In reading and meditating on Psalm 40, I struggled with the idea of waiting. I don’t mind the idea of judicious and planned action which integrates pauses into each phase. But how does this waiting thing work out? And how do I pray this portion of scripture?
As simple as it sounds, the gospel comes down to the power that resides right under your nose. You begin to speak it out and pray it back to the Lord.
A Forgotten Power
So that is what I did, and no sooner did I say back to Him, “Lord, I am waiting on You. And I thank You that You have heard my cry,” than this image and thought came into my mind: God embeds into us the power to biblically wait, which activates a myriad of blessings. The first blessing is the power to Stop God. By stop, I mean, the ability to turn God’s head, or arrest His attention toward our situation and condition.
I point out these individuals in Scripture:
The Syrophoenician woman who was able to believe Jesus for healing of her daughter
Zacchaeus — the tax collector who stopped Jesus by his tree-climbing faith
Woman with the issue of blood — who stopped Jesus with her touching faith
Waiting contains the ‘seeds’ to cause God to turn toward us and to listen to what we are saying.
Are you getting that? The Universe Master stops and asks, “What do you have to say?”
But then when God turns around and asks us what we want, the outcome is nothing short of spectacular. He sets into motion all the resources of heaven and earth, which results in the following:
He brings you out of the pit
He takes us out of the miry clay
Sets us on a rock
He establishes and guides my direction
He puts a new song in my mouth
Waiting represents a lifestyle of flexibility, adaptability, and changeability.
So then what are the elements of waiting? Waiting starts with:
- What you think
- What you say
- What you don’t say
- What you confess
- The direction that you choose to face
- How you choose to listen
- What you do
- What you worship
As I was sharing with BOLD’s Chairman, Vaughn Weimer, waiting on God empowers you to live a “Yes Life.”
You know that you are living a Yes Life if people look at your life and they are saying “Yes” or “No.” Yes, God is with him, or No, God is not. Living the Yes Life doesn’t guarantee everything always goes right. It does mean, though, that everything works together for good.
God wants to make each one of our lives one big YES.
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