Friday, January 31, 2020

Waiting Rooms


Since I was about six years old I dreaded going to the doctor -- not so much for the actual visit, but because I really hated waiting rooms. Sitting in a sterile and drab office lined with uncomfortable chairs and stacks of old magazines gave me a hemmed in feeling. Depending on how long I’d have to stay, my patience would give out and I’d start to panic, somehow thinking I’d never get out.

As a Christ follower, I’m often in a similar place – only it’s God’s waiting room. I can’t just cancel the appointment or leave when I’m tired of waiting if I want to experience the blessing of His peace and presence. I’m there until it’s time to move on, which usually means learning important life lessons and developing a deeper level of trust and dependence. 

Like all waiting rooms, spiritual ones require special grace and patience. I believe this is true for several reasons. 

They don't tell time. Uncertainty about how long I’ll be in a place I do not want to be waiting for God to break through with deliverance is uncomfortable to say the least. God uses these ambiguous situations to test my faith, challenging me to grow and mature to become more like Christ (Jas 1:3-4). When I enter a season of waiting, my initial response is to look for a way of escape, much like the Israelites did (Ex 32).

During our first year in Korea, I was often tempted to doubt God’s wisdom in leading us there. I'd wake up many mornings convinced we had somehow missed God’s leading and come to the wrong place. As a result, I developed a back-up plan for bailing out and returning to the states. I fell into a pattern of rehearsing our quick escape -- how we could pack, book tickets, move back into our house, and put the girls in their previous school with an almost seamless transition. The more I dwelt on this, the less I was able to trust God and more miserable I became.

My husband knew from experience that running from the uncomfortable was not a good idea, and he challenged me to trust the Lord and wait on him. I slowly began to see that making a rash decision to leave would mean forfeiting God’s grace, which led me to repentance. By finally acknowledging that his ways were higher than mine, and his thoughts far greater than my own, I begin to come into agreement with the mindset of the Spirit that I was where I was for purposes beyond my understanding (Rom 11:33-36). This mindset led me to submit to God and present myself as his living sacrifice, willing to do what he called me to do and wait as long as he called me to wait (Rom 12:1-2).  As I exercised the gift of faith in his goodness, he began reminding me that his plans for my life were good and designed to make me mature and complete, lacking nothing (Jer 29:11, Jas 1:4).

They're restrictive. Waiting rooms leave us feeling hemmed in or trapped, and this at times can lead to panic. I like to do things quickly and move on, which obviously isn't the pace of waiting rooms. Instead, the interval can feel long and tedious. I’m always free to go, but running ahead or from God is never the right choice. He wants me to wait patiently so He can prepare me and others for the next step.

One of my overused lines while we were in Korea was, “I no longer have grace for this.” My husband would give me a look that said, “Oh really?” He didn’t have to say any words because I knew what he was thinking – that if and when it was time for my season of waiting to end God would let us both know. And until that time I DID have grace, but I had to choose by God’s gift of faith to stand in it.

I remember going to the local Korean hospital for tests and had to wait a long time to see the specialist. When I walked into the room and saw it was filled with people my heart started pounding with a sense of panic about being hemmed in a room with so many people speaking a language I could not understand.  Even though I had no idea how long they had been waiting, the room felt tense and unwelcoming.

Though my gut response was to panic, I remembered one of my students who usually sat with his eyes closed while he was waiting for class to start. His face always looked calm and peaceful, which spoke volumes to me. Because he was a Christian, I assumed he was practicing resting in God’s presence through prayer while he waited.

As I thought about him, I sensed the Lord nudging me to try sitting still and praying.  I found a seat in the back of the room where I reluctantly plopped down, closed my eyes and went over the Lord’s Prayer and as many verses as I could remember. I had to wait almost an hour, but by focusing on truth instead of my frustrating situation I endured it with a lot more grace that I had in the past.

I realized God was giving me a snapshot of what resting in a place of uncertainty looked like so I would start applying it to more of my life – no matter how long I had to wait. I also realized that the same peace I was experiencing there was mine for the longer duration if I’d learn to trust in God’s timing and refuse to fret. 

They test our hope for deliverance. In the waiting room of a doctor’s office there’s a high probability that I’ll see the doctor and leave at some point in the day. With God, I realize that the timing is not so clear, which often leaves me wondering how long I’ll have to wait. I know from experience that it could be a day, months or even years.  

I prayed for five years as I waited for God to bring Mark into my life. During this time I cried a lot and even started praying several times a day that God would send the man he wanted for me. Some days and weeks dragged on to the point that I didn’t think I could wait any longer. I would meet someone, think they were God’s answer, and start moving forward in the relationship only to hit a wall of disappointment when it did not work out. Then I would return to the waiting room, where I had to continually learn what it meant to be still and know that he is God, not me.

Twenty seven years later, I’m more thankful for that time of waiting and preparation than any other season in my life. For one, I’d never have been ready to marry until I matured some more and dealt with severe pain from my past. Plus, God used that season for me to study and learn about his character as I was pursuing a master’s degree in theology. When we met, I was spiritually and emotionally ready, not perfect, to commit the rest of my life to marriage and having a family. I cannot say that I would have been able to persevere through some of our challenging trials if I had not learned what I did while I was waiting on God.

They expose stubbornness. As a child, I used to have melt downs in waiting rooms, begging my mom to get me out. Even as an adult I’ve left doctor’s offices before my appointment because the waiting was taking up too much time. Instead of giving thanks, seeing the time as a chance to recharge, read and have some quiet, I would grumble.

My relationship with God is incredibly similar. For the past many years I’ve been in one season of waiting after the other: waiting to get married, to have children, to see them mature and grow up; waiting for friendships to flourish, for relationships to heal, for greater wisdom and understanding to live in a way that honors God.
Our last year in Korea was another time of intense struggle as I weekly pleaded with God, often on my face with cries of desperation, that He would open the door for us to return to the states. With our son in Alabama and both girls in college in North Carolina, the distance carved a hole in my heart that seemed to expand and ache more each day. I came to a new end of my ability to press on in my own strength and began clinging to God for moment by moment grace just to get through the day.

When I chose on some days not to trust His timing and pushed Him away, I immediately fell into a pit of anger and despair (a miserable place to be if you haven’t experienced it). After wearing myself out wrestling with God, I would come back to a place of surrender, trust and thankfulness. It’s there that I found peace and assurance in His unchanging goodness and promise to deliver me at the right minute – not a second too early or late.

He finally did open the door for us to come home to be with our family. As I look back on those years of waiting, I can see how He used them to radically change me in ways that never could have happened otherwise. Through some painful and often seemingly unbearable times I am learning to trust God more, to persevere in His strength instead of my own and to rest in His timing, knowing that He’s in charge, overseeing my life with tender care and compassion.

“Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” Ps 27:14

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

The Spirit's Response to Fear


     When we experience fear and allow it to drive us to prayer and worship we know we are operating in faith, while fear that drives us to indifference, numbness, panic and living independently from God is of the flesh. When we feel fear, God has designed for us to run to him in full speed, to stand in his presence and to present our requests as we’re standing on his promises in his gift of faith. When we experience fear and we’re trusting God, this leads us to call for a holy fast, where we rend our hearts before him and cry out for his help and deliverance. 
     Fleshly fear will never go expectantly before the throne of grace hoping to receive help and mercy in our time of need (Heb 4:16). It will go to others to vent and worry. It will go inward to stew and meditate on the trouble. God knows that we will feel fear, that we will be afraid when armies surround us on every side. But he wants us to run to him, to stand on his promises and to cry out to him in faith (1 Pet 5:7). The flesh says that either God is not going to help or that we’ve got this. The Spirit reminds us that apart from God’s help and the prayers of others we cannot fight the enemy (Ps 94:17; 2 Cor 1:11). 
     The Spirit always moves us to run to the Father and to call others to stand with us in this place of expectant prayer and worship.

"Jehoshaphat was alarmed and set his face to seek the LORD. And he proclaimed a fast throughout Judah. So the people of Judah gathered to seek the LORD, and indeed, they came from all the cities of Judah to seek Him" (2 Chron 20:3)

Friday, January 10, 2020

Way Maker, Miracle Worker


It’s easy to label someone, even ourselves, based on bad behavior or choices so that it’s hard to move past this broken identity and see the mighty hand of God at work. We witness certain attitudes or words repeating themselves and begin to put people or ourselves in categories that are void of hope and redemption. In reading about Jacob this morning in Genesis 28-31, I was reminded of how the beauty and glory of God’s grace eclipsed the sin in his life bringing heart transformation where only darkness had been.
I’ve heard many stories and sermons about Jacob the deceiver -- the one who stole his brother’s birthright and got what he deserved at the hands of his even more deceptive father-in-law. And while it’s true that he sinned and did evil, God still set his love on him out of pure, covenantal faithfulness and grace. When Jacob first flees from Esau, God comes and tenderly speaks to him in a dream, saying that he will fulfill everything he promised to his father and grandfather. Jacob wakes up and recognizes the very presence of God has been with him, but he responds with a conditional promise to God saying that “if” he comes through for him with life’s necessities and brings him safely home, he’ll serve him as God (Gen 28:18-22). Yet, God remains faithful.  He unites Jacob with his uncle and gives him wives and work to do – though these blessings come with consequences for his previous sins. As he struggles for 14 years to work for the opportunity to marry Rachel, God blesses his work and prospers him. Later, as both Leah and Rachel struggle to have children, God sees their suffering, hears their cries and blesses them with many children (Gen 29:31, 30:17, 22).
When Jacob is finally fed up with his father-in-law’s manipulation and deception and leaves, God continues to protect him by warning Laban in a dream to “be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad” (Gen 31:24). At this point, after years of suffering injustice, Jacob has become so certain of God’s faithful presence, power and protection that he now testifies to Leah and Rachel it is God who has not allowed their father to harm him and has even “taken away [their] father’s livestock and given them to [him]” (31:7-9). The one who 20 years earlier was not certain God would come through for him is now declaring that everything good in his life has come from God. When Laban comes after him, Jacob gives glory to God by saying “if the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been with me, you would surely have sent me away empty-handed. But God has seen my hardship and the toil of my hands, and last night he rebuked you” (Gen 31:42). In making a covenant with Laban, he further shows his allegiance to God by taking his oath in the “name of the Fear of his father Isaac” – the name of the LORD.
Jacob heard of and witnessed the “Fear of Isaac” throughout his childhood, but through years of oppression and hardship he experienced it for himself.  He started his journey in Bethel with the mindset that God might not come through (20-22) and ended his time in exile with the confidence in God’s faithfulness. He watched God year after year sustain, provide for and protect him. And in seeing God’s faithful and lavish love poured out in his life, he came to know him in a very personal and intimate way – just like his father and grandfather.  Jacob is no longer the deceiver or the one who is gripped by uncertainties about God. He’s becoming the man who trusts in the “Fear of Isaac” and calls on his name, faithfully testifying to all that he’s done.

And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns” (Phil 1:6)