Pastors are often placed in the position of having to wait on God. This is especially true during this pandemic. Think of the number to times in the past month you have had to wait on God. You are waiting for Him to guide you in plans to reopen the church. You are waiting for answers prayer, mending of relationships, changing of hearts, healing of brokenness, restoring of health, and God’s moving in the congregation.
Why is it so difficult to wait on God? Perhaps it is because we don’t like the idea that we don’t have any control over the events that affect our lives. You may be going through a “season of waiting” right now. God has placed you in a position of having to wait on HIM.
The hard part for me is waiting. I have a tendency to take matters into my own hands and make them work out the way I think they should. This often leads to stress, frustration, and sometimes heartache.
The Bible has much to say about the discipline of WAITING on God and why it matters. Here are four principles from the Scriptures:
Waiting on God is not Passive
The word for “wait” in the O.T. is a word that means, “confident expectation”. It is related to the word for rope. It literally means, “to twist tightly around something.”
We have a confident expectation that God is going to reveal His plan in His time and so we wait. While we are waiting, we continue to do the things we know to be His will. We continue to pray, preach, worship, fellowship, serve, and give. We continue to be faithful to fulfill our calling as God’s servants. The waiting in this pandemic is hard because none of us have ever been in this position before.
Waiting on God means Yielding to His Will
One of the hardest things about waiting is that we must yield our plans to HIM. As I said earlier, our natural tendency is to take matters into our own hands and try to work something out that fits into our own concepts of what should be done. Waiting on God means that we must trust God to work out His plan in His way and in His time.
The danger in this period of waiting is that I will grow impatient and force things to happen that are not a part of God’s plan. I really should not plow ahead until I have clear leadership from the LORD. We must WAIT. He will work it out if we will WAIT (Psalm 27:14).
Waiting on God Renews Our Strength
The promise of God is that He will strengthen us if we wait on Him. Those who fail to wait on HIM will spend their emotional and physical energies on things that will not accomplish His will. It is exhausting to work at the will of God without waiting on God. If we are upset and stressed out about the circumstances, we will be drained of physical energy and emotionally depleted.
Waiting on God renews our strength and energizes our work. It is only when we run ahead of God that we get exhausted (Isaiah 40:31).
Waiting on God is Part of His Purpose for Us
God often puts us in the place of WAITING so He can teach us things we need to know. Not only are we waiting on God but He is waiting on us.
- He is waiting on us to seek Him.
- He is waiting on us to trust Him.
- He is waiting on us to surrender to Him.
- He is waiting on us to be obedient to Him.
Waiting on God is part of the process of getting us ready for the next phase of God’s will for our lives (Psalm 37:7; 40:1). What other things have you learned from the discipline of waiting on God?
Pastors, you are not alone. Reach out to us at careforpastors.org.
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