Waiting...

Who has two thumbs and writes two blog posts in a week?  Apparently this girl does.

It wasn't my plan to blog this morning, but as I journaled my thoughts on waiting, I thought, "This is good stuff."  Thankfully, it's only good stuff because it's God stuff...not because I came up with it.  I felt the Holy Spirit leading me to some really interesting and relevant ideas.

So now that I've probably built this blog up way too much, let me share with you some thoughts on waiting...

I was simply journaling and asking God to help me to wait in some areas of my life when I realized that waiting is a very interesting thing.  Have you ever thought about it before?  I feel like there are two very different ways that we wait.  Here's the first scenario.

Waiting scenario #1:  Picture a waiting room at a doctor's office or an automobile repair shop.  You're sitting there with your terrible cup of coffee, holding a magazine full of articles you don't care about.  When I'm in a waiting room, all I can think about is the thing for which I'm waiting.  So you constantly look at the clock on the wall, and it seems that time is going as slowly as a motorized cart in a Nascar race.  You picture all of the other wonderful places you'd rather be and all of the other wonderful things you'd rather be doing.  And while you're sitting there with your coffee, looking at the clock, the nurse comes in and calls a name (btw, don't you hate it when they call a name that starts with the same letter as your name?  "Ka...telyn"  Dangit!  I got all excited!  Maybe that's just me).  And as the person is led to the back, you think, "Hey!  I got here before she did!  Why does she get called back, but I'm still here reading a magazine article on how to feng shui my refrigerator?  That's not fair!"

Does that sound familiar to you?  Do you see how we do that in our own lives?

My next question, as I was journaling all of this, was, "So what does healthy waiting look like?"  Thankfully, healthy waiting is ALL throughout Scripture...

And as I read these passages dealing with waiting, I noticed a trend which can be summed up in these three questions:

Where are your eyes?
Where is your heart/hope?
What are your hands and feet doing?

So let's look at question #1.  Where are your eyes?  Psalm 27:13-14 says,
"I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living!
Wait for the LORD;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the LORD!"
While the Psalm writer waits on the Lord, he is looking upon the goodness of the Lord.  So often, we choose to look at our watches in the waiting room and in real life.  We choose to look at all of the other people who are getting to do the things we want to do.  In the past two years, I've probably had 20 friends get married.  How easy it is for me to say, "That's not fair!"  My eyes are on other people.  Or we choose to close our eyes and imagine what life would be like if we were already doing the things we're waiting to do.  In all of these scenarios, our eyes are taken off of Christ.

But when we look upon the beauty and the goodness of the Lord, we are not discontent with what we have.  Rather, we are completely content to gaze upon our Creator!  You want beauty?  He IS beauty.  You want life?  He IS life.  You want love?  He IS love.  Catching on?

Question #2:  Where is your heart/hope?  Psalm 62:5-7 says,

"For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
for my hope is from him.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
On God rests my salvation and my glory;
my mighty rock, my refuge is God."
Does your hope rest in getting what you want?  Do you put your hope in a relationship with someone or being accepted by people?  Have you devoted your heart to that one person, job, car, salary, event?  If so, my next question is have you been fulfilled by those things?  I can answer that for you.  No, you haven't.  The ONLY thing that will ever satisfy is the living and triune God of the universe.  If our hope is in anything BUT Him, we will be utterly disappointed.  People will (not might) fail us.  They either lie, leave, or pass away.  Things will fail us.  Fame will fail us.  Jobs will fail us.  God is everlasting.  Let us put our hope in Him!  (Lamentations 3:25-26 is another good passage for this question)

Question #3:  What are your hands and feet doing?  You can't write a blog on waiting without including Isaiah 40:30-31:

"Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint."
If we are simply sitting in our waiting room, waiting for God to do something amazing for us, we have no need to be strengthened, really.  When we look at this passage in Isaiah, we see that the Lord gives strength to those who run and walk.  So often, we have this idea that waiting equals sitting.  NO!  Waiting includes DOING!  God calls us to serve Him and others while we wait.  Are you waiting for your dream job?  Great!  Serve Him by doing your current job well!  Are you waiting for a relationship? Great!  Serve Him by building relationships He's already given you and seeking to build relationships with those who might not feel loved at all!  Don't sit.  RUN!  It is at that moment when God gives us the strength we need to wait.

So Waiting scenario #2:  We fix our eyes on Jesus, we put our hope in Him, and we get up, stretch our legs, and run the race He's called us to run (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).

Is it easy?  No.  Is it painful?  Yes.  But is it worth it?  Absolutely.

May we wait faithfully for the Lord as He has waited faithfully for us.

Imperfect

So this shouldn't be a long blog...these are just thoughts I had this morning that I thought I'd share since there might be some of you who feel the same way.

I have always felt this need to be perfect...and if I can't reach perfection, then I try to appear perfect to those around me.  The hard part is that I'm not perfect...that tends to become an obstacle. lol.  I could go on and on about my need for perfection, but I will leave it at that.

Well, this morning, I was showering...and typically, when I shower, I make it a point to pray.  I tend to pray for my friends who might be dealing with something, family, etc.  Well, this morning as I was praying, I realized that I was only doing it because I felt obligated.  Like, if I didn't pray in the shower, God wouldn't be pleased with me and would love me less.  I had this idea that if I went one day without praying for So and So, God would be disappointed in me, and I wouldn't get a gold star.

And you know what?  I might not get a gold star.

But that doesn't matter.

At all.

While I was in the shower (mid-obligated prayer), it hit me that God doesn't want me to spout off these prayers because I have to.  HE WANTS ME TO BE NEAR HIM.  He doesn't want perfect, grammatically correct prayers recited to him.  He wants His imperfect child to come to Him ready to be held and ready to be loved.  At that moment, as I was putting my Dove body wash on my turquoise lufa, I realized that God loves me JUST AS I AM.

I know what you're thinking right now.

"Katie, this is VBS crap.  You learned this when you were like 7.  You've sung a million songs about this very concept."

My answer to that is, "I know."  But sometimes you have moments when God says, "Get it?" and you dumbfoundedly (I just made up a word) nod your head with assurance that you are loved.

So what are the "shower" moments in your life?  Where do you feel the need to be perfect in front of others and/or in front of God.  Are we praying because we should, or are we praying because we want to share our hearts with our Father who has gone out of His way (to say the least) to bring us to Him through Jesus Christ?  Are we running around trying to earn our gold star like Martha (Luke 10:38-42), or are we sitting at the feet of Jesus because He's here with us?  I feel like it's then when we are able to truly share with Him what is on our hearts including our requests for our friends, family, enemies, etc.

What are your thoughts?