Last week I pulled the trigger on a decision that I’d not even been considering for more than nine years: I’ve resumed my work on my Master of Divinity degree which I left off from when Meadow asked me to serve as their interim pastor in the Summer of 2002. Yes, at age 41 and in the midst of the least conducive time in my life to add another commitment, I sensed the Lord saying that now is the season to finish my remaining courses and start gathering material for my 20,000 word thesis. I’m beginning to wonder if I will ever comprehend the timing of the Lord.
“As for God, His way is perfect” – 2 Samuel 22:31
There’s a course that all of us will need to take if we will continue to deepen in our walks with Christ. It might well be called WAITING ON GOD 101; then again, it seems we have to learn this same thing on successively deeper levels so it might serve us well to acknowledge ahead of time that there is a WAITING ON GOD 201,301,401…you get the picture. Many of us find ourselves more suitably wired to tackle things in the Kingdom of God than to patiently abide and let things be brought to us by the God of the Sovereign Calendar. I’m a big proponent of proactive faith but I also have been made keenly aware that our Lord sometimes refuses us the open doors through which we might walk. The closed door is not my friend – at least that’s what I often feel inside. Frankly, I’ve never liked to wait, whether it be in traffic, at the dentist office, on my wife and children, while being placed on hold by some customer service agent or, embarrassingly, even on God’s timing. NOW always seems like a better option than LATER. Alas, God reveals again that He is not overly interested in the way I prefer things to be done and is committed to re-teaching me some coursework for which I still have not earned my cap and gown. Do you ever wonder if you will earn your Masters Degree in the school of Joyful Patient Waiting? Oswald Chambers helps us with the concept of waiting on God with the thought below:
“Wait on God and He will work, but don’t wait in spiritual sulks because you cannot see an inch in front of you! Are we detached enough from our spiritual hysterics to wait on God? To wait is not to sit with folded hands, but to learn to do what we are told.”
It is not necessarily wrong to wonder why He’s unwilling to enter into your sense of urgency. You are allowed to struggle in this manner. The danger arises when our appetite for response or results becomes more important than our obligation to honor God in knowing that what He is doing will be, in the final disclosure, much better than what would have manifested from our initial impulses. Waiting on God is not apathy, it is activity. Waiting on God is not a waste of time but a harnessing of time. Octavius Winslow said 135 years ago that waiting on the Lord “is that Christian grace, the fruit of the Spirit, which will enable you to bear with dignity, calmness, and submission the dealings of your Heavenly Father, the rebuke of the world, and the wounding of the saints.” We must learn together that waiting on God is not an impediment to our journey of faith but an essential within that journey. Every committed follower of God has been called to wait at various points along the pilgrimage…you and I would be arrogant to assume we would be granted an exception. Waiting on God is soul-nutrition but, like many medicines which benefit us, it has a taste that doesn’t always please us. I suppose that wisdom would tell us that the unpalatable medicine is much better than the struggles that might ensue without it. I reckon that we would do well to keep waiting…and trusting…and praying…and believing…and praising the God of our Salvation who waited on us to eventually turn to Him and bow.
I’ve no idea when I will finish my MDiv. My goal is to commit to the process and trust the Lord with the timing. Perhaps the greater Degree which I might earn in this chapter of my life is His empowering of my will to abide in a patient confidence that “As for God, His way is perfect.”
Pray that God will bless you along the way, give you what you will need to succeed, and, at the same time, thank God for the fact that He will help you succeed. May it all be to His Glory.
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Congratulations! I don’t know how you could be any better in the pulpit than you already are, but I so admire your ambition.
Blessings
WHAT? You don’t have an M.Div yet? You must stand down immediately Sir. Immediately!! Everybody knows that all the disciples and Apostles had M.Divs! What? They didn’t? Now I’m talking to myself. Great, just great.