Patiently Waiting on God, While Checking My Watch

Patiently Waiting on God, While Checking My Watch

By Rachel Williams, PhD

Patiently Waiting on God, While Checking My Watch

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Copyright © 2021 by Rachel Williams

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ISBN: 978-1-63769-288-2

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Acknowledgments

To my faithful friends and adopted family: Monica Armstrong, Amy Chambers, Adam Gergen, Dan & Jessica Gillan, Smokey & Melissa Hebert, Mike & ML Henshaw, Jamie & Annie Herring, Olivia Berg & Jon Krog, Peggy Mathews, Roger & Theresa Mathieu, Bob & Michelle VanGerven, dear friends and coaches not listed by name, and my work colleagues who have become adopted family—thank you for your love and friendship along this journey and helping me stay focused on fighting the good fight and finishing the race. Thank you for praying for me so faithfully and for helping pick me up and dust me off on the days the race seemed to get the best of me. Your Free Therapy sessions have meant the world to me (and saved me a ton of money). May God bless you as abundantly as you have blessed me.

To Ginny Lee: what a road we have faithfully journeyed together, my precious friend. Day in and day out. One step at a time. Always believing that miracles do happen. Your faith and deep resounding love for the Lord is infectious and has been a model for me to live by.

To my amazing family: Dad & Mom, Stephen & Bethany, Ryan & Michelle, and the little humans Christian, Brooks, and Ava…there are simply no words—none—that can begin to describe what you mean to me. You have been my collective rock through all the good times and all the bad, through all the joys and pain, through all the laughter (much of which you caused) and the tears. Thank you for all the ways you have blessed me, as they are too many to count. I pray that my life is just a fraction of the blessing to you that your lives have been to me. And there is no doubt in my mind, this book would never have seen the light of day without your wise and insightful feedback and persistent encouragement.

To Sam: you were worth every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, and the many years of waiting. God blessed me more than I could have ever imagined when He brought you into my life. Thank you for making me laugh every day, for challenging me intellectually, for helping me grow spiritually, for participating in all my athletic exploits, and for loving me endlessly. You are my best friend and the love of my life. I love you and cannot wait to embark on the adventures God has planned for us.

To my Heavenly Father: You have given me the ability, the vision, and the passion to see this undertaking through to completion. The perseverance you have developed in me over the years has once again helped me accomplish what I believed to be impossible. My life is in Your hands as you continue to guide me in accomplishing the impossible with each day I am given. All for Your glory.

Introduction

I have recently been through what is undoubtedly the most difficult time of life: a period of waiting. It may sound odd, but those other precious souls who have walked this same road understand that waiting can be one of the most arduous things one has to endure. It is undoubtedly the most trying of the spiritual disciplines. And the difficulty is compounded when God has made you a promise but then requires you to wait for the fulfillment of that promise.

We will all have waiting periods during our lives. Those waiting periods may be as simple as waiting for our order to come up at our favorite restaurant, waiting in the line at the grocery store, or waiting for our coffee to brew at home. Those waiting periods may be as challenging as waiting for test results from our doctor’s office, waiting for the right man or woman to come into our lives, or waiting for the Lord to bless us with children. The bottom line is we will all have waiting periods.

I have personally waited far more than I ever hoped to, wanted to, or thought was realistic of my very get-to-it personality. Sometimes I waited well, and I sensed the Lord was pleased with my spiritual maturity. Other times I didn’t wait so well, looking more like my friend’s two-year-old throwing a temper tantrum than the adult woman I am because the Lord was not abiding by my timetable. On those occasions, I have a feeling the Lord looked down at me and shook His head, knowing there was a lot more work to be done on this feeble vessel!

In my periods of waiting well, or at least with the proper attitude, I researched the concept of waiting and did my best to learn everything I could about it. Some of the key questions I asked included the following: what is it? Why does God make us wait? What does waiting require of us? What are the consequences of not waiting? How should we wait? And what are God’s promises if we are willing to wait on Him?

I researched waiting, waiting on God, waiting faithfully, waiting well, God’s promises, and the list goes on. As I collected page after page of information, the Lord began to give me waiting examples that I knew I was supposed to capture. So I did, and then one day, I felt the Lord leading me to put all that He had revealed to me in one place as a source of hope and encouragement for those of you who are about to enter a significant period of waiting, for those of you who are in the middle of one now, and for those of you who are loving someone else through a period of waiting.

Dawson Trotman said, Thoughts disentangle themselves when they pass through our fingertips.¹ So, I hope, in this case, that the many thoughts that have been sprinting through my head over the last few years do become disentangled as they pass through my fingertips onto the words of these pages. It is my sincere prayer that at least one of those thoughts that found its way into this book will be helpful to you.

I have traveled down this road you are walking, and I know how excruciatingly difficult it is. I know that many people don’t understand what you are going through, but I do. My heart breaks for the struggle and the frustration that each day can represent for you. Yet, my heart soars for all I know that God will teach you during this time and how He will love you in ways that you have never been loved before.

We are on this journey together, and I promise that is not a dead end! Eventually, our waiting will come to an end, we will see God’s purpose in the process, and we will find that the blessings of obediently waiting for God will leave us simply breathless.

By God’s Grace,

Rachel

¹ Warren, Rick. The Purpose Driven Life. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002, p 308.

Chapter 1

Waiting

We All Have Periods of Waiting

We all will have periods of waiting in our lives. That is a given! But before we dive into this perplexing topic, let’s agree to define waiting as the action of staying where we are or delaying our action for a particular time.¹

Even in this age of modern technology and conveniences, waiting is still a big part of every one of our lives. You may start your day off by waiting for your coffee to brew. If you live in an area of high congestion like I do, you typically start off your trek into work by waiting in traffic. You may get to work only to continue to wait on your boss’s decision about a project you are working on. You will probably wait at a restaurant for lunch. You might have to wait in line to pick up your kids from school. You will probably wait on a service repairman to repair your broken washing machine or other major appliance, especially if they give you the lovely window of four or five hours for their arrival. And it would be a small miracle if you did not have to wait in line at the grocery store. Of course, you will absolutely have to wait in an airport terminal for your flight to board. The bottom line is you will wait in this life.

I would label these moments as our momentary, fleeting, or short-lived waiting events. Although they can be somewhat trying, we know approximately when our waiting will end. And their ending usually comes within a few minutes or a few hours, within the day, or within the week in which they occur. With these waiting events, we see the light at the end of the tunnel (and it doesn’t appear to be an oncoming train).

On the opposite side of the spectrum, we have our continuing, long-lasting, or enduring waiting events. These events carry with them a far heavier emotional burden, and in some cases, a burden so heavy it is difficult to make it through the day. These events are not kind enough to be short-lived but rather last for days, weeks, months, and yes, even years.

You may find yourself in a job situation that’s beyond difficult to endure, and you do not know how much longer you can survive waiting for the conditions or the management to change. You may be out of a job and currently waiting on responses from the fifty resumes and applications you sent out. Perhaps you are having health issues and waiting for the pain to finally subside. It could be that you are single and waiting for Mr. or Ms. Right to finally come into your life. Or perhaps, you are waiting to finally become a parent, whether that occurs through your own pregnancy or through adoption.

I don’t know what your situation is, but I do know how heavy the burden is. And I do know how hard waiting is. I know that because I have personally been there, and I understand the spiritual battle that can ensue. Unfortunately, we are a part of fallen humanity, and our natural tendency is to take matters into our own hands, to fix what is broken, and to follow our own paths. So, our natural tendency is not to wait on the Lord, resulting in an internal war of sorts when He asks us to wait on Him. At best, it’s uncomfortable, and at worst, it’s excruciatingly painful, as what we are collides with what God wants us to be.

What Does It Mean to Wait on the Lord

So, what does it mean to wait on the Lord? To wait on the Lord is to look to Him in expectation and to eagerly anticipate what He is about to do. It sounds so easy, right? I can look to the Lord in expectation of bringing my waiting to closure, and yes, I am eagerly anticipating what He is about to do and when He is about to do it. And yet, when that waiting lasts day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, it is one of the hardest things the Lord will ever ask us to do.

It’s not just about the waiting either. It’s often about what we are waiting for, as we wait for different things at different times in our lives. Sometimes we are waiting for direction from God. Sometimes we are waiting for doors to be opened that only He has the power to open. Sometimes we are waiting for extremely murky and confusing situations to come clear. And sometimes we are waiting for the deepest needs and longings of our hearts to finally be fulfilled by God.

The one constant in all our waiting on the Lord is the passage of time. In Psalm 130:5-6, the psalmist writes, I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits, and in His word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.²

The psalmist is comparing his own waiting to that of the night watchmen who eagerly anticipated the coming dawn of morning as that would signify their release from duty. The watchmen knew that the dawn would surely come, but it would only come with the passing of time. It is in the same way that we eagerly await the passing of time to bring our release from our waiting period.

During this time of waiting, we often have the opportunity (said with a very large smile on my face) to surrender our timing to God’s timing. We have the most wonderful ideas about when something in our lives should occur—down to the date and the time. I know I have been even so bold, and yes, naïve, to share those wonderful ideas with the Lord. In fact, at this point in my life, I firmly believed and shared with the Lord that I would have a loving husband who I had been married to at least ten years, two well-behaved kids—a boy and a girl, an awesome dog, and a great home. Well…I have the great dog and home, but apparently, my timing on the other desires of my heart was way off.

More often than not, however, our ideas on timing are light years apart from God’s plans. So, we must surrender to His timing, and when we do, He can do amazing things in us and for us. The hard part is reminding ourselves that God acts on behalf of those who wait for Him. In fact, the Bible tells us, Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for Him.³

Although the waiting is excruciatingly difficult and seems pointless, our waiting is never useless. Let me repeat that point because I think it is just that important! Although the waiting is excruciatingly difficult and seems pointless, our waiting is never useless! God is working behind the scenes, and things are happening that we cannot even begin to fathom.

It’s as if our lives are the threads making up a beautiful tapestry. We often can only see the underside of the tapestry, which is messy, with threads connected here and there in seemingly no rhyme or reason. Some threads even seem to disappear into a dead end. But God has the design of the tapestry of our lives ever at the forefront of His mind. Each and every thread has a perfect place and has a purpose within the tapestry. When the tapestry is finally turned over and God reveals His work, we will finally understand how every single thread of our lives came together to present the most breathtaking picture.

But far too often, we want to help the Lord with the weaving of tapestry because we are impatient. We don’t want to wait for Him to finish the last few threads on the tapestry or to tie the last few knots, so we grab it off the loom before it is completed. We don’t want to wait for Him to ripen the fruit, and so we pick it while it is still green. We don’t want to wait for the answers to our prayers, so we move ahead in the way we think is right. Our impatience and restlessness only result in one thing: more trouble in our lives. Our human interference will result in one outcome; it will make things messier than they already are, and it will exhaust us in the process.

Although our natural tendencies cry out for movement, we must will ourselves to wait. (And you have no idea how hard this is for me to say as a self-professed get-to-it kind of girl.) You and I must listen ever so closely to that still quiet voice (that I often wish was a still medium or still loud voice) of the Holy Spirit, guiding us in the way that we should go. We need to accept what the Lord is doing in our lives and trust Him to fulfill His perfect will for our lives. We need to wait with purposeful anticipation of God accomplishing all that He has promised.

When I cannot understand my Father’s leading,

And it seems to be but hard and cruel fate,

Still I hear that gentle whisper ever pleading,

God is working, God is faithful,

Only wait.⁴

Waiting for the Desires of Our