#150. Waiting on God
Apr 14th by JonWaiting on God is a good thing, but it can quickly evolve into just another form of the excuse, “let me pray about it.” And to tell you the truth, I’ve received some great emails in the last few weeks asking me to address this issue.
Rather than going over the steps on how to run and how to wait, I thought I’d share the three stories that kind of punched my understanding of waiting on God in the face:
1. The silent bush.
If you have kids and their Sunday School teacher has access to red construction paper then you’ve seen this story 19 times. But here’s something I always missed. God didn’t talk to Moses until after Mose took a step toward the burning bush. Here is what Exodus 3 says: So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” What if Moses had “waited” on the Lord instead of exploring the strange sight?
2. The great goat parade.
In Genesis 43, after Joseph of the coat fame, forgave his brothers, he tells his father Israel to come to Egypt. Here’s what happens: “So Israel (Jacob) set out with all that was his and when he reached Beersheba, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. And God spoke to Israel in a vision at night and said, “Jacob! Jacob!” “Here I am,” he replied. “I am God, the God of your father,” he said. “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again.” Do you see the sequence there? Israel had to pack up his entire life first. He had to get the goats moving, pick up his tents, send his clan to Egypt before God spoke to him. The journey was underway before God comes on the scene. What if Israel had waited on God before he left for Egypt?
3. Why test when you can split?
After Elijah goes up to heaven and Elisha takes up his mantle he’s forced with a decision. He can sit and pray and wait or he can strike out on his own campaign for God. Here’s what happens in 2 Kings 2: He (Elisha) picked up the cloak that had fallen from Elijah and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. Then he took the cloak that had fallen from him and struck the water with it. “Where now is the LORD, the God of Elijah?” he asked. When he struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over. I love that. He didn’t test the waters with his toe, he parted them. He basically said, “God if you’re down, let’s do this thing.” And then he did it.
The one thing we can’t miss in those examples is that a period of great waiting preceeded a the period of great action. Moses was in the desert for 40 years before the bush caught aflame. Israel had spent years trusting in the Lord even though he believed Joseph was dead. Elisha had apprenticed to Elijah for a while.
So the question comes down to, should you wait on God or run?
And I think the answer is “yes.”
Comments
my favourite example of this is Johnathon and his armour bearer.
Classic example of gung-ho “well I don’t know if God is with us or not, but let’s just go anyway and if we get killed then we’ll know”.
I wish I could go back to being more like this.
Wow, nice little devo sandwiched in there. Good stuff!
Great post! So true and so hard to do.
I also wanted to tell you I just finished reading the first part of your book that you emailed and it’s fantastic. I really hope you get published one day. It’s a message we all need to hear. Let’s rescue sex!
This reminds me; Christians like to “give stuff to God.” I hear this all the time and I always wonder what that means. Seems, since God is creator of everything (Col 1:15-17) there isn’t anything we can give to Him. However, we like to hold onto things we aren’t supposed to. When we do this, we aren’t holding onto God. So instead of “giving stuff to God,” we should let go of what we aren’t supposed to be holding onto and grab hold of God.
thanks
“So the question comes down to, should you wait on God or run?
And I think the answer is “yes.”"
Nicely played.
"Get on your knees and fight like a man" Petra
"It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees" Midnight Oil
"There's no more need for sorrow if we get off our knees to pray" The Housemartins
I stopped listening to Petra in the 80's but the Oils are still regularly featured. I only had the Housemartins on cassette. I miss them.
I believe in prayer, but I definitely have (though somewhat timidly) more of an activist spiritual temperament (by the way Gary Thomas's book Sacred Pathways is a valuable read – and with that I've exceeded my quota of elipses!!!) so I'm with Alex. I wish I could be more like Jonothan and his armour bearer.
Actually, I think it would be great if we could develop some kind of symbiotic relationship between activists and intecessors. Not that activist shouldn't pray, or that pray-ers shouldn't act, but that we each recognise the validity, God-given calling/passion and value of the other, so that activists feel strongly supported in prayer, and intecessors can recognise and celebrate some of the answers to their prayers in the work of activists – instead of hyper-spiritualising everything and making activists feel inferior and unspiritual for not being there every Tuesday night bored out of their brains and not feeling at all inspired and close to God through the same routine of spending 40 minutes talking about what we're going to pray about then, the first person praying about all of it, so everyone else thinks they've got to pray about all of it too, even the stuff they don't feel at all strongly about, so the final 20 minutes feels like 2 hours…
maybe this rant should end now.
Here's another one that always kicked me in the butt:
Moses reaches the edge of the Red Sea, all the Israelites behind them, the Egyptian army on their tail, and he lifts up his hands and starts praying. And God says (in the NIV or NASB or one of those): "Why do you cry out to me? Tell the people to move forward."
But in the Living Bible, God says, "Quit praying and get the people moving!"
And sometimes we need to do just that.
Makes me think of Erwin McManus's "Seizing Your Divine Moment", his point being that we should be waiting and on the watch for chances to do something for God, and when one presents itself don't back down. Many people "wait on God" in the hopes of obtaining a guarantee, when in truth it is often action that precedes provision, not the other way around.
Preach it! This is awesome.
Very cool.
The only time I remember anyone being told to wait and pray in the bible is Jesus telling the disciples after he left and before the holy spirit came.
Maybe God likes us to be proactive, even if its hit-or-miss sometimes.