Waiting and Rejection

Why does waiting on God often feel like His rejection?  It’s like those stilling moments are death. Is that just the fears of a neurotic, or reality? I wonder if that is why many sects and religions have beads to fondle. Is it the nervous energies of the soul wrought up by stillness and silence?  Are those tangible orbs a crutch to alleviate the pain perpetuated in those solitary moments?

Rejection: Real or Imagined

The stillness of waiting on God unearths all my doubts about our relationship, all my fears that I’m not pleasing, and my insecurity that He is possibly displeased with me. How often would my playing of a worship song be used to drown the silence? Or thumbing through the pages of my favorite devotional? But what is He looking to achieve? Does this actually bring Him pleasure?

Does He have delight in my stilling moments? Those moments when nothing is present to distract? Does He delight in my waiting—in the emptiness of time? Does it honor Him that I sit waiting for His gaze? I have to be perfectly honest, it scares me!  His immediate interaction invigorates me with joy – His guiding Words, or tender touches.  Even the adjustments to correct my course satisfy my heart. But the silent waiting echoes against the walls of my fallen-ness. Although those walls were torn down for me by Christ, still they masquerade as my reality.

Waiting

But is that what it is? Does the ensuing fear of waiting erupt from fallen-ness or is it something else? Why is waiting so painful, so scary, so disconcerting?  Waiting comes against every instinct I have to DO and to GET – and all right NOW! It’s my inner addict looking for my fix.  Waiting is a death and it kills the soulish self-supportable life. Waiting requires yielding, and my fear of death is real.  Agreeing to wait is my choice to reject my soul-life in favor of His Life. Waiting is God!

What does it look like in my life? I sit and bow, crying out to Jesus. I surrender to the waiting and His ways, not demanding that He come. The Lord never agrees to my terms, but it gives Him pleasure that I choose to stop and look to Him. Waiting is to become one with God so that when He does speak, I am ignited and infused with His Word. You enter Union when you wait.

Waiting communicates to God our trust.  It honors Him as God. To wait is to look to Him as Source.  Eventually the passage of the time settles our frantic self-fixing soul—despite how exhausted we may have made ourselves. Actual waiting is impossible for the natural man. We move beyond the gyrations of the soul into the new spirit man. Then we can surrender to enter the silence and become the waiting. Why? Because the still silence is faith!

You don’t wait for a bus thinking it won’t come; you wait in certainty of its arrival because you are standing on the marked route. With God, our waiting communicates to our souls where our hope comes from.  We wait because we know our Father is faithful. We wait because He does come! We wait because waiting is the Faith that He is, and He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.  We wait because waiting pleases Him! Faith actually is the only thing that does.

Faith comes to meet the silence—silence never meets faith.  We enter silence in faith of God’s meeting, or else we enter silence in fear.  Fear in waiting is unbelief and can simply be confessed as sin. So now I’m gonna go wait. Hope you will, too.

Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the Lord.
Psalms 27:14 ESV