by Jill Weber

Wait for the Lord;

 

be strong and take heart

 

and wait for the Lord. Psalm 27:14

In our modern era of hurry, worry, hustle and instant gratification, waiting on the Lord seems to be a lost art. As a senior leader of not one, but three ministry organizations (I know, I know, I’m working on downsizing my life, I promise) my inbox and to-do lists harry and hassle me. Learning how to make space and to embrace waiting is one thing, but appreciating why is another thing altogether. If I get my head around the latter – the ‘why’, I’m convinced the ‘what’ will sort itself out. I’m practicing waiting on the Lord very, very imperfectly, but I am practicing it, and here are some things I’m learning along the way.

Waiting as resistance

Corrie ten Boom is attributed to have said that “if the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy.” Richard Foster adds, “In contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in ‘muchness’ and ‘manyness,’ he will rest satisfied.”¹ Foster goes on to quote psychiatrist Carl Jung, who remarked, ‘Hurry is not of the Devil; it is the Devil.’²

In his wonderful book, Sabbath as Resistance, Walter Brueggemann says it this way:³

Such faithful practice of work stoppage is an act of resistance. It declares in bodily ways that we will not participate in the anxiety system that pervades our social environment. We will not be defined by busyness and by acquisitiveness and by pursuit of more, in either our economics or our personal relations or anywhere in our lives.

The consensus is clear. Waiting on the Lord is warfare, resistance against the spiritual forces of our day.

Waiting as restoration

After an intense and difficult season of ministry amid the Covid crisis, my family and I were finally able to get away for a couple weeks of holiday. I arrived at our Airbnb utterly exhausted. I didn’t have the emotional energy to socialize. I didn’t have the mental energy to read. Fortunately, my family are late sleepers, so I had ample alone time each morning. I tried mindlessly scrolling on my phone, but that just increased my sense of overwhelm. I tried watching fluffy entertainment but found myself irritated and agitated. I felt like a petulant toddler who desperately needed to rest but just couldn’t settle.  

It was time to pull out my noise canceling headphones (best purchase ever by the way – after one too many international flights sitting in front of melting down children, I finally entreated my family to pitch in for my birthday and Christmas to buy me a pair). I dialed up some simple repetitive instrumental music, snuggled up on the couch under a blanket, and let the music soothe me.

I did it for about three hours every morning. At the beginning, it took a bit to calm into some kind of semblance of stillness. Then, as I settled into the safety of the space, my heart began to speak, not so much in words but quiet groans and sighs. Near the end of the week, scriptures began to bubble up within me like a stream and God began to sing on a breeze that blew over my heart garden. Slowly I came alive again and, at the end of that vacation, I felt remarkably restored. As I waited on the Lord,

He renewed my strength.

 

Have you not known?

 

Have you not heard?

 

The everlasting God, the Lord,

 

The Creator of the ends of the earth,

 

Neither faints nor is weary.

 

His understanding is unsearchable.

 

He gives power to the weak,

 

And to those who have no might He increases strength.

 

Even the youths shall faint and be weary,

 

And the young men shall utterly fall,

 

But those who wait on 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. Isa 40:28-31 NKJV

Waiting to receive 

My daughter was two weeks overdue. I was tired of waddling around, gingerly lowering my rotund body in and out of cars, getting hauled out of chairs. Lack of sleep, swollen feet, I was ready for this baby to arrive. I did everything we could think of to induce labor: hopping up and down, drinking castor oil (not recommended), and eating spicy food (also not recommended). One day I hiked hill and dale in a local park, my husband gamely pushing me from behind as we tried to get the birthing process under way. To no avail – she wouldn’t budge. I was just going to have to wait.

In Acts 1, the disciples weren’t exactly sure what God was birthing, but their instructions were clear. Wait for the gift of the Father. So they waited, joining together constantly in prayer in the upper room. Not one day, or two, but ten days, until the birth pangs of the church began, and they received what was promised⁴ – the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church. What do you think might have happened if, discouraged by delay, they gave up the prayer meeting on day nine? 

Waiting in faith and expectation

A ministry colleague and friend of mine lives with chronic, often debilitating pain. Over the years she’s tried multiple treatment regimens and thus far nothing seems to have worked. I don’t see her frequently, but last summer I bumped into her at a festival. As I often do, I asked the inevitable question, the one she probably dreads and is tired of people asking.

‘How’s it going?’

She smiled sadly and shrugged. ‘As usual.’

And then she brightened, ‘But, maybe today!’

Maybe today…

Months later, I’m still stunned by the sparks of faith and hope that flared up from the ashes of her affliction. Astonished by her inner strength and resilience. She’s the kind of leader worth following.

Ruth Haley Barton writes, ⁵

What kind of leader is able to call people to wait on God in the face of real threat, when all of their survival instincts are raging? What inner strength does a leader need to be able to access in order to stay calm, to quiet the primal instincts of others, and to create space for turning to God in the midst of such fierce human reactivity? Only a leader who has waited for God in the darkest moments of his own deep need. Only a leader who has stood still and waited for God’s deliverance in the places where she feared for her very life. Only the leader with inner spiritual authority that comes from his own waiting can ask others to do the same.

Leading in today’s climate requires resilience, a strength of resolve, and a determination to lay hold of God and not let go until the wrestling turns blessing. No matter how long it takes. 

The Case for Waiting

What grows in the garden of delay, in the liminal spaces betwixt and between? For me, patience has grown there. And when I participate in the waiting instead of fighting against it, if I trust in the timetable of heaven, I find that I am beginning to grow in ‘eager confident expectation to see the goodness and glory of God revealed.’⁶ I love Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Romans 8:15-17 in the Message⁷: 

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!

We have a choice, don’t we? We can be the adventurously expectant child, greeting God with ‘What’s next, Papa?’, or we can be the bored and restless child in the back seat of a car on a long journey, ‘Are we there yet?’

It is said that God has two speeds: slowly and suddenly. Often when God plants a promise within us the period of incubation can seem excruciatingly long – until the moment when suddenly God brings it to birth. 

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Can we notice that we are being enlarged in the waiting, be patient, and let things run their course? 

Can we trust that the kingdom of God, like a seed, is by nature generative, and has a life of its own? 

Do we believe that God’s timing is perfect? Can we wait on the Lord?

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. Psalm 130:5

Perhaps you’d like to consider how a spiritual director might be a trusted guide who could accompany you on your journey of faith. If you’d like to have a conversation with us to explore what this might look like, please contact us and we will follow up with you. Email us here: Soul of the Shepherd.

1.  Foster, Richard. Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (p. 19). John Murray Press. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
2.  Morton T. Kelsey, The Other Side of Silence: A Guide to Christian Meditation (London: SPCK, 1977). ↩︎
3.  Brueggemann, Walter. Sabbath as Resistance, New Edition with Study Guide (pp. 31-32). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
4.  Acts 1:3-5, 14, Acts 2:1-4 ↩︎
5.  Barton, Ruth Haley. Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry (Transforming Resources) (p. 97). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition ↩︎
6. Romans 8:19
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7. Romans 8:15-17 The Message ↩︎