wait

I wait for your salvation, O Lord. ~Genesis 49:18


I've been reading a book called Waiting on God by Andrew Murray and it has really challenged me and opened me up to consider (to a much deeper degree) what it means to wait on God, and what that looks like in life and in ministry.  It is not something that comes naturally at all.  In fact, it is pretty counter-intuitive for most of us.  And, if we are really honest, it is something that we are not very good at.  I guess the reason for this struggle is that waiting on God puts us in a very vulnerable and powerless place.  It causes us to admit that, in the end, we can neither produce nor manufacture anything of eternal value.  That work is solely up to God.  We are at his mercy, both for ourselves and our friends.  I mean, obviously there are things we are given to do.  There is space that must be made for God that might make something coming alive in us more of a possibility, so I'm not talking about just sitting on our hands.  But then again, neither are the Scriptures when they call us to wait on God.  What they are calling us to is a particular posture, a way of being and of seeing, if you will.  When the Scriptures call us to wait on God they are calling on us to totally surrender to him, to completely trust in him, to wholly rely on him, and not ourselves.  It is a posture, and a way of being, that takes a significant amount of courage and resolve because fear would have us spring into action and trust in our own gifts and efforts.  Waiting on God calls us to refrain from that reliance on self and to begin to truly rely only on him, and his grace and his power.  Waiting on God means that our first movement always must be towards him in prayer and dependence, rather than towards others in pride and arrogance, or in desperation and need.  I have a suspicion that if we ever learn what it really means to do this  --to truly wait on God--it will change everything. 

O God, give me the strength and the courage and the trust necessary to truly wait on you. Help me discover what it means to wait for your salvation in my life and in my ministry.  Show me what that looks like.  Keep me, O God, from the temptation of trying to manufacture or produce something that only you can bring about.  I cannot do it on my own, no matter how hard I try; and no matter how much I might believe in my heart of hearts that I really can (or should be able to).  There can be no good, O God, other that what you bring into being.  So give me a heart filled with faith in your working, not my own.  In the name of Jesus I pray.  Amen.