7 Hear my voice when I call, O LORD; be merciful to me and answer me. 8 My heart says of you, "Seek his face!" Your face, LORD, I will seek. 9 Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, O God my Savior. 10 Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me. 11 Teach me your way, O LORD; lead me in a straight path because of my oppressors. 12 Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes, for false witnesses rise up against me, breathing out violence.
13 I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. 14 Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.

Do you like to wait? Most of us don’t like to stand in line and wait. We don’t like to go to the doctor and have to wait. We live in a society that is keenly aware of time and we want everything to be instantaneously gratified. Waiting is even more difficult when we don’t know how long we will have to continue waiting or we don’t see any progress in getting closer to the goal.

God does not use a watch or clock. He created time for us and our purposes but he is not bound by it. He has the ability to see the beginning and the end together and knows the outcome before it starts. He also knows that waiting can have good results for us. For most of us, waiting on God is like the five year old waiting on Granny’s cookies to come out of the oven – it is hard to do. Peter warns us to not let the slowness of God be considered as being ignored by him or to think it means he is not acting and will not act.

Some of the most valuable lessons ever learned take time. When we think about it, maturity comes slowly (and some of us don’t seem to ever get there). Wisdom comes with experience. Any sport requires lots of training, which takes time. We go to school for years to learn a profession.

While God may not act according to our whimsical demands, we can know that when we trust him, he is always faithful. He loves us and therefore cares for us and about us. When we turn our lives over to him in complete submission, we can then actually enjoy the wait. Whatever we face in life we know the outcome is going to be for our good because God promised it so.

O God, give me faith to wait on you. Help me to not get in such a hurry that I try to take control and act foolishly without your direction. I thank you for the difficult lessons I have learned in waiting on you. Please allow me to hold up and encourage others who are about to give up on you in their wait. Use me for your good. Fill me with your Spirit that I may know your love and share it with others so they will learn to trust you too. In Jesus name.

May God bless each of us as we learn to wait on him today