January 26-28 Perseverant Waiting….

“But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.” Romans 8:25

    More than once within in blog, I’ve written about waiting on God, but I don’t believe I’ve explored waiting on God with perseverance. The word waiting, in itself, implies passively sitting and watching the world go while you wait for something to happen.  There’s no action in waiting, well, not in the normal sense of the word, but if you put it in Biblical terms of waiting, you’ll find lots of action you can take while you wait eagerly and with perseverance.  While we wait on God, we should pray, fervently pray for what we are waiting for, pray for God’s blessing upon the situation, pray for God’s will, pray for contentment while we wait, pray for His hand upon every part of what is happening or is going to happen, and that kind of praying doesn’t happen without action from our waiting place in this world.  While we wait on God, we can picture what it is we want, see ourselves in that place of God’s will, and believe we will make it there someday.  This reminds me of the Israelites wandering for 40 years in the desert…talk about waiting on God! It took God’s people 40 years (not 40 days, but 40 YEARS) before He brought them out of Egypt and into the promised land, and I thought I had been waiting a long time!!  No wonder they started grumbling to Moses on the way through, but maybe if they had turned those complaints into positive prayers to God and taken the view of the desert in front of them and pictured it as the promised land of milk and honey, they might have found the contentment they needed to make it through until arrival at their home.  It’s not really in our nature to be content when things are hard, to wait and not take some sort of human action to solve our dilemmas in life ourselves, but isn’t that the whole point? God wants us to look beyond ourselves and our meager understanding of life and people and look to Him for protection, for love, for guidance, for peace and contentment.  When we are looking anywhere else but up at Him, we will become restless and make reckless decisions that are not part of His plan, then He has to take us through even more tough times to get us where we need to be in Him.  If we would just wait, eagerly looking forward to what He has in store for us, picturing His will for our lives and if we would just wait, with prayer and perseverance, trusting that He will take care of us in time, His time, then maybe, just maybe we won’t have to go through so much pain while we wait.  Waiting could end up being a wonderful time of rest in God, allowing Him to take the burdens and problems in our lives that we no longer have any control over and letting them go. Simply not worrying about our problems could make waiting in faith one of the most peaceful times of your life, even in the midst of difficult, unresolved circumstances.  So, why not give your concerns over to God today and take action to wait perseveringly on God!!