Quiet Time For Your SoulSample

Wait on the Lord

I was rewinding an old VHS tape to show Christian and his friends some footage from our trip to Scotland when he was two years old.

“This is taking forever,” one of them said.

“Does this thing run on gas?” another asked.

I laughed at their horror of anything that takes longer than three seconds to load. We live in such a “now” culture, where everything is immediately available at the touch of a button or with a voice command.

Waiting. It isn’t easy, especially when we are waiting on God, but Scripture is filled with the stories of men and women who experienced agonizing periods of waiting on the Lord.

Abram and Sarai waited twenty-five years for God to fulfill His promise that someday they would have a child. When Isaac was born, they were old enough to be great-grandparents!

The Israelites suffered for more than four hundred years in Egyptian slavery, waiting for God to deliver them from their cruel bondage.

After Samuel had anointed him king of Israel, David waited years to assume the throne that was rightfully his.

For three long days Jesus’ followers waited for hope to break through their darkest despair as His battered body lay in the tomb.

Jesus rose from the dead and returned to the Father to prepare a home for us, and we who call Him Savior and Lord have been waiting more than two thousand years for Him to return.

The difficult work of waiting often seems to be part of our relationship with God. His timing is just different from ours. The apostle Peter wrote, “Do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:8).

What does this have to do with our quiet time with God? When I enter into that space with God, I often experience a period of waiting. Don’t be discouraged if you struggle to quiet your mind or you feel as if your prayers are bouncing off the ceiling. Grant yourself the gift of relaxing into the wait. If you gently continue to turn your heart back to Him, simply waiting on Him, you will experience His presence.

And His presence will be worth the wait!

I choose to step into the quiet and wait for You.