A growing relationship with God is like any other relationship. It has its ups-and-downs, its joys and struggles, its victories and disappointments. Some days are pure delight; other days are dreary and unsatisfying.

The promise of life in God is something we presently possess but don’t completely enjoy. While we await the consummation of our salvation – the experience of complete redemption – we press on to greater levels of intimacy and understanding. Like any other relationship, this necessarily involves long periods of waiting.

And waiting is never fun!

Waiting on God

Waiting on God is a dominant theme throughout the entirety of sacred Scripture. It is especially prominent in the book of Psalms – the prayers, songs, and liturgy of ancient Israel. Following is a brief sample:

• Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long. (Psalm 25:5)
• Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! (Psalm 27:14)
• Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him. (Ps. 37:7)
• And now, O Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in you. (Psalm 39:7)
• For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation… For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him. (Psalm 62:1, 5)
• My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning. (Psalm 130:6)

Waiting is a consistent practice of the faithful. For this reason, it is commended by the biblical authors. They unanimously agree that waiting on God is necessary to a growing relationship with God. They also concur that God richly rewards those who wait upon him. But, since waiting is involved, the reward does not come when one would like, but rather, in God’s time. And God is dreadfully slow (read: patient) in his work in our lives and in the world!

The Truth about Waiting

I hate waiting. Waiting makes me feel unproductive, ineffective, and inconvenienced. Raised in a fast and furious culture I delight in instant gratification and immediate solutions. I prefer quick-and-easy meals over a gourmet dinner (I drive my wife crazy in that I absolutely refuse to wait at a restaurant for a table). I prefer the snappy hook of rock music over the long sustained movements of classical music. I’d rather find a short cut to losing weight than spend long years getting in shape through a steady exercise regiment and a good diet. I could go on, but the point is simple: I hate waiting!

And I don’t think I’m alone.

My complaints mostly involve trivial types of waiting. There is a type of waiting that is brutal and exhausting. “A weekend can seem like an eternity if we are waiting to find out whether a tumor is malignant or benign.”[1]

Whether it is trivial or tragic, waiting is an inevitable part of life. In her book, The Power of Patience, M. J. Ryan observes that one of the assumptions of our impatient age is that “waiting is not at the core and center of human life but somehow accidental: we should not have to wait. Human progress should mean our emancipation from the necessity to wait.”[2]

But waiting is central to human existence. If we view our lives as a journey, then we should not be surprised by waiting. Ryan notes that “[t]raveling more than anything means waiting in line: to board the airport shuttle, to go through airport security, to board the plane, to get off the plane, to get a rental car…” and so on.[3]

The Spiritual Significance of Waiting

Waiting on God has deep spiritual significance. It has deep connections to the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love.

Waiting is an act of love. We only wait for what we value. The reason I refuse to wait for a table in fancy restaurants is because a gourmet meal does not hold great value to me. I do, however, count the days to the next superhero movie or the next Dream Theater album and wait with eager anticipation.[4] On a more serious note, a spouse who faithfully waits for her beloved husband to return from a foreign battlefield, proves her love by her faithful waiting.

Waiting reveals our deepest desires. David Runcorn writes, “Waiting sharpens desire. In fact it helps us recognize where our real desires lie. It separates our passing enthusiasms from our true longings.” If the spouse in our illustration above gave up waiting on her husband because it was wearying or inconvenient, how would this reflect upon the depths of her desire?

Waiting is an act of hope. Waiting is a hopeful activity. It is not a passive exercise but an active expression. It clings to God’s promise of future glory in spite of gloomy circumstances. It is the forward-looking aspect of faith that chooses to entrust the future to God.

The Church calendar invites us to develop and experience this hopeful yearning each year during the season of Advent. We enter into the story of Israel and patiently and expectantly wait for the coming messiah. The waiting is painful, frustrating, and disappointing. We hear the pleading tones in songs like, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”:

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

The oppressed and lonely people plead for God to take note of their desperate circumstances and liberate them from bondage. The tone of sadness is offset by the call to joy – “Rejoice! Rejoice!” – a call that embraces the future in the midst of painful waiting: “Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.” The waiting, though painful, will not be in vain.

Our ultimate hope is in the complete restoration and renewal of the cosmos – a new heaven and earth in which righteousness exclusively dwells and sin is forever banished. Two of the most powerful calls to wait in the midst of trials are found in passages that speak of the promise of new creation:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:18-25)

Paul writes honestly about a groaning creation that awaits complete restoration. We also “groan inwardly” as we await the consummation of our salvation: “we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” Waiting is the activity of hope. And our hope is in God’s promise to restore and renew the entire cosmos in and through the risen Christ. Hope assures us that, though we wait, we do not wait in vain.

Peter speaks in a similar fashion when he seeks to console his readers concerning hostile opponents who mock the church’s hope by saying, “Where is the promise of Jesus’ coming?” Peter assures his readers that God’s slowness is not due to apathy or inability, but it is due to God’s passionate love for all the world – including the scoffers. “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). He then reminds his readers that the entire cosmos will be purged of sin, purified, and renewed. He concludes by reminding them that this is the ultimate promise upon which they hope: “But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home” (2 Peter 3:13).

Waiting is an act of faith. Patience with God’s timing indicates deep faith and is the source of divine empowering. God carries those who patiently wait for him.

He gives power to the faint,
   and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
   and the young will fall exhausted;
but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
   they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
   they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:29-31)

Though waiting brings great reward, it is not easy. It is simple – it doesn’t take an advanced theological degree to wait – but it is not easy. In fact, it is perhaps the most difficult expression of faith. It demands that we trust God’s promises, no matter how slow God is in fulfilling them. It is “a standing invitation to trust in God’s timing.”[5] We wait on the slow work of God. Waiting exposes the painful fact that we are not ultimately in control of most of the events in our lives. It proves to us that not everything can be accomplished by willpower – that the essence of faith is not willfulness but willingness, not control but surrender.

The psalmists are painfully honest about the hard work of waiting: “I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God” (Psalm 69:3). They, like us, in the midst of painful waiting, were constantly confronted with the question: Is God worth the wait?

Our answer reveals the depth of our desire for God. We only wait for that which we value. We wait in hope that our waiting will not be in vain. Our willingness to wait reveals our measure of God’s worth – and the measure of our faith.

Waiting is driven by promise – and God has offered us the greatest promise of all: the promise of the complete restoration and renewal of all things so that God’s glory may pervade all. Is this promise worth waiting for?

God’s Waiting Room

In order to sustain ourselves while waiting, we must constantly remember who is with us and what he is doing with us – healing us! Though we generally are impatient when we have to wait, we will wait when it seems advantageous to us. We wait in traffic to get where we want to go. We wait in line to purchase what we want to possess. There is one other place where we willingly wait – one place we expect to wait while suffering pain with the possibility of suffering even further pain in order to be made whole. That place is aptly named, “a waiting room.”

We are in God’s “waiting room.” Consider a “patient” in a hospital room (the word patient comes from a Latin word meaning “to bear pain”). Why do we wait? We hope for healing even if it can only come through more suffering. We are aware that the additional suffering of medical tests, treatments, and perhaps even surgery may lead to ultimate healing. How much more should we patiently wait in God’s waiting room of life – the place where God shapes and molds us to be more like his Son through the experience of suffering love, self-controlled passion, and sacrificial giving of ourselves and our time for the greater good of others and the glory of God.

The doctor is the Great Physician. He can certainly be trusted, even if his treatment involves immediate suffering to bring ultimate healing – a healing that results in our likeness to God in Christ through the Spirit.

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Prayer:

Gracious God, it’s so hard to wait. To wait for new things to happen in my life. To wait for you to answer my prayers. To wait for the open doors that may lead me into a new way of being. During the time of waiting, it seems that all I can think of is having what it is I am waiting for. At times I feel weary of asking and waiting, and I wonder if you really hear my prayers at all, if you are ignoring me, or if you are simply refusing to give me my heart’s desire. A part of me knows that you want my best, and that your time is not my time, but Lord, it is still so hard to wait. Deepen my trust, O Lord, during the times when my heart longs for what can only come in the fullness of time. Give me a calm assurance that your will for me is grander than anything I could ever imagine. Still my mind and heart in your love so that I am mindful of the grace you are draping around me every single day, every single moment. I ask this for the sake of your love.
http://www.explorefaith.org/prayer/essays/patientpray.html

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For reflection:

• Complaint: “God, you are so slow to _________________.”
• Commitment: “God, I wait for you!”

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The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. (Lam. 3:25-26)

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© Richard J. Vincent, 2006