Waiting On God

Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him! (Isaiah 30:18).

Have you ever noticed that God is not in a hurry? It took forty years for Moses to         receive his commission to lead the people out of Egypt. It took Joseph seventeen years of preparation before he was delivered from slavery and imprisonment. It took Jacob twenty years before he was released from Laban's control. Abraham and Sarah were in their old age when they finally received the son of promise, Isaac; so why isn't God in a hurry?

God called each of these servants to accomplish a certain task in His Kingdom, yet             He was in no hurry to bring their mission into fulfillment until He had accomplished what     He wanted   in them. We are often more focused on outcome than the process that He is accomplishing in our lives each day. When we experience His presence daily, one day we wake up and realize that God has done something special in and through our lives. 

However, the accomplishment is no longer what excites us. It is knowing Him. Through those times, we become more acquainted with His love, grace, and power in our lives. When this happens we are no longer focused on the outcome because the outcome is a result of our walk with Him. It is not the goal of our walk, but the by-product. Hence, when Joseph came to power in Egypt, he probably couldn't have cared less. He had come to a place complete surrender so that he was not anxious about tomorrow and or his circumstances.

This is the lesson for us. We must wait for God's timing and embrace wherever we are in the process. When we find contentment in that place, we begin to experience God in ways we never thought possible.

Have you ever had to wait a long time for something to happen?

In John 1, Jesus delayed in responding to Mary and Martha when they sent word that Lazarus was sick. In fact, He stayed a few more days away and Lazarus died. The situation looked hopeless. Have you been waiting for God to answer some of your prayers, and the answer has not come? The situation may look hopeless from every human standpoint. But realize this: God uses delay to purify and prepare us for the harvest.

"God uses delay as one of His chief tools of refining human character. Those who are attuned to the heartbeat of the Holy Spirit in this hour also recognize that the Spirit is stirring an incredible urgency in the hearts of His people because the hour is so late. The harvest is ripe, and the need for laborers who will minister in the words and works of Jesus is of critical proportions. Jesus is returning very soon and so God is doing a quick work in His people today. He's preparing us quickly. To do a quick work, God is turning up the heat and pressure everywhere. It's happening the world over. Saints and leaders everywhere are testifying to shaking, fire, distress, persecutions, and afflictions. The hour is late, and God's people must be prepared quickly. To do the quickest work, God uses the hottest flame. Nothing purifies us faster than when we have to wait on God." - Bob Sorge

"To do the quickest work, God waits. The greater the wait, the greater the work."

In whatever you are waiting on God for, never give up for you shall see His resurrection power in your life, and every day of waiting shall be worth it. "The Lord responds, 'Wait on me. Look only to Me. Don't look to other human resources. Fix your eyes on Me, and wait for Me." Don't give up your hope. He wants you to believe that he can resurrect any dream, hope or impossibility. Look what He did with Lazarus. And it is all for His glory. So just as He said regarding Lazarus in John 11:44, God is saying to us: "Take off the grave clothes! Believe in me." God will come through for you in His timing. You have every reason to hope because of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

"Then Jesus said, 'Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"  (John 11:40).

Waiting on God for Instruction
“Shew me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me; for thou art the God of my salvation; On thee do I wait all the day.” (Psalm 25:4-5 KJV)

I spoke of an army on the point of entering an enemy’s territories. Answering the question as to the cause of delay: “Waiting for supplies.” The answer might also have been: “Waiting for instructions”, or “Waiting for orders”. If the last dispatch had not been received, with the final orders of the commander-in-chief, the army dared not move.

Even so in the Christian life: as deep as the need of waiting for supplies, is that of waiting for instructions. See how beautiful this comes out in Psalm 25. 

The writer knew and loved God’s law exceedingly, and meditated in that law day and night.   
But he knew that this was not enough. He knew that for the right spiritual apprehension of the truth, and for the right personal application of it to his own peculiar circumstances, he needed a direct divine teaching.

The psalm has at all times been a very peculiar one, because of its reiterated expression of the felt need of the Divine teaching, and of the childlike confidence that that teaching would be given. Study the psalm until your heart is filled with the two thoughts - the absolute need, the absolute certainty of divine guidance. And with these how entirely it is in this connection that he speaks, “On Thee do I wait all the day”. Waiting for guidance, waiting for instruction, all the day, is a very blessed part of waiting upon God.

The Father in heaven is so interested in His child, and so longs to have his life at every step in His will and His love, that He is willing to keep his guidance entirely in His own hand. He knows so well that we are unable to do what is really holy and heavenly, except as He works it in us, that He means His very demands to become promises of what He will do, in watching over and leading us all the day. Not only in special difficulties and times of perplexity, but in the common course of everyday life, we may count upon Him to teach us His war, and show us His path.

And what is needed in us to receive this guidance? One thing: waiting for instructions, waiting on God. “On Thee do I wait all the day.” We want in our times of prayer to give clear expression to our sense of need, and our faith in His help. We want definitely to become conscious of our ignorance as to what God’s war may be, and the need of the Divine light shining within us, if our way is to be as of the sun, shining more and more unto the perfect day. And we want to wait quietly before God in prayer, until the deep, restful assurance fills us: It will be given - “the meek will He guide in the way”.

“On Thee do I wait all the day.” The special surrender to the Divine guidance in our seasons of prayer must cultivate, and be followed up by, the habitual looking upwards “all the day”. As simple as it is, to one who has eyes, to walk all the day in the light of the sun, so simple and delightful can it become to a soul practised in waiting on God, to walk all the day in the enjoyment of God’s light and leading.

What is needed to help us to such a life is just one thing: the real knowledge and faith of God as the one only source of wisdom and goodness, as ever ready, and longing much to be to us all that we can possibly require - yes! This is the one thing we need. If we but saw our God in His love, if we but believed that He waits to be gracious, that He waits to be our life and to work all in us, - how this waiting on God would become our highest joy, the natural and spontaneous response of our hearts to His great love and glory!

“My soul, wait thou only upon God!”

God has made it possible for you to know Him and experience an amazing change in your own life.

Prayer 
“Father, thank You for what You are doing in my life today. I receive the vision You have for me. I receive Your hope. I look forward with joy to all You have for my future in Jesus name. Amen!”