelessness.

Waiting in Hope

Steven Curtis Chapman wrote a song when he grieved the loss of his daughter. He wrote,
“We have this hope as an anchor,
‘Cause we believe that everything God promised us is true, so…
We wait with hope,
And we ache with hope,
We hold on with hope,
We let go with hope.”

In the waiting of this season, how is God filling your heart with hope?

Let me know in the comments below or on the Missionary Life Facebook page.