Steadfast, Immovable, Abounding

“Season of waiting.” We’ve all heard it. Most of us have used it to describe some time we or others have experienced. The words have a nice flow to them. They even sound…aesthetic. They and the voices that discuss them might lead us to believe these “seasons” are rather peaceful and calm, if uninteresting at times. We envision ourselves resting on a park bench, enjoying the view until the time comes to keep going. We might even quote the psalmist and say we are “waiting on the Lord.”

But the thing is, while we may be waiting, life most certainly is not. Time is ticking by as methodically and unstoppably as it has since the moment God wound the clock of the universe. The world is flying past us at the speed of a freight train, oblivious to the fact that we are stuck inside our “season of waiting.” You think, “Oh if only everything would stop. My life can’t catch up.” But we can’t make it stop. While we wait for the decision to be made, the relationship to work out, the opportunity to show itself, the prayer to be answered…life moves on. It occurs to me that what we call a season of waiting is actually a season of living. And living, especially living as a follower of Christ, is not a state of inaction.

Imagine this: you have a young child, and one day you give them a list of five things you want them to do. Four of those tasks are ready for them to start, but one of them requires you to finish something before they can do their part. It’s not time for them to complete that part of the job yet. So they sit and they wait…leaving four other tasks unfinished. It doesn’t make any sense, right?

The Lord has given us commands, commands we are fully equipped as believers to obey. He has called us to “go therefore and make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28:19), to “make it your ambition to lead a quiet life” (1 Thessalonians 4:11), to “encourage one another and build up one another” (1 Thessalonians 5:11), to “visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (James 1:27), to “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18), and to “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). How many of these commands have you and I neglected under the inadequate excuse of “waiting on the Lord”?

After Jesus’ resurrection and before His ascension into heaven, He spoke to His disciples, as recorded in Acts 1:4-8: “Gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, ‘Which,’ He said, ‘you heard of from Me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’ So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, ‘Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?’ He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority.”

Jesus said “wait”, giving the assurance of the Lord’s sovereignty as the only explanation. And so they waited for the Spirit, this promised Helper, unsure of how long the waiting would last or how the Holy Spirit’s arrival would look when the time finally came. Yet they did not wait in disobedience, they did not wait in silence. Verse 14 tells us, “These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer.” We learn from this that in our season of waiting, we must seek both the presence of the body of Christ and the presence of our Father. We must act worthily of our calling, even while we wait.

When you follow while you wait, worship while you wait, pray while you wait, serve while you wait, testify while you wait, disciple while you wait, and live while you wait, you finally begin to grow while you wait. If you sit through your season of waiting in blindness, you are stifling the good work God is doing in your life—often the very work that is preparing you for the season you are praying for. Perhaps this is the purpose of the waiting: to make us ready. Because while we think we are prepared to receive everything we ask for, we have a good Father who knows better.

So how do we start treating our seasons of waiting like seasons of living? I believe it all starts with raising our head and opening our eyes. Just because our lives seem to be on pause doesn’t mean we can’t use our time to impact other lives. And – what is often harder to accept – just because our lives seem to be on pause does not mean God is absent. Jeremiah 29:11-13 says, “‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.’” These words did not come at a victorious mountaintop moment for God’s chosen people. They came after the Israelites were taken into exile in Babylon, where they would spend many years in captivity. And yet God’s plans were still good.

In your season of waiting, do not forget to steward well.