Assurance Rather Than Endurance

Let me begin by saying 'thank you' for all of your prayers for me last week. Shane and I had a safe trip to Boston to see my doctor. I also received a great report. Test results show my disease hasn't spread and is confined to the left side. Cutting down on my medication has been put into motion, as of today! This is wonderful news and could only be the work of my Lord. "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word, I put my hope." Psalm 130:5 Recently, God led me to write a post on, "How to Wait For God." I must tell you that I had planned on writing a post that was on a different topic. But the more I prayed, the more I began to see that God was leading me to write on 'waiting' again. However, we won't be looking at how to wait for God, but why we should wait for Him... Have you ever wondered why it is so difficult to wait? I have. I wonder why God gave us this inner choice to either wait patiently or frantically. After my doctor's appointment today, I thought about how long I had waited to hear such good news. Then, it was like God began to play back, in slow motion, all the events that lead up to the good news. The time in between... the 'wait time'. I was sitting here in front of the computer looking over some of my prayer journals from 2007. I recorded the trials of my sickness. There are so many pages where I had told God how tired I was; how my body hurt; how I hated to see my hair come out; I didn't feel like working; I was afraid of the infusions; how scary it was to know the medicines were not working. The entries brought tears to my eyes because I remembered those nights. I remembered thinking, "Can I wait on Him?" God has shown me that waiting on Him is easier if I began to get my mind off of the endurance of waiting and focus on the assurance of waiting. In other words, the question is not, 'can I wait for Him?', but 'why should I wait for Him?' As humans, we don't like to wait. Statistics tell us that the average person spends about 45-62 minutes a day waiting. Just waiting. Waiting on water to boil; waiting on the snooze button to go off one more time (yes, I do that!); waiting on someone to answer their phone while it rings. Just waiting. I know certain things that I don't like to wait on, but when are there times that I don't mind waiting? For me, I don't mind waiting when I know the outcome will be worth the wait. This means my hope is secure in the outcome. I do not doubt that it will be everything I expect. Why aren't we this way spiritually? Perhaps it has to do with our hope in who or what we are waiting on. Let's look at Psalm 130:5 in three parts. First, the Psalmist says, "I wait for the Lord." The word Lord, in Hebrew, translates to the personal name for God (Jehovah /Yahweh), depending upon how it is capitalized (here, Lord means Jehovah). The Psalmist is saying that he is not waiting on just anyone; he is waiting on his God that he knew personally and had a relationship with. We can rest assured that the more intimately we know God, the more reason we have to wait on Him. The second part of the verse says, 'my soul waits.' To me, this reminds me that my eternity is secure and I am waiting to be with Him, whether in death or by the rapture. The last part says, "and in His word I put my hope." Here is yet another reason to wait for God's help... His spoken word. God's word should be reason number one and reason one million and one, that we say why we will wait on Him. How about you? Are you struggling with waiting on God? Do you have a trial that you pick up every single day and try to handle it your way by yourself, only to escape the wait from God? It is just not worth rushing. 2 Thessalonians 3:5 says, "May the Lord bring you into an even deeper understanding of the love of God and of the patience that comes from Christ." It is important to know that if God allows the trial, He provides the patience to go with it. The patience comes from a daily relationship with Him. I hope God has spoken to you (as He has to me) through this post. I hope that if you are struggling to wait on Him to come to your rescue, you will consider the following: "Yet this I call to mind and therefore have hope: Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, "The Lord is my portion; therefore, I will wait for Him." Lamentations 3:21-24 Love, Corrie My prayer for today: Lord, how faithful you have been to me and my family. You have never given me reason to doubt you. I have failed you daily, but never for a moment, have you failed me. Help me to remember that waiting on you should be about who you are and not when you come. I love you and will draw close to you while I wait...