Published: June 23, 2008
Sitting at my desk this morning I was reflecting and praying for different people I know who aren't doing all that well.
I think so often how it is hard to pause during pain to tell God how we feel. It is hard in difficult times to wait on God.
I can't believe how many waiting rooms I have been in. Waiting to hear if someone made it, waiting to hear from the doctor a good report. Waiting is one of the most difficult things we can ever or will ever do. Because really in waiting you are doing nothing. If you are truly waiting on God, you are doing everything.
If you are in a season of waiting, let me encourage you. God knows. God is in control. God will walk with you through whatever it is you are going through. He is for you, and has good plans for your life.
Two things that I have learned to do and two things I see in the life of David, who is the only one the Bible says is a "man after God's own heart."
FIRST. I have learned to tell God really how I feel. Not some over-Christianized attempt at trying to pray myself into being OK, but telling God. Really really how much I hurt, or why I am mad at him, or how I don't like the situation. To be in pain and to pray inauthentically is a tragic mistake. It isn't real and it won't help. God knows. He wants you to tell him.
So many of the Psalms are Psalms of Lament. To lament is to complain. To tell someone. It is only in waiting I know how much God is in control. For me, the times I DON'T tell God how I feel (as if He doesn't know?), then I carry the weight of the problem on my life.
True relief comes not through the problem being resolved but in placing my hope in God alone.
SECOND. I have learned that God can be trusted. He and He alone will be the One that will walk us through stuff we are going through. When I had cancer, it was ONLY GOD that healed my body. Those times are critical hinge points of everything else about your life. The times you wait and He alone shows up. The times you cry out and He answers. The times you are hurt and He brings healing to your body. The more times you have this God-showing-up moment, the more your faith will intersect with His faithfulness. Make sense?
I was reading Psalm 62. You see in this and many of the Psalms a level of honest confidence. In other words, you see both telling God and trusting God.
During the writing of Psalm 61 and 62 you see honest confidence. It was a time in David's life (2 Samuel 15-18), when his own son, Absalom, was rebelling against him and tried to kill him.
Notice David's honest confidence. Notice the deep trust? That comes from trusting God over and over and over. It is a relational thing, not a religious thing:
"I wait quietly before God, for my salvation comes from him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress where I will never be shaken." Psalm 62:1-2
Now, if you read Psalm 61, David is in the same situation and he TELLS GOD how he feels.
Listen to what he says in verses 1 and 2.
"O God, listen to my cry! Hear my prayer! From the ends of earth, I will cry to you for help, for my heart is overwhelmed..." Psalm 61:1-2a
I love that. A man after God's own heart isn't a man who charges in but one who waits on God. A student who pauses to listen, to trust, but is close enough to God he or she can tell God how they feel.
If you are in a season of waiting, I am sorry. I can tell you this. Tell God how you feel, and trust God to lead you to what is next. Choose to wait on God.
Wait in the Hebrew means "to await with confidence and patience". It carries the idea that we are to live in constant expectation.
In seasons of confusion, the tendency is in all of us to run into the operating room and deal with things ourselves. And sometimes in waiting, we quit. That is our tendency because we are human. That is our tendency because we cannot see what ONLY GOD can see. That is our tendency because of the culture we all live in.
It is in doing the one next right thing (sometimes it is only to breathe) and trust God. He will show up. Will you wait on Him is the only (real) question?
The two things I learned. I learned from what David said and what I learned to do. I am not there yet (by a long shot), but David is teaching me and God is with me.
Will you tell Him and can you trust Him?
Listen to David's words again in Psalm 62:
"I wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress where I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honor come from God alone. He is my refuge, a rock where no enemy can reach me." Psalm 62:5-7
Waiting works. Doesn't make sense but neither does faith.
John Bishop is the senior pastor of Living Hope Church, located in Vancover, Washington. Striving to cultivate an "Acts 2" church, John has helped lead Living Hope Church into becoming one of the fastest growing churches in America. For more about John, log onto http://www.johnbishop.tv.
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