Waiting is Surrender
No one likes to wait, especially Americans. Before the days of self-check-out at the grocery store I would quickly survey the lines and make internal assessments about the speed of each cashier and the carts of every person in line, all in hopes of not having to wait an extra minute or two to buy bread and milk. I know I am not the only one.
Recently I have been reflecting on how God doesn’t seem to mind us waiting. In fact, he seems to like it. There are numerous biblical texts that reference “waiting on the Lord” but I am not sure I have really grasped what that means.
Psalm 27:13-14
I remain confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord.
Psalm 130:5-6
I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
In prayer this week the Lord encouraged me with this simple thought: Waiting is the posture of surrender.
Why does the Spirit fall upon a waiting people at Pentecost? The intentional act of inaction is a tangible statement that we do not have what it takes ourselves and that we need God. Think about Jesus' instructions to those early believers in Acts 1, “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.” He did not tell them to rush out and start doing something! The something they were to do was to be still and wait on the promise of God. Waiting takes real faith.
In an action-obsessed culture this idea of waiting on the Lord is counterintuitive, and yet I am more and more convinced that it’s essential to renewal in the church.
Think about the recent Asbury outpouring. That all started, in essence, with a group of college students who said we must wait here in the chapel for the Lord. We need more of him, so we will wait here.
Or think about the God-given command for Sabbath. Is not Sabbath an intentional design to wait upon the Lord each week? To stop our striving and recognize our true need for him.
Even at the heart of Israel’s story is the theme of constant waiting. Waiting for a deliverer in Egypt. Waiting for a promised land. Waiting for a messiah.
Now is a time in the church to begin waiting upon God. To do so means to come to the end of ourselves…to give up our notions of self-correction, self-reliance, and self-made plans. It’s time to wait upon the Lord for his power. It means to work on our knees rather than the constant buzz of activity. Waiting in this sense is not a lazy pursuit. It’s an active choice. It’s a slowing on purpose. It is the intentional posture of surrender.
The posture of waiting is the very place God chose to launch his church in the first place, among a small group of waiting and praying people in an upper room. We can’t fix ourselves, but he can. And when we wait…he draws near. Perhaps that is why the Lord loves this method so much. It’s the place where he can lean in close and we have stopped long enough to listen. Waiting is the place where our relationship grows so that when we start moving again, it’s not at our own speed or direction, but we move together in relationship with his Spirit.
“I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.”