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I'm thinking of all the other things I'd rather be doing instead of sitting here - waiting. It happens every time you go to the doctor's office. You wonder how long must I wait? Or maybe you're dreading what's going to come next and you wish you didn't have to be there waiting at all. If you've ever been called to the principal's office in school, you know exactly what I mean. It's the "waiting room" of life – and most of us don't like it one bit.

We live in a world of fast cars, fast food, emails, instant messaging, microwaves, Fed Ex, and express lines. So much time and technology is invested in making the "waiting" time shorter. I'm almost surprised we haven't figured out how to get more than 24 hours in a day.

How well do you wait? When you're sitting at a traffic light and the light turns green, how long are you willing to wait for the car in front of you to move before you will honk your horn? If you're standing in the 10 items or less line, do you count the number of items the person in front of you has to see if they really do have less than 10? Afraid you've been cheated out of a minute or so?

What are you willing to wait for? Some experiences of waiting are trivial – like waiting in traffic on your way to work in the morning, or waiting in line at the grocery store. Other types of waiting are much harder. Like the waiting of someone who is single who hopes that God might one day have marriage in store for him or her, but is beginning to despair. Or the waiting of someone who longs to have work that is meaningful and significant and yet unable to find it. What about the waiting of a childless couple desperate to start a family? And then there's the waiting of a deeply depressed woman who longs for a morning when she will wake up wanting to live instead of wanting to die.

At some point in each of our lives, we will have to learn to wait.

I realized just how impatient I am with God and His timing when I started looking closer at the scriptures to see what God had to say about waiting. Talk about waiting… Abraham and Sara were long past childbearing age when God's promise of a son for them came about. Joseph had to endure imprisonment before finding favor in Egypt, and then it was much later before his brothers traveled there looking for famine relief and eventually discovering the fate of the one they'd sold into slavery. Moses tended sheep for forty years before his call to return to Egypt and ask Pharaoh for deliverance of his people. Moreover, the Israelites wandered for another forty years before entering the Promised Land.

Recently I've found myself waiting on a number of things. At first, I complained a lot about having to wait. And then I found myself asking the question, "What am I to do during the waiting process?" Do I just sit back and do nothing? The answer is both yes and no! As I turned to God's word I found so much was gained during the "waiting" phase in the lives of those who had to wait.

So how do you "wait" well? For me, the first step was to turn to God's word.

This tells me that in waiting for Him, I must also seek Him. There are many ways to seek Him, through spending time in the Bible studying, seeking answers, and claiming God's promises; through spending time praying about the situation at hand, praying for wisdom and discernment; and through meditating on who God is and what He wants to do in us and through us.

The ability to wait on the Lord stems from being confident and focused on who God is and in what God is doing. It means confidence in His wisdom, love, timing, and understanding of our situation and that of the world. It means knowing and trusting in God's principles, promises, purposes, and power.

Waiting also means resting in God's timing while taking care of our responsibilities—the things we
can do and should do as set forth in the Word of God.

The opposite of waiting and resting by faith is turning to our solutions of self-protection because of anger, fear, and jealousy. We fret, we complain, we may withdraw or even run from the problem. We may try to control others, call attention to ourselves to bolster our feelings of inadequacy or to defend ourselves against the comments of others. Out of fear of failure or loss, we may compromise our convictions. Fear, which has displaced faith in the Lord, causes us to lean on the arm of the flesh. It is in these moments we make our biggest mistakes and that is trying to control situations that are beyond our control.

I know - I've done it a thousand times before. I might even do it a thousand times again. I hope not. I hope this time I've learned a little bit more about waiting and what it means to "grow in the waiting."

Growing is what happens when you seek control over how you respond to the waiting rather than give up. It happens when you decide to be completely faithful in a situation you don't like or can't understand. Sadly, quitting always looks easier that enduring. When life doesn't turn out the way you've planned, quitting just might look like sweet relief. But know this, "who you are" is revealed when life doesn't turn out the way you planned. Don't give up easily. Instead, grow!

There are so many promises in God's word for those who are willing to wait.

If you are like me, and you're waiting on God these days – if you are obeying Him, but you don't see the results you've hoped for yet – there is a wonderful promise in the Bible attached to waiting. It gives me courage and strength to endure the waiting. I pray it encourages you as well.

Don't give up easily. Instead, choose to "grow in the waiting." You won't regret it!

"Refreshment in Refuge" from Gina Burgess

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