How Are We Waiting?

How Are We Waiting?

     We often inquire as to how someone else is working.  “Are you getting anywhere with that project?”  “Are things progressing?”  “Did you get much done today?”  These are all quite legitimate questions which express our interest in seeing progress.  We tend not to regard waiting with such interest.  By contrast, God wants us to learn to wait, often keeps us waiting, and uses waiting as a valuable spiritual tool.  We need to learn that the walking by faith, the working by faith, the working in faith, and the waiting of faith are all part of a total spiritual experience.  As I saw the subtitle of the Psalm “a song of degrees,” I could not help thinking that we all need to take an advanced “degree” in waiting.  All waiting is not equal.  Some people wait for someone or something by merely “killing time.”  They make no decent use of that waiting period.  Not so the writer of Psalm 130; rather, his waiting is of the variety that we ought to do.

     The psalmist engages in a prayerful wait.  Verses 1 and 2 show us a soul crying out to God in prayer.  Many times, if we have to wait for God to do a thing we will be liable to faint.  Prayer is the antidote for that problem, for “men ought always to pray, and not to faint.”

     Our hero also engaged in a pure wait.  Verses 3,4 tells us that he had addressed the matter of his own sin.  Before God, he had dealt with the sin issue in such a way as be able to speak of the Lord’s forgiveness.  If we are to wait in a pure manner, then we must address the matter of our sin.  The Psalmist tells us just how personal this wait was.  He includes his whole self in verse 5 as being involved in this exercise.  We, if we are serious, diligent workers for the Lord, throw our whole selves into our labour.  Our involvement in our waiting should be the same.  That makes it also a persistent wait.  So it was with this man.  Twice he repeats the fact that his waiting for God is “more than they that watch for the morning.”

     So let us wait with patient persistence.  His was also a promising wait.  On the basis of what the writer knew about God’s character, he could wait, knowing that God would come to put all things right.  As the writer of Lamentations puts it’ “The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.”  How are you waiting?

Where the Bush is Burning
Tomm Tice