King David

Here’s the thing that amazes me most about King David: he was anointed king years before he actually became the king. He knew God’s plan when he was a musician playing in the king’s palace. When he was a lowly shepherd boy slinging rocks at a giant. When the king tried to kill him (over, and over). When he lived like a fugitive. When he had the chance to kill the king.

All that time, David just waited. He knew God’s plan. He knew it. But he waited patiently. He didn’t turn around and sling a rock at Saul. Or kill him when he caught him taking care of business in a cave. 

I remember going to a writer’s conference a couple years ago and Jerry B. Jenkins answered an audience question about what he’d tell his young self if he could. Jerry said, “I’d tell myself, ‘you’re going to be very, very lucky.’” And I thought, “I wouldn’t want to know.”

Because if I knew that I was going to rule a country or sell best-selling books…I wouldn’t be patient about it. I’d try to make it happen sooner. I’d try to rush God’s plans. If I knew now that 10 years from now I’d be doing X (assuming I liked plan X), I’d try to make it happen in 1 year. The Bible says David was a man after God’s own heart. And with the exception of a few really bad decisions in there, he showed it over and over again. But one way that I’ve often overlooked in that is his patience.

 Sometimes I feel like I want a spoiler of certain things that will happen in my life. But thank God, he hasn’t shown them to me.

Waiting

I had this thought today about waiting. I've blogged before about how waiting seems so hard because sometimes, you don't even know what you're waiting for. Romans 5 says if we hope for what we don't yet have, we wait for it patiently. But what about when we're not sure our hopes are even what we'll end up getting? It's hard to wait patiently when we're not even sure all that patience will yield what we want.

But my thought today was about dessert. Because, well, I think about dessert a lot anyway. I was thinking about how when I was a kid, every night for dessert we got a bowl of ice cream and a cookie. And through my green beans, I had to exercise a lot of patience as I waited for that yummy dessert.

But what if one night, my parents had an even yummier surprise dessert? What if they had ice cream cake (with the chocolate crumblies), or double chocolate Dunkin Donuts, or a trip to an ice cream parlor? I'd be waiting for my bowl of ice cream and cookie and never get it...but only because I'm getting something far better!

When we don't get what we want, it's because God has something better in store. I've come to the realization that there are things I was waiting for that are pretty much not going to happen. But all that means is that I'm going to the ice cream parlor! What I thought was going to be an awesome thing probably won't happen...but whatever God will do in my life will be vastly greater.

And that's why I can wait patiently and hopefully.

Trust Me

A few days ago I felt like God was speaking directly to my heart, two simple words: Trust me.

These words came specifically in regards to a situation that has brought me a lot of frustration. And although those instructions have been very hard to follow for me in the past (didn't I just blog about letting God have control of my life...and how unnatural that is for me?), it has been easy this time. Maybe because I heard the direction so clearly.

Then on Sunday two more simple words came to my heart: Just wait. Not as in the patience I blogged about last week. Not as in "just wait and you'll get what you want." More like when someone says, "Just wait until you see what I have planned for your birthday." Or, "Just wait until you see what I got you for Christmas." The kind of just wait that means someone has something planned for you that is so exciting for them as the giver, and will be exciting for you to receive.

So those two phrases have been running in my head since then. And it's helped me so much with patience and trust and knowing that God has a plan for me. I was thinking about Psalm 139 where it says, "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

And that verse coming to mind, coupled with the two phrases, has brought me to this realization: God is a better writer than me. 


I've always loved that verse in Psalm 139 because I liked that it implies God is a writer. I could identify with that. But it was only yesterday that it hit me that he's a better writer than I am. It should've been obvious, perhaps, but I guess I just didn't think about it.

All my hopes and plans and daydreams are nothing compared to what God wrote in his book before one of my days came to be. I don't know what he has written. But I'm pretty sure he's excited to show me, in his time. And I'm excited to see, in his time. Because I know it's so much better than anything I've written in my head.

Just wait.

Waiting

Lately I've noticed that I'm not a very patient person. It's not that patience is a recent struggle, just a recent conviction. Waiting has never been my forte.

So this morning I decided to find a verse in the Psalms about waiting on the Lord and reflect on it. And I found this in Psalm 37:34: "Wait for the Lord, and keep his way."

Now, as I started reflecting I was just thinking about wanting to learn to be patient for things I want to happen in my life. I wanted to think about waiting on God's timing for those things.

But God showed me something as I thought about that verse. He showed me that waiting for him doesn't mean setting my eyes on what I want and waiting for him to give it to me. It means just looking to him and seeing what he will do in my life. And keeping his way as I wait. Without my hidden agenda. Otherwise I'm not really waiting for him; I'm waiting for whatever is on my list.

And I realized something else, too. There have been times in my life when I've been waiting on God's timing for my agenda and what he ends up giving me isn't my agenda at all. It's something much better than what I thought of. If God isn't planning what I hope for, it's because he's planning something that's ultimately so much better.

Do I have it all figured out? Not remotely. Somehow I still have to figure out to let go of the agenda I cling so tightly to, to truly give it to God and wait for him, not for him to give me what I want.

Patience

Nehemiah gets a lot of press for being a patient man. But when you think about the other stories of big projects in the Bible, Nehemiah's is one of the fastest moving. He just waits a few months for permission to go, and the wall is done in a mere 52 days.

In contrast, Noah was 500 when he is first mentioned. He is 600 when the earth floods. And between the rain and waiting for the flood waters to recede, he is on the ark for about 9 months. Abraham died hundreds of years before his descendants would truly conquer the promised land. Joseph was wrongly imprisoned for two years, and that was only a part of his path from slave to leader.

The Israelites cried out in captivity in Egypt for 400 years. They wandered in the desert for 40 years. David had to wait until after his death for his son to achieve his dream of building the temple. Paul waited and prayed but never did get rid of the thorn in his flesh.

And the Messiah? Thousands of years of waiting for him to show up. (And Simeon was sure waiting!)

In fact, the "faith hall of fame" in Hebrews 11 says this about many of those examples: "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth." They knew that their patience would pay off in the form of answered promises, even if they never saw it happen in their lifetime. So they lived by faith.

Bottom line: Sometimes it takes a lot of waiting to see God's hand do mighty things. Nehemiah, one of the shortest "waiting" timespans, is the one we look at, probably because 4 months is all we can bear when we think about waiting for something. But the truth is, sometimes we don't even get to see what God does with our lives, because his story is bigger than you or me as individuals. God is doing good things, and the best things are worth waiting for.

I recently reflected on Psalm 103:5: "...[he] satisfies your desires with good things." As I reflected on it I thought about my tendency to manipulate situations I feel are taking too long. I realized that my impatience means I'm satisfying my own desires with lesser things. But if I wait on his timing, I'll find that he has good things in store for me.

God's Will

This is kind of a follow-up to my post yesterday about Christians I admire vs. those who make me embarrassed to call myself a Christian.

I remember reading this article in college from larknews.com, which is kind of like The Onion but specifically satirizing Christian topics. If you didn't click the link, I'll summarize: a man dies at the age of 91 without having done anything substantial with his life, because he was waiting for the voice of God to direct him.

Which brings me to an item I didn't list on my blog yesterday: Christians I admire take action. Christians that embarrass me sit around waiting for a tangible sign from God.

It's not that God can't speak to us in miraculous ways today. I believe he can. But he doesn't always. And I think sometimes faith means taking that first step and seeing how it goes. Sometimes, we just need to take action.

There's an old joke about a guy who was sitting on his roof as floodwaters rose, and he prayed for God to rescue him. Someone on a raft came by, and he said, "No thanks, I'm waiting for God." Then someone in a row boat came by, and again he said, "No thanks, I'm waiting for God." A motor boat came by and he gave the same response. Eventually he drowned in the floodwaters, and when he got to heaven he asked God, "Why didn't you rescue me?" And God responded, "I sent you three boats!!"

Sometimes we're so bent on having to see God speak or act in miraculous ways, we miss what he's telling us in everyday life. Like if we're not at a burning bush, God can't be directing us. And so we sit back passively, waiting for that booming voice that will probably never come. God's much more into subtle whispers than booming proclamations, it seems.