Waiting Rooms & Opened Doors |
Is. 40 : 31: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. I have spent my life, like most, in the waiting room. It begins as a small child waiting for that next bottle/meal, diaper change, treat, adventure, etc. We are conditioned to anticipate what is coming. We move on through life and wait for the school bell to ring, the math test result, the summer to come, that reward, that discipline to fall. I think of my grandchildren when they have done something in disobedience. You can see it in their eyes as they play the up-coming scene through their minds‘, shuffling from foot to foot until they have worked themselves into tear. The anticipation {worry} of the spanking is far worse than the actually gently swats on their bottoms, if it comes at all, and it might not.
Growing up can never come soon enough. We wait for that first car, the first love, the first kiss, the “question” to be popped, that first job, the next job, the work day to be over, and on and on through the list. Somehow our arrival at the place we awaited never seems as satisfying, or as horrid as we expected when waiting........Rarely do we spend much time simply waiting on the Lord. This of course, we have been told, is the answer to our greatest worries.
We wait for “our ship to come,” that next pay day, a better day, illness or loneliness to pass, a trial to go by. We wait for circumstance to change, so we can then be better people- a lie that Satan slips in often. In fact, we can reach a place where we, as Christians, wait for life to pass. No, it isn’t wrong to long for Heaven when life is troublesome, we all do that. We want to be nearer to our Father and feel His comfort. But if we allow the waiting game to dull our spiritual senses, we stumble into pitfalls that we might not fully recover from. We get so focused on the tomorrows that always remain just out of our grasp, that we completely lose sight of what is going on around us in the here and now. We overlook the opportunities, blessings, and simple pleasure, and that may sound corny, but it is so very true.... I have a personal tendency to become restless when life is going well and God has brought us to a temporary “rest and refuel” time- a respite from the normal chaos. I complain about having nothing to do to occupy my mind. Instead of curling up on the lawn swing with a good book, and letting the wind comb my hair, I whine. Ask my friends, they’ll tell you! Then when the wind blows in a little more fierce and rustles the peace, I complain and whine and want the peace to return. I’m always waiting for the next moment. And, as I have become older and my own children are finding their way to adulthood, I find myself waiting for their circumstances to change. "If God does this for them, THEN I can relax.” It is moments like this that we may receive a spiritual spanking.We shuffle from foot to foot, anticipating the worse.
We can be so burdened spiritually, that we wait for that next breathe. We can feel a suffocating force in the waiting room as though someone slipped a vacuum under the door, removed the air and sealed it up. We can be so absorbed by the waiting that we are certain it will never be over, and we will remain breathless forevermore.
We get snared in the sanctuary of what appears to be human progress, or lack thereof. We make our own plans according to what we see will work with the least resistance, and least effort or sacrifice on our part. This, most often, leads to struggles, stress, and failure. We forget that He has the bigger picture and knows the best, and the result. So many times we struggle to open closed doors, while completely ignoring the door that He has already opened- “waiting” patiently for us to walk through.
But then we come to the “open door” and find it isn’t really a door at all, and it is far better than we ever estimated. For whatever reason we find ourselves in the waiting room, we are told to hand it over to God and dwell in the moment for Him. If it is answered prayer we wait for, we can’t allow it to distract us from the immediate. Do we need a different job, home, school, friends, situation? Do we wait for changes in ourselves that can include anything from wanting to be more spiritually minded - to wanting to lose weight. Do we need changes in a special relationship? Love relationship can be the most distracting. Often we place that person in the role that our Heavenly Father embraces. That is in relying on that person to make all things right for us, and if they don’t, we are left hurting. Many couples have gone on before us who were lost in a moment of frustration and despair when they lost sight of who truly commands the direction of our path. God will not honor that, but He also will not abandon us. In other relationship matters, is he/she unsaved, insensitive, unyielding, quick-tempered, superficial, insincere, inaccessible, unfaithful? We must place it {burdens-we give up our control over them, relationships, future, our loved-ones, our dearest hopes and dreams, our hurts} on the alter as Abraham did with what was most precious to him. He then trusted, and we should trust God to complete what He has begun. And, when we have placed it on the alter, taken our hands off, and stepped away in faith - looking to Him alone, only then will He supply. He provides the door, which, again, is not a door at all. Instead He removes the walls/barriers/ hedges that encase us. Our eyes are awakened to that which is beyond the hedge and all around us- even though we have not left that very spot. And what is beyond the hedge is the peace that dissolves all the tomorrows. We find contentment with the here and now, and then we are free to be good stewards of the moment. This is where the real victory is found. In His time, He will change the circumstances, and answer those prayers in a way that we might not expect, but it always leads to our best. He will then bring genuine progress to our lives. We can triumph in the waiting room. We can spread our wings like an eagle and fly away because the hedges that restrict us our all about our humanness. Phil:4:7: And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Col:3:15: And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful...........
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