What are you waiting for?
What are you waiting for? Off the top of my head, I would say SPRING! This has been the most annoying Virginia winter I can remember. (In fact, I write this on March 30th while watching the snow fall outside.) The good news is, spring WILL come, sooner or later. But waiting can be hard. Especially when it drags long past our expectations. Look at David. He waited to be rescued from a life on the run; waited to be reunited with his family and dwell in peace and safety; waited to become king.
Sometimes he waited courageously and faithfully trusted in God’s timing and deliverance. But in order to lay hold of that good stuff, the courage, patience and faith, he had to work through the bad stuff. So he cried out to God in all his frustration, fear and anger. But he rarely left his communication with God there. He almost always ended by recounting God’s faithfulness in the past and his expectation of God’s goodness toward him in the future. As desperate as he sounded at the start of many of his psalms, he more often than not finished with praise and exaltation. If God had not put David in his own agonizing waiting room, we would not have many of the Psalms. And that would be a tremendous loss for all of us.
Sometimes, though, David did not work through his frustration, fear and anger. He did not get to the good stuff of courage, faith and patience. Who can blame him? After so much running and hiding from Saul, petitioning God and waiting for things to change, I believe he simply grew weary. Without consulting the Lord, he came up with a logical solution to his problems. So he “thought to himself” (1 Samuel 27:1) what better place to go than to the land of the Philistines where Saul would not follow? What seemed like a “good idea” was not a “God idea.” He traded one set of problems for another.
David was not perfect. In his youth he started fresh and faithful but as the years went by, God required David to trust Him in hard places over long periods of difficulty. I find it very hopeful to study not only David’s triumphs but also his failures. Because God uses everything. Nothing is wasted. In the waiting room, David grew up and became the man after God’s own heart.
Rooted & Growing 