Isaiah 40:31
31 But they that wait upon
the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall
mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall
walk, and not faint.
James 1:4-8
4 But let patience have
her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
Waiting. It is an antithesis to this generation. In our world
of fast food, fast internet, fast gratification with credit cards, orders with
the click of a button, fast money, fast cars, fast planes and so on. Patience
is not regarded as a virtue, instead speed is considered to be much more
important. We also see it with lists like Forbes 40 under 40, the obsession
with youth and lack of reverence for age, the obsession with the new etc.
But the Bible tells us opposite.
Waiting is the virtue. Patience is the virtue. Patience is
how we achieve perfection.
We are in a world, where acting on our impulses, being men
and women of action is considered the virtue, doing is the verb every one regards
as the high value, no one asks, how do you wait for a living, instead the
questions are what do you do for a living, what are you going to do; when you
answer, I’m going to wait, you are looked at as if you were an alien. It is believed
that waiting is some form of passiveness, but the wisdom of God is different.
The initial text at the beginning of this article says that
waiting on God is the path to strength renewed, it is the way to fly like an
eagle, it is the way to running and walking without being tired.
The question is why wait? Why wait when I can go out there
and get all I want and need, why should I wait on the Lord?
Waiting has been, is and will always be the Plan.
The Bible makes it clear that God is always at work and has
been at work since creation, even in the books of Esther and Ruth, where the
activity of God is little mentioned, we have the benefit of hindsight and we
see God working, weaving His fingers and His hand through time from eternity to
accomplish His purpose and plans for all His creation. He has, He is and will
always be in-control.
And we are His creation. Though we lost something at the
Fall, we recover it when we find Jesus. We lost our purpose which was to rule
over the earth, in Jesus, we have recovered that purpose, but we must be
careful not to make the same mistake that Adam made; we must wait on God. At
creation, God instructed Adam that He could eat everything except the Tree of
the knowledge of Good and Evil, the interesting thing is that He was not previously
barred from the Tree of Life, but Adam impatiently ate of the Tree of the
Knowledge of good and evil; he was seeking to be like God, to know good and
evil. The temptation to be like God is so great, there are several men who
overtime have fallen to this temptation; Adam had spoken to God, He had seen
the splendour, the majesty, the glory, the greatness, and He could not wait to
be like Him, this was His error. God always intended to make us like Him and
not Him, Adam and Eve, only needed to be patient and they would have become
like Him, they could not wait.
Waiting is the Plan, there is no other plan.
To be like Him, we must wait. We will never be God, He only
is God, and we are His children, gods, sons of God, which is what we are and
created to be but we must wait.
Jesus’s Example of Waiting
Jesus understood this when He came to earth.
When He was tempted in the desert, He waited before He ate to
regain strength in His body, turning stone to bread would have been easy but
that was against God’s word, hence He waited till He found bread to eat; He
could have jumped and landed on His feet, but He knew that this was against
God’s plan for the season, He could have bowed to the devil and received all
the kingdoms of the world at that moment, but He knew, that was not the time
and He had to wait more than 2000 years when the kingdoms of earth and heaven
will become the Kingdom of our God. He knew that waiting was God’s way. God
created time for us to wait. Time is his instrument to accomplish His purpose,
so that we may become all that He has purposed. Time is an instrument of
perfection.
Even God the Father waits, He waited before Jesus came down,
He did not send Him immediately, He is waiting to vanquish the devil, He waited
for the salvation of every man who is saved and continues to wait for everyone
who will be saved, He waits to see His will on the earth. Waiting cannot be
removed from the order or things. Jesus waits to rule the earth.
The Holy Spirits waits for us. He waited for us to receive
Him and His Power, He waited for us to be convicted of our sin and turn to Him
for grace. He waits for many today and continues to wait according to the will of
God.
God is a God of Patience (Romans 15:5)
We must wait, learning to wait is hard but we do well if we wait.
The times of waiting are peculiar, they may seem like nothing
is being accomplished but only if we could see with our spiritual eyes what
waiting accomplishes. The spiritual controls the physical and we need our
spiritual eyes to see what waiting does for us. Isaiah does an outstanding job
of describing what waiting does for us. Paul comes second in describing it as what
perfects us.
