Wait Quietly for His Victory

It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
Lamentations 3:26 ESV

When problems arise or crisis strikes, it is enormously tempting to get loud and move fast. In fact, that IS the temptation. Every crisis tests the mettle of my relationship with the Lord but never more so than in how quickly I turn to Him. These are the moments that reveal the daily, often mundane work of communion with the Spirit—or lack thereof. When the wind blows and whirls, will I be tossed in the tempest or anchored to my Rock?

Wait Quietly, Not in Fear

Fear and anxiety are LOUD. A fearful person doesn’t have to speak a word to be loud because their spirit is shrieking. When I first started working at Shulamite Ministries, I was a VERY fearful person. And when that fear got whirled up, my hysteria was deafening. More than a few times, John had no choice but to send me home. At the time I didn’t understand, but I now know what love it was. Yes, it was love for me, but first and foremost it was love for and absolute loyalty to Jesus Christ and His ministry.

In my frenzy of fear, I was destroying the ministry’s peace and shredding the quiet of the Spirit. My spirit was screaming, aggressively. I was a wrecking ball, smashing into the call and purpose of His ministry. Hysteria destroys. That’s just what it does! Yet it rarely sees that destruction. Most of the time, John or Martha would confront that fear and deal with me right there. But sometimes the Lord wanted me alone with Him. In that solitude, my fear wore itself out under His hand, leaving just the truth of my heart.

In times of trouble, giving in to fear is a great temptation. It is the opposite of what God calls us to do, which is to wait quietly for His salvation. The Expanded Bible says it this way: “to wait silently for the Lord to be victorious.” And that’s what Satan would have us lose sight of in a frenzy of fear: Christ’s victory. We may not know what God will do or how He’ll do it, but His victory is assured. Always.

Wait Quietly, There’s No Hurry

Right behind fear is the temptation to run ahead of the Lord rather than wait quietly. Everything must be done NOWNOWNOW! There’s no time to ask, to pray, to thank, to breathe even…so there’s certainly no time to wait on the Lord. God is perfectly capable of moving quickly when that’s His will; He is the Master of Time, after all. But I can’t recall a single scripture where Jesus and the disciples raced across Israel to get somewhere ‘in the nick of time.’ Jesus was in His Father’s will, so He was in His good time as well. Might not that be the same for us, too?

I don’t say any of this with the expectation that I can perform well in a crisis. I can’t! That’s not mine to do, or yours. What is mine to do is to choose His will, that I be safely in it when trouble comes. What is mine to do is to listen for His voice, that I be tuned to it when life gets loud. What is mine to do is to commit to loving God with all I am and have every day. Then when things get dark, my hand will already be holding His and fear will find no welcome.

But I stand silently before the Lord, waiting for Him to rescue me. For salvation comes from Him alone.
Psalm 62:5 TLB