Worth the Wait

Hi, this is Cynthia Dowling, and Scripture clearly teaches that we should wait on the Lord; but what does it really mean to “wait on the Lord”? Do I open my human box of tools and start pushing in different directions to see if something will happen? Do I try to sniff something out? Do I start dropping hints to influence people that might be able to help my situation along? Do I twiddle my thumbs and hope for the best? Or, do I just sit and fume, frustrated and angry that I am stuck waiting? Some years ago, I began to wonder, “What does God mean when He asks me to wait on Him?” As I thought about this question, I began to see verses pop up in my daily Scripture reading that gave me some clues. These verses in Isaiah 55 actually made me close my human toolbox. God says, “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ saith the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’” Whoa! So, I can't even begin to guess what eternal good God wants to do for me and His kingdom with my situation as I wait on Him. If I start to make things happen with my human box of tools, I’m going to be scratching around in the dirt of the earth limiting myself with temporal, short-sighted and even harmful solutions, while missing out on God’s eternal, holistic, heavenly plan and its accompanying blessings.

So where can I find God's thoughts and God's ways, so I don't miss out on those blessings? Well, there is only one comprehensive source—the Bible. Isn't God wonderful to give us His thoughts and His ways in simple terms that we can understand, if we will yield our wills to follow His ways? God had the Psalmist David pen the words “wait on the Lord” many times throughout the Psalms. Interestingly, the life of David is very well chronicled in Scripture with many chapters given to the history of his life. God wanted us to have a clear picture of just who the writer of the psalms was and how he trusted the Lord through his recorded vicissitudes of life. So, when we read the Psalms, we know that David experienced extremely difficult times as well as times of magnificent blessing. Hence, we can safely say that his wide range of experiences encompasses the gamut of our relatively short range of ups and downs. Clearly, God was faithful and David was obedient.

So, let's take a quick look at David's life and see where he intersected with a man who did not wait on the Lord; his name was Saul. Saul seemed to be a good guy when Samuel anointed him to be king. When Samuel met him, he was carefully looking for his father's donkeys who had strayed; and when the people tried to anoint him king, he was so uncomfortable, the Bible says that he “hid in the baggage.” But did he look like a king, standing head and shoulders above all the other men. The people must have been thinking that this guy could lead us to victory; this guy is just the king we've been looking for; he'll make all those other nations stand up and take notice. The test of “other nations” was not long in coming. Saul had reigned two years over Israel, when the Philistines gathered themselves together to test his mettle. At this time, Saul and his son Jonathan had the only swords in all the army of Israel, because the Philistines had confiscated the rest. Saul truly was in a bad spot. Samuel, the prophet, told Saul that he would come in seven days to offer the sacrifice before the battle. But as the swordless Israelite warriors began to gather and saw the multitude of the Philistines, many became fearful and started to hide themselves in caves and thickets and rocks, and yet Samuel did not come. On the seventh day Saul was getting desperate.

So what did desperate Saul decide to do? As the day waned and his men continued to scatter, he reached into his human box of tools, thinking that he had to make something happen; and then he decided to offer the burnt offering himself. Made sense, right? Yes, and no. It made human sense but not God-sense. Samuel, the man God had chosen to offer sacrifices, clearly commanded Saul to wait for him to come; but Saul took “tool-box” initiative and offered that burnt offering himself. The Bible then tells us, “And it came to pass, that as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came; and Saul went out to meet him, that he might salute him. And Samuel said, What hast thou done? And Saul said, Because I saw that the people were scattered from me, and that thou camest not within the days appointed⁖: I forced myself therefore, and offered a burnt offering.”

What was Samuel’s response? “Saul, Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of the LORD thy God, which he commanded thee: for now would the LORD have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever. But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the LORD hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the LORD hath commanded him to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the LORD commanded thee.” Do you know what else Samuel said? “Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king.” What a price to pay for dipping into that human box of tools. Saul forfeited his kingdom and lost everything else that was important to him, including his life, at the hands of the Philistines.

Now let's take a look at David, the man after God's own heart. He had no fear of Goliath because he feared the Lord. In fact, he was angry that Goliath had defied God and God's people, and God gave him a wonderful victory over this evil giant. After this duel and Israel’s subsequent victory over the Philistines, King Saul brought David into the palace to serve as his armor bearer, until he became a more popular warrior than Saul himself. Envious Saul then started on a path of vengeance to kill him, realizing that Samuel had anointed David to take the throne. The result, David was on the run from Saul for many years. During that time, he had multiple opportunities to kill Saul and reach into that human box of tools to take care of his enemy for good. His band of 600 followers were all-in on his reaching into that toolbox. But what did David say, “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the Lord's anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord.” David feared God more than he feared Saul; God had made Saul king, and it was God who must dethrone him. So, the place to start while waiting on God is fear, fear of displeasing God more than fearing the looming, apparent consequences.

The Lord started teaching me this principle when I was in college in the midst of the dating scene. I was frustrated that the guys that asked me out weren't the ones I wanted to date, so I asked a friend of mine how to get the guys I was interested in to ask me out. She gave me a few tips, and I tried them on the guy I had targeted; and, lo and behold, they worked! We started dating and got a little more serious, and then I started to get an uncomfortable feeling in my spirit. “Wait a minute,” I thought. “Where is God in all of this? How can I possibly know if this guy is God's choice for me, when I engineered our getting together?” I began to backpedal and got out of that relationship fairly quickly and told the Lord I would never do that again, and I didn't. At that point, I knew that I wanted what God wanted for me in His time with all its future blessings more than I wanted companionship and even marriage. That decision to put down my human toolbox of dating tricks started me on a path of other good decisions that eventually led to meeting my wonderful husband much later. I was beginning to understand what it meant to fear the Lord. It simply means to wait for the Lord's best without a toolbox of tricks and with a great desire to please Him. How thankful I am to the Lord for teaching me to fear missing His best more than I feared being alone and being single.

David and Saul, two men facing hard choices. Saul waited but not long enough. David by faith waited, and waited, and waited, and waited; and he saw God protect him and direct him again, and again, and again. Then, at just the right time, he saw God bring him to the throne, unify the tribes, destroy Israel’s enemies, and even give him the design and materials for God's magnificent temple in Jerusalem! On top of all those blessings, he received a promise from God that his line would reign over Israel forever and ever in the person of Jesus Christ, God's own Son! Wow—an eternal dynasty! Do you think David would tell us it was worth the wait?

Let's put away our human box of tricks and wait on the Lord to see what good things God will do in us and through us and for us. “Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart. Wait I say on the Lord.”