WHEN GOD STOPS

“For Your salvation I wait, O LORD.”Genesis 49:18
“Indeed, none of those who wait for You will be ashamed”Psalm 25:3
“I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD In the land of the living. Wait for the LORD; Be strong and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the LORD.”Psalm 27:13-14
"I waited patiently for the Lord." Psalm 40:1
“I wait for the LORD, my soul does wait, and in His word do I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchmen for the morning; indeed, more than the watchmen for the morning.” Psalm 130:5-6

One day George Mueller was reading Psalm 37:23,"The Steps of a man are established by the LORD, when he delights in his way." Mueller wrote in his side margin, "and so are the Stops." I have come to discover that "walking with the Lord" is easier for me than "stopping with the Lord." "Stopping" is another way of saying "waiting". One of the ways that God prepares us for the great things of destiny are the times during which we must wait on the Lord.

Waiting for the Lord" is an Old Testament way of describing a willingness to neither run ahead of the Lord nor bail out on the Lord; but instead to be willing to stop and do nothing until God moves or gives His marching orders. John Piper describes it as staying at your appointed place while he says stay, and it's going at his appointed pace while he says go. Waiting in the Bible is a metaphor for a life of faith and trust in God alone. If we get impatient with life, it is no wonder we get impatient with the Lord as well. Yet impatience is a form of unbelief. Our plans are interrupted or shattered, our lives are not moving at the pace we want it to, we are dissatisfied with the circumstances that we are in the midst of. It’s what we begin to feel when we doubt the wisdom of God’s timing or the goodness of His guidance in our lives. The opposite of impatience is a willingness to wait for God in the unplanned pace of obedience, and to walk with God at the unplanned place of obedience- to wait in His place, and to go at His pace.

Sometimes God brings us to a place of crises that turns our world upside down. Life can come to a sudden stop or halt where we don't know where God is, what He is doing, where He is going, how He is getting us there, or when this situation or circumstance that we are in will be over. Psalm 107:28 calls it the place where we are at "wit's end" (Psalm 107:28). The place of waiting breaks something deep within us-that unbelieving, controlling, fearful, driving, grasping self will that must make something happen, or art least to help God out to make it happen. It makes or breaks us. While we kick and scream, God slowly teaches us to wait.

There is an old spiritual that describes it, "So high you can't get over it; so low that you can't get under it; so wide you can't get around it; you must go through the door." I am in that place in my journey. I am in a place where I cannot do anything because it is too high, too wide, and to low; all that I can do is go through the door and embrace the stop of God in my life. To wait upon God is to be willing to submit to God, adapt to God, and to be willing to go through the door. It means waiting on God not on our own sense of timing and place. Waiting purges us of the deep, stubborn, controlling, willfulness to run around, above, and ahead of God. While we kick and scream, God says, "Are you finished yet my son, then wait."

There is a difference between waiting and waiting on God. T.S. Elliot in his poem West Cocker described it like this:

“I said to my soul wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing. Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing. Yet there is faith. And the faith, hope, and love are all found in the waiting.”

Oh how many times have I waited for"the wrong things" and the very thing I waited for never happened. But I have learned that when you wait upon the Lord alone, everything you hope for, long for, and dream of will ultimately be found in the Lord and from the Lord.

Abraham had to learn to wait. At seventy five, he was told that he would be a father to the nations. So what did he do in response. After eleven years of waiting, he decided he had waited long enough, took matters into his own hands, and birthed Ismael through his maidservant Hagar(Genesis 16:1-4). But then there was waiting on God, who forced him to wait another fourteen years before the promised child Isaac was born, through whom all nations would be blessed. Abraham's waiting transformed him into a father of faith for all history.

Hannah learned to wait. She prayed and prayed and prayed for years for God to bless her womb and waited and waited and waited. After years of infertility, unanswered prayers, and mocking from the second wife of her husband,God finally heard and answered her prayers. Her years of pain and grief transformed her into the godly mother of Samuel who would transform the nation (1 Samuel 1+2).

Do you see what waiting did for Abraham and Hannah? God has the power to turn all obstacles, barriers, delays, interruptions, and detours into glorious outcomes in our lives.

WHAT GOD DOES FOR THOSE WHO WAIT?

The prophet Isaiah advised about waiting, “But they who wait for 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” (Isaiah 40:31). From this verse we learn that five things happen when we wait rather than rushing into action:

1. When we wait, God gives further instructions. We are able to stop, be quiet, rest, and able to listen for God’s direction. “For God alone my soul waits in silence from him comes my salvation…For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him”(Psalm 62:1,5).

2.When we wait, God gives new strength. Isn’t that what we all need? you may at this moment feel feel weak, fatigued, and broken. But, when we turn to our Lord, while waiting, amazingly, we exchange our weakness for His strength.

3.When we wait, God gives us a better perspective. Isaiah says we "will mount up with wings like eagles." Eagles can spot fish in a lake several miles away on a clear day. By soaring like eagles while waiting, we gain His perspective on what we are dealing with.

4.When we wait,God gives us extra energy. "They shall run and not be weary." Notice, it's in the future tense. When we do encounter the thing we have been dreading, we will encounter it with new strength-extra energy will be ours to use.

5. When we wait, God gives us a deeper determination to persevere We "shall walk and not faint" The Lord empowers us to do what we cannot do ourselves. He gives us fresh energy and vitality supernaturally to keep on keeping on.

Are you in that place where God has seemed to have stopped? Are you in one of those silent, yet precious and powerful seeming parenthesis in your life? Are you facing an unprecedented and unplanned event in your life? Are you at a critical juncture where you need to act or speak? Are you at a place where unless God helps things are hopeless? If so, wait on the Lord.

Maybe it's time for you to pray and to fast and to call upon a few close friends to fast and pray with you. “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me…fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Behold, all who are incensed against you shall be put to shame and confounded; those who strive against you shall be as nothing and shall perish. You shall seek those who contend with you, but you shall not find them; those who war against you shall be as nothing at all. For I, the LORD your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, "Fear not, I am the one who helps you" (Psalm 50:15; Isaiah 41:10-13).

Maybe it's time for you to say, "I'm not going to rush into this unpredictable and unprecedented situation. I don't know my way through. I can't find the path to walk. So I'm going to stop with God and wait upon Him. I will neither run ahead nor lag behind. I will submit to the place where God has me and follow the pace He is moving. In the meantime, I'm going to give it to God and trust that He loves to work for people who wait for him. Isaiah 30:18, "Oh how happy are all those wait for the Lord." Waiting on the Lord will make you happy. Why? Because no longer will you have to work things out when you know you can’t. No longer will you despair because a problem can’t be solved. No longer will human inability be a hindrance to the destiny that God has purposed for you. God works for those who wait!

Oh let us look up, lift up, and enjoy the beauty of a God who so happily labors for us. All the things we need most will be achieved for us by the labor of God or not at all.

A Prayer
Oh Lord, my soul is overwhelmed with so many things. I believe in Your precious promises but I feel like there are so many things working against the fulfilling of Your promises in my life. Teach me to trust You even when I don't know what You are doing or where you are going. Help me to surrender and not try to help You or run ahead of You. Grant me the grace to follow You wherever you lead me; to move when you say move, and stop when you say stop. Help me to to trust that you will do for me what you did for Abraham and Hannah if I learn to wait upon You. I will not look to myself or man and think that they can hinder Your work, I will wait for You. AMEN