“Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! Psalm 27:14
Life is full of waiting. You wait in traffic, you wait at the airport, you wait at the doctor’s office. Most businesses even have nifty little rooms set up so you can wait even more. There is no doubt that life is full of waiting, but have you ever thought about the act of waiting as an art? Have you ever thought about painting that seemingly useless act into one laced with strokes of grace and patience?
We live in a global culture today that does not do well with waiting. People hate to wait, even for mere minutes. You see daily outbursts of people online that just can’t handle the pain of waiting one more minute and they crumble under its pressure, succumbing to road rage or horrible adult temper tantrums. The pain of waiting is indeed somehow capable of pushing us to a place that we somehow just can’t process. Yet there it is every day, at every really long red light…what do you do with the process of being forced to wait.
In Psalm 27 David pens yet another beautiful Holy Spirit inspired poem. It is real, it is transparent, and it is extremely applicable to our world 3,000 years later. David uses the words fear, afraid, enemies, trouble, evildoers, crying, and violence. All things that are woefully abundant in our world today and all things that we can easily become way too focused on. David had all of these factors in his life and we also have all of them in our lives. But in a two-part strategy, we see what David did with these items and therefore what we as well can do with the threats, fear, and troubles of life.
Fear, anxiety, and worry will drive you to destinations you don’t want to go. Why do you think "do not fear", "do not be afraid" and "be not anxious" are the most often repeated commands and exhortations in God’s Word? Why do you think Jesus personally commands "do not be afraid" between 32 and 40 times depending on your Bible translation? You see, fear and worry will harken you to hastily remove them from your life, just as the desire to quickly pull a nasty splinter from your finger. Worry and fear will call for you to displace them in your own power and in your own timeframe. But it cannot be done.
Within this inward personal solution lies a process that brings a life erroneously into the thought pattern that it can somehow banish fear on its own. But only the Lord can do so, and guess what? As we look to the Lord to work in His perfect timing, that bad ‘w’ word surfaces again…waiting. And it is here that we see David’s experience-driven logic take beautiful form. David knew that to banish his fear, anxiety, and worry in life, he had to cry out to the Lord to remove them, for David knew he was powerless to do it himself. And after he gave those unwanted and unneeded emotions to the Lord, he waited for the Lord to do His beautiful work. He recognized that the Lord’s perfect timing is not the timing of man. And as a result, David committed to waiting on the Lord. But a huge key here is not simply the waiting, but how he waited…with great patience. God mentions patience in over 70 verses, it is obvious how very important it is to God in what fashion we wait for His perfect plan to unfold. And that is with abundant patience and intense focus on Him, trusting in great faith that His plan will be revelaed in HIis time and on His day.
Today, as you hand over your fear, anxiety and worry to the Lord, He will graciously take them as He continues to work in your life. But as you wait on the Lord to construe your jumbled palette into yet another masterpiece, you must wait on Him with great patience. In great faith, and with great patience, wait on the Lord today.
“But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” Romans 8:25
“Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him…” Psalm 37:7a
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