WAITING PATIENTLY IN TRUST

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in Him.

Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods.

Psalm 40:1-3

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Yesterday, I started my first civilian job since 1989. In the time between then and now, I proudly served in the United States Navy, spending many years upholding and defending the nation’s liberties and freedoms.

This service often placed me on deployments, eight at sea and one overseas on shore, when I would have to leave my family for anywhere from three to fourteen months. The separations were difficult and required both myself and my family to have to wait for the deployment to end when we could be reunited again. The waiting wasn’t easy but the homecomings were wonderful as the fruits of patiently waiting for the time to pass were realized.

Back to my new job. My Navy career ended on June 30th and I had been looking for employment for weeks prior to that date. It had been a long time since I experienced what it was like to be unemployed and I thought that getting a job would be easy. After all, I was a veteran with 18 years of leadership and management experience with seven at the executive level. Surely someone would snatch me up as soon as they read my resumé.

It didn’t quite happen like that, at least not at first. I had to wait.

You see, I was really just one fish in a big pond of other fish who were doing what I was – looking for work and hoping to get hired soon. Others had the same thoughts and aspirations I had. Many even had similar qualifications and specialized experience in areas I didn’t, specialized experience that employers were looking for more than someone with a lot of military experience but little anything else.

And so I waited and waited and waited. More resumés sent. More rejections, if I received a rejection at all. Some places never even contacted me at all. With every rejection, I admit I got discouraged. With every interview that didn’t result in an offer, I began to question whether I was really prepared to transition to civilian life. I wasn’t handling the waiting well.

Now, let me caveat all this by saying I never lost my faith in God delivering me through all this. I knew He had a plan and would reveal it in His perfect time by His perfect will. And yet, I lacked patience in my waiting. I allowed myself to be anxious and annoyed, stressed and agitated over it all. I wanted things to work out when I wanted them to even I knew they would work out when God wanted them to. And they finally did a week ago when I interviewed for this position that would involve training Sailors and their families to prepare and endure deployments. Yes, that’s right, the same deployments my family and I had to go through, the deployments that served to teach us lessons on how to wait.

So why do I bear my soul to you on this?

Because I believe I’m not alone in the world when it comes to having trouble waiting, to wait patiently in the trust that God is going to work things out eventually. Indeed, the Lord is always trying to instill patience in us. It is a fruit of the Spirit, remember (Galatians 5:22-23 HCSB)? Think about these scenarios:

You are on your way somewhere, let’s say either to work or on vacation. You are on the interstate and traffic has been moving along well. You have a time you are expecting to arrive at your destination and so far you are on schedule. Then it happens. All traffic slows and stops. You go down to a crawl and eventually stop all together. There is an accident ahead. And so you sit and wait. And you wait. And you wait. You’re now off the schedule you had set. You would love to be able to get out of the situation but there’s no way. You are sitting with many other cars who also are waiting, waiting to be set free from the gridlock.

How do you feel at that point? Do you wait patiently or do you find yourself agitated?

or

You decide to go and do some shopping. You spend time in the store making your selections and are ready to leave. You head to the front to check out and find that only one register is open and there are five people already in line – and their carts are all filled with multiple items. The cashier appears to be struggling with the current transaction she is dealing with. She must be new on the job. And so you pull into the line and wait. After three or four minutes, the line moves ahead by one. You bump ahead and start looking to see if someone is going to open up another register so you can get waited on sooner. None come. And so you continue to wait. You want to be patient but you are ready to get home. It’s been a long day. You look ahead and the cashier is calling for a price check on an item. You are still three people away from checkout.

Have you been there? I know I have and I have been less than patient in my attitude while waiting. Maybe you have felt the same way.

Yes, let’s just be honest, we hate to wait. But maybe, just maybe, we need to step back from that attitude and consider that God is trying to do some of His best work within us when we have to wait. Maybe during those times when we are unable to do what we would like to do, He is wanting to commune with us, to instruct us, to guide us, to instill His direction and will into us. Maybe we should count our waiting as a blessing.

David had something to say about patiently waiting in trust for the Lord. Look at his opening words as found in the 40th Psalm:

I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in Him.

Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods.

  

David wasn’t waiting for a job to come, sitting in gridlock on the interstate, or stuck in a check-out line but he was up against adversity and much more difficult circumstances than any mentioned here so far. People wanted David dead.

Yet, David maintained his faith in the Lord. He had cried out for help and never stopped believing God would deliver. He patiently waited for the Lord who heard his cry and lifted him out of the pit he was in and set David’s feet on a firm place. In other words, he rescued David from his circumstances and brought him to safety. All because David trusted in him.

Friends, we should follow David’s lead and just resign ourselves to trust in the Lord and wait patiently for Him to act. He will bring us to the job He wants us to have, He will get out of the traffic jam we’re in and onto our destination, He will get the line moving eventually so we can check-out and get on our way, He will (insert what you are going through that requires patient waiting) – and He will do so according to His perfect will and timing. Getting upset and impatient will not drive the Lord toward moving any faster. In fact, He might just see we need a little more transforming, a little more patience development, and make us wait longer.

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Christians in Rome, reminded them and us that “in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).” He is always working for our good in all circumstances, not to meet our desires but His. We would be well served to just trust Him, to wait with patient for Him to reveal His amazing way through our circumstances while he is conforming us to be ever more in His image along the way.

So let’s be like David and have faith in the Lord, doing so with patience. For He has seen and heard our needs, even well before we cried out to Him, and will deliver us in His perfect time.

We can trust in that now and forever.  

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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