thought exercise on Waiting on God

There are times, when we’re waiting on God to do something for us, when (sad to say) God seems to take forever. And there are times when God is waiting on us to do something for God, when (thank God) ...

With the global coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, life stopped. Overwhelmed by the threat of a disease we couldn’t stop and for which we didn’t have the hospital capacity, everyone moved work and s...

Patience is a hard discipline. It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control: the arrival of the bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a co...

God intended man to have all good, but in . . . God’s time; and therefore all disobedience, all sin, consists essentially in breaking out of time. Hence the restoration of order by the Son of God ha...

I’ve always thought that Jesus gave a very odd first step to completing the Great Commission, basically telling them, “Do nothing until the Holy Spirit comes upon you” (Luke 24:49, my paraphrase). Wit...

Do you ever feel as if God is far from you? Be assured, He is steadfastly near. Do not be disheartened because you don’t see Him in your circumstances. I saw an illustration of this during a photograp...

An experienced gardener knows the value of not watering their tomatoes. Well, there's a little more to it, but that's the headline. Suppose you go to the nursery in the spring and get a tom...

Because the results of God’s sovereignty are delayed, waiting remains an act of faith. We believe results will occur one day. By waiting on God, we affirm our belief in his providence. We trust his ti...

The first three items in Paul’s fruit basket sound very spiritual. Heavenly almost. Very nice for Sundays, at least. But his next one, patience, brings us back down to earth on a Monday. What are we l...

A 2007 study conducted at Fuller Theological Seminary found patient people were less likely to suffer from depression. Patient people were found to be more grateful and expressed they felt more connec...

At least as important as the things we wait for is the work God wants to do in us as we wait… Picture a blazing hot forge and a piece of gold thrust into it to be heated until all that is impure and ...

In Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat , the narrator encourages the imprisoned Joseph not to despair because “I’ve read the book and you come out on top.” Unfortun...

With the global coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, life stopped. Overwhelmed by the threat of a disease we couldn’t stop and for which we didn’t have the hospital capacity, everyone moved work and s...

Hoping does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions. It is not compelled to w...

According to the groundbreaking book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, his research tells us that cravings drive our “habit loops.” Some of us crave escape or relaxation through the habit of a g...

The more I use stuff to fill up my hungers, the more distance I put between God and myself. And as I continue to fill up my infinite hungers with finite things (when I run through the Starbucks drive-...

We must learn to see our limits as the entrance into the good life, not what bars us from it. But as we grow older, waiting feels like an inconvenience or affront. We take out our phones when we’re...

When we learn to wait well, we get to leave behind the hustle that feels like anxiety, the sense we’re always behind where we should be. When we wait well, we leave behind hurry; we slow down to see t...

One of the most influential myths nourished by the culture of authenticity is that we will be “saved” or made complete when we meet the right-shaped soul, that perfectly complementary person who can f...

Triumph and failure always go together in the wait of faith. They are the head and tail of the same coin. Show me a person who has had no struggle with waiting, whose faith has known no swings between...

With the global coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, life stopped. Overwhelmed by the threat of a disease we couldn’t stop and for which we didn’t have the hospital capacity, everyone moved work and s...

When someone promises us something wonderful, we can hardly wait for that promise to be fulfilled. If the promise is something good, we want it now! We really don’t like to wait. And yet the very best...

Somebody should write a book someday about the silences in Scripture. Maybe somebody already has. “For God alone my soul waits in silence,” the psalmist says (62:1), which is the silence of waiting. O...

Patience is more than endurance. A saint's life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and He stretches and strains...

It isn’t easy to wait. It demands persistence when common sense says “give up.” It says “believe” when there is no present evidence to back it up. Faith is forged in delay. Character is forged in dela...

One of the most fascinating features of the Bible is that it tells what is ahead for our world. Both Old and New Testaments contend that history is moving to a climax and that the sovereign God is in ...

God takes 40 weeks to create a human life in the incubator of a mother’s body. As the tendons are woven around the joints and the lungs find strength to eventually breathe air, the parents wait with a...

Our culture is afraid of grief, but not just because it is afraid of death. That is natural and normal, a proper reaction to the Last Enemy. Our culture is afraid because it seems to be afraid of the ...

“They will look toward the earth and see only distress, darkness, and the gloom of affliction, and they will be driven into thick darkness.” (Isa. 8:22) In The Two Towers , the second novel in Tolki...

As we wait, it is critical that we keep our sense of humor in the fullest meaning of that word. When laughter goes, so does hope. When God reaffirms his promise to Abraham and Sarah, he restores not o...