Benefits of Waiting

As an advisor to many college students during my thirty years of teaching, I discovered that one of the most difficult lessons for Christians to learn was that of waiting. Our impatience surfaces very quickly and we want to see immediate results, so frustrations increase when God refuses to conform to our human timetable. However, the wisdom of Vance Havner is very pertinent when he spoke:

“All that matters is to say tuned to the Divine will, for it takes time to tune the instrument, so he who waits on God loses no time.”

This is what the prophet Isaiah emphasized hundreds of years ago in a beautiful verse in Isaiah 40:28-31:

“Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and warty, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

Today, why not save yourself some worry, some fretting, and some stewing? Just wait on the Lord and you will definitely not lose time, but you will gain the divine perspective. They who wait on the LORD are those who trust in the LORD and who have an eternal hope. Fyodor Dostoyevsky views the subject from a negative perspective.

“To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante’s hell is the inscription: ‘Leave behind all hope, you who enter here.’”

Song:

They that wait upon 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.
Teach me, Lord, teach me, Lord to wait.
--Stuart Hamblen

© David Biberstein