Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
“…And therefore the Lord [earnestly] waits [expecting, looking, and longing] to be
gracious to you; and therefore He lifts Himself up, that He may have mercy on you
and show loving-kindness to you. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed (happy,
fortunate, to be envied) are all those who [earnestly] wait for Him, who
expect and look and long for Him [for His victory, His favor, His love, His
peace, His joy, and His matchless, unbroken companionship]!” Isaiah 30:18
In one of my previous devotion, I shared about waiting on God and we realized that
we ought to persevere and wait on him. One thing about God is that he has promised
that whoever waits upon him will never be disappointed. Don’t be in a hurry. We
must learn to wait upon the Lord. You cannot rush God. He is in no hurry.
Why is He not in a hurry? Because He has all of eternity ahead of Him; and
when you and I get in step with Him, life will be much easier for us down
here. He has his plan laid out well and perfectly. His word is perfect and
whatever he has planned and set to do will be done to perfection in his own time and
pace. He knows us pretty well; what we need, when we need it and the
appropriate time we need it. That’s why Jesus said in Matthew 6:8 that our
father in heaven knows what we need even before we ask for it. Thus we need to
have confidence that as we wait on him, He will surely fulfill his word, promises unto
us and the prayers that we pray unto him.
We don’t like to wait and when we think of waiting, most of the time we get
discouraged. We always put out a sigh and show as an indicator of the weight the
word “wait” has. But then these two words, weight and wait are not always unrelated
because one of our needs in waiting on the Lord is the need to cast
the weighty burdens of life on Him. Even in our modern age of conveniences,
waiting is still a big part of life. When we think of waiting, what comes to mind? We
might conjure up visions of an airport terminal, a doctor’s waiting room, the line at
the supermarket, or being stuck in rush hour traffic, etc. The simple fact is, in spite
of our modern age and our dislike for waiting, life is full of waiting. And one
of the most challenging exhortations of Scripture is “wait.” But waiting, despite our
impatience and our dislike for it, is a vital element in life. I have discovered that we
live in an age and generation that needs instant things. We have fast foods
everywhere and thus, no need to cook if you do not feel like. In the supermarkets and
malls, you will discover that we have almost everything we need in the shelves and
thus, all you need to do is get home, warm a little bit and your food is ready.
Indeed, waiting has a number of benefits that we will discover. There are some
essential factors in waiting on the Lord that we cannot overlook. Waiting on
God:
a) Waiting necessitates the passage of time – David writes in Psalm
130:5-6 “I wait for the LORD, my soul does wait, and in His word do I hope.
My soul waits for the Lord More than the watchmen for the morning; Indeed,
more than the watchmen for the morning,” In this, he was comparing waiting
expectantly on the Lord to the night guards of the city who watched the
passage of time in anticipation of the coming dawn when they would be
released from duty. The coming of the dawn was certain, but not without the
passage of time. In our “I want it now generation” we must understanding
and accept the fact that waiting on the Lord always involves the
passage of time just as it does when we are waiting for the news, a special
TV program, for a plane to arrive for a play to start in the theater. Waiting on
the Lord inevitably means enduring the passage of time, but the
returns are more, much better.
b) Waiting means confident expectation – waiting includes the concept of
hope. WAITING and HOPING are wound together like the strands of a
rope. This is how they are: When you wait to hear whether or not you have
been accepted for the job you’ve applied for, you are not only hoping to get
the job, you are hoping your credentials and qualifications are more than
sufficient. Compare again Psalm 130:5-6. “I wait for the LORD, my soul does
wait, and in His word do I hope. My soul waits for the Lord…” Waiting involves
an expectation of something special. Waiting means anticipation, expectation,
confident hope that something that will take place. Ultimately, waiting on the
Lord is like waiting on the sun to rise – waiting expectantly for the Lord’s
answers to human needs as the sun brings the warmth of the day.
f) Waiting involves taking the right action at the right time – There
is a time to plow, a time to sow, and a time to reap, but they are
never done all together or at the same time. Take an example with
a farmer. There is a season for planting and another season for
harvesting the crop; but the two seasons are weeks and weeks
apart. Take into consideration the time he takes to plough and
prepare the land, plant the seeds and then wait for them to grow.
From there, there is weeding and maintaining the right
atmosphere and condition for the crops to grow well. You will
never see the farmer going to plant when it’s time for harvest; no,
in every season, he knows what to do. Finally, he harvests his
crops. But the whole process involved doing the right thing at the
right time. Same for our Christian waiting cycle or process; we
need to know the season we are in so that we can do what is
expected of us as we wait on God. God is in the business of
growing a spiritual harvest in our lives, but this takes time and
our cooperation in doing the right things at the right time.
Once we have known what it takes and involves us to wait on the Lord, we also need
know the benefits that we get when we waiting on the Lord. One of the keys to
obedience or appropriation of something is motivation. These are just but a few of
the great motivations/benefits that we get when we wait on the Lord:
I don’t know what you may be going through at the moment, but whatever it is the
challenge of Scripture is to wait on the Lord because, unlike temporal man and the
fleeting world in which we live, the sovereign Lord of the universe loves us with a
steadfast love and personally cares for us like a father. Read the words David wrote
in Psalm 103:13-19. Moreover … “Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart
take courage; yes, wait for the LORD.” (Psalm 27:14)
Amen!!