God's Waiting Room

Waiting rooms are not my ideal place.

In fact they are about as far from it as you can get.

I'm not sure whether it's the anticipated doctor visit or just the over abundance of Forbes Magazine that graces the tables. Either way, I don't like waiting rooms.

Not one bit.

In all honesty, waiting on anything is not my idea of fun. But I get through it. I survive. I keep going and going. I might not be very happy about it, but I'll make it through.

Far too often, this is how I feel about being in God's Waiting Room. I'm not talking merely about the marriage one. I mean any one of His waiting rooms--whether it's waiting on direction for life goals or purpose, waiting on someone to change, waiting on school, waiting on Him to provide--waiting on anything.

It doesn't stop. There is always something else we will have to wait on.

Something else we struggle to survive. To just get through.

The problem with that approach is, we're taking on a burden we don't need to take on. Waiting is hard, yes--it comes back to trusting the Lord and believing He is good--but I believe God has far more in store for us than just "surviving".

He wants us to thrive while we wait.

One of my favorite songs is While I'm Waiting by John Waller. I first heard it on the movie Fireproof (which is a great movie--go watch it if you haven't already), and felt the pang of God's conviction searing right through me.



I wasn't worshiping as I should've been. I wasn't serving Him as I should've been. I wasn't running the race as I should've been.

I wasn't actively waiting. I was passively waiting.

I was surviving.

There's a saying I once heard--God wants to change YOU more than He wants to change your circumstances. The Waiting Room is hard. It's painful. It's not easy.

Sometimes it lasts for a few months. Sometimes it lasts for years.

But the end result is that God changes us through waiting. He builds our spiritual muscles up in one waiting room, so He can take us to the next one, and build them up more. He isn't in a hurry to accomplish His work in us--He will take the time He needs to do it.

Because He loves us. And He knows that ultimately, when we come to place where He's all that we have, we'll find He's all that we need.
Which we learn, many times, in His Waiting Room.

Don't despair in God's Waiting room. Keep running. Keep serving. Keep worshiping. Keep thriving.

He's right there with you while you're waiting.