Worship in the Waiting

Do you ever feel like you spend ALL your time waiting? I feel like since early 2020 a lot of us have been waiting for life to just get back to normal! Sometimes you're waiting on small things, like your kids to finally get their last shoe on so you can get out the door on time, or you're waiting for dinner to be done so you can scarf it down, or the traffic....oh the traffic, always waiting on the traffic to move so you can get to where you need to go! Some of these things can be frustrating but also relatively easy to wait on and typically you aren't waiting for all that long. But what about those whole seasons of waiting, you know the ones where you ask God something and he makes you WAIT! Man! Those are hard seasons!

Something I heard God speak to me through journaling this page was that our waiting seasons are not spent in a waiting room. Have you ever gone to the doctor and you have to just sit in a waiting room forever and you wonder if the doctor just forgot you were there? That is NOT what our waiting seasons are comprised of. God does not put us in a waiting room to just sit and wait, left to wonder if he forgot about us! Instead think of your waiting season as a hallway, when placed in a hallway your instinct is to walk through it, not just stand in it, waiting doesn't mean you don't keep moving forward, and this is how our waiting has to be. We have to keep making forward progress, but God is also there, walking right beside us!

But what we do in that hallway is also important. When God doesn't answer our prayer right away or gives us an answer of "wait" we have 2 options, we can choose to go take a seat in the waiting room which comes with frustration, impatience, discouragement, doubt and a whole host of other issues, or, we can choose to keep moving forward with God and learn to worship him in the waiting! If you are anything like me you might hate waiting. Especially for something that I am looking forward to or anticipating. This can make waiting extremely difficult. Maybe, though, you've asked God for something specific and it seems like he just isn't hearing you, maybe that is because your answer right now is to wait.

I have become so frustrated at times because I have dealt with anxiety most of my adult life and I have asked God to take it away so so many times yet I still battle it. Something I have been seeing him reveal to me is that it all has to be in his timing, you see I know God didn't cause this anxiety in me but I KNOW He is using it. He is using it in a way that I never even imagined. I would love to say that means I am just okay with it but I'm human and that means I'm not. I still get frustrated, sometimes on a daily basis when it's bad. I sometimes feel like I miss out on some stuff that I otherwise wouldn't if I didn't have anxiety. I sometimes get flat out mad because I feel like it's not fair that I have this daily battle. But here's what I know, I know that "after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you" (1 Peter 5:10) I know that although I have the struggle here on earth that in "just a little while" we will all be called home and we will all be fully whole in Christ! I know God could heal me tomorrow and I could be anxiety free, but in this waiting season, that of which I have no idea if or when it will end, I am choosing to worship him in the waiting.

There is a song by Maverick City Music called "Wait on You" that I have been loving and in the extended live version something they repeat a lot is "why complain when you can praise" It is REALLY easy to complain when you are having to wait but I promise you there is so much blessing and growth in the waiting when you instead spend your time praising and worshipping God in that waiting! Just like it says in Isaiah 40:31 "But those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. They will mount up on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint" This verse is so encouraging to me because I know that no matter how long I am waiting that God is strengthening me through that.

So my question to you is are you sitting impatiently in the waiting room of your life or are you shouting and praising in the hallway of faith. Be encouraged today in your waiting season, know that God has not left you, he is right beside you walking in your waiting with you. He wants to change you in this season of waiting. After all, maybe you aren't so much waiting on Him, maybe he is waiting on you to finally get up and move and start praising him in the waiting!

My challenge to you today is to ask yourself what are you doing with your waiting? If you have just been sitting around I challenge you to get up and move from the waiting room to the hallway and move forward with God. You can dance in the hallway, you can walk, you can run, you can shout, just don't stop moving forward!