I’ve been blown away by the responses I’ve gotten over my last blog post. It has been an absolute blessing getting to read the comments on social media, receiving texts and messages from people who’ve read it, and having people come up to me in person to talk to me about what I wrote. It’s times like these where I see just how much good God has done on this earth. Often in the moment, I fail to remember just how much of a faithful community I have around me. It’s easy to get caught up in stressful situations, worry about things to come, and try very hard to take some sort of control in my own limited way, when many of these things are really and truly only in God’s hands. Getting to step back for a moment and see the uplifting and loving support from everyone around me has been nothing short of a true example of what God’s love looks like. It’s helped remind me that I need not try and control the things around me, but that I can actively live in the moment, serving God by being open about my faith, and continuing to love the way he would want me too. This actually leads me to what I want to talk about this evening: Control, specifically in the context of something that I know I struggle with immensely: waiting.

Waiting is such a difficult thing for all of us, but it’s been especially challenging for myself. I’m one of those people who likes to plan. I like to have things mapped out. I like to have every contingency prepared for. If you’re like me, you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say that something I have a bad habit of is having imaginary conversations with myself or with other people. These conversations supposedly serve me so that I can game out all the possible responses a person might give me if there is a tough situation or conflict I’m anticipating. Often though, these internal conversations only lead me to more stress. As I’ve grown up, I’ve learned to be a little more patient, but it’s hard. We live in a world where we have direct access to so many different things. Technology allows us to connect with others in the span of a moment. We receive instant gratification from social media, from online videos, and we’ve gotten to the point where any interruption makes us anxious or uncomfortable. Think about it, have you ever had somebody in your life that you text constantly, but when you don’t hear from them for a bit, you get worried that something is wrong. There could be any number of reasons why they don’t respond at the given moment. Perhaps they’re occupied with work, or driving, or they’re asleep. Maybe they’ve just set their phone down for a bit, or they’re having a conversation with someone. All of these are more than likely scenarios, yet we often want to assume the worst. On the flipside, we often can’t put our devices down, even when we are spending quality time with other people. My Apple Watch is a great tool, but I have to remind myself to take it off when I’m talking to somebody, or put it on silent mode so that I don’t feel tempted to look at all the notifications that pop up on it. How about videos? Think back to the last time you pulled a video up on Youtube, but it wouldn’t load right away. How long did you sit waiting for it to load before you gave up completely and moved on to something else? Ten seconds, fifteen seconds, thirty? If you made it past thirty then I’m impressed, because I usually give up around the ten second mark. None of this is said to encourage you to give up your devices, merely to make the point that we all struggle with waiting. 

Another waiting-related area that I struggle with is waiting on other people. I’m somebody that always wants to work through challenges upfront. I don’t like to let things sit or fester, especially if there is a conflict that has arisen. I don’t like to wait on other people to get back to me, and the longer it takes, the more frustrated I get. Good communication is very important to me, and I value being able to talk about things upfront rather than letting resentment build up, but I’ve also had to learn that sometimes it takes other people longer to get to the point where they are ready to talk about something. Now, do I think there is a healthy balance to both of these things? Yes. Sometimes it’s important to give space to somebody if they need time to get mentally ready to have a challenging conversation (which for me, is the area where I have struggled to wait the most). Are there also times where it’s necessary to discuss something sooner rather than later? Also yes. Sometimes, delaying communication can lead to increased feelings of resentment. Rather than taking the time to prepare ourselves to have an honest but loving conversation, we focus deeper on the pain or stress that we are feeling, which makes it all the more difficult to have that loving conversation. This is a topic I want to write about in a separate blog post, but I think it helps establish just how tough waiting can be, especially when we all have different tendencies regarding the length we are willing to wait on things. 

Yet another area that we can often struggle with is waiting on God. God has his own timing, and he knows better than us what is to come. He works on each of us at different speeds and in different ways. A great scriptural example of this is the Apostle Paul. Paul, previously named Saul, was a man who persecuted the early Christians during the first century. In Acts 8, we see how he made it his mission to track down followers of Christ and put them in prison (Acts 8:1-3). He spent his early life accomplishing this task, until one day, while traveling to Damascus, the Lord revealed himself to Saul, blinding him and asking him “why are you persecuting me”? Saul was led, still blind, into the city, where he awaited a disciple named Ananias, who laid his hands on him and blessed him. Saul regained his sight, was renamed Paul, and began a new ministry to all people, preaching the good news of God. Can you imagine being one of those early Christians, perhaps waiting for God to work into the hearts of people like Paul, waiting for what seems like forever, and then all of a sudden, BANG, a heart has been changed in such a significant way. God works in all of us, and even though we don’t always see it, he is calling to each of us. Often, all we have to do is wait. But what does that waiting look like?

Recently, I’ve fallen in love with a concept I like to call “Active Waiting”. This concept came to me after listening to a sermon at the church I attend in Gallatin, TN. The Pastor at our church spoke of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem in the Gospel of Luke. This was a long journey, and while it’s encapsulated in just a handful of pages, it would have taken him a while to get there. What was remarkable about this journey is that he continued to teach, preach, and heal along the way. He didn’t go straight to Jerusalem, where he knew he was about to die. He continued to do his father’s good work. We are called to follow his example in our own periods of waiting. Like Jesus, we are not supposed to just sit on our hands until God gives us what we hope he will give us. We are not called to mull about and waste each day that we’ve been given. We are called to do two things: to continue his work, and to pray.

My favorite Bible verse, Philippians 4:6 (which is one that Paul wrote) says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and pleading with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God”. Here, we are instructed to pray constantly, thanking God for all he has done for us, and offering up our requests to him. We are called to pray in every moment, whether we are worried, scared, sad, or frustrated, to offer up those feelings and thoughts to him, and let our desires be known. God will answer those prayers. It may not happen in the time we want, or in the way we expect, but God will hear and answer those prayers. While we wait, he also shows us that we must continue to worship him, to spread his good news, to live a loving, faithful, gracious, forgiving, Christ-centered life. He didn’t stop his ministry waiting for the time to come when he would die for our sins, so why should we wait now?

Right now, I’m in a period of waiting. There are things that I desire, conflicts that I pray will be resolved, pain that I ask God to heal, and in the place of all these things, an example of his love to be shown. I won’t lie, it’s really hard waiting. Something being hard though doesn’t mean that it can’t also be simple. We know what we must do during these times, and we know what choice we have in front of us. We can either choose to actively wait, following Jesus’ example, praying to him, or we can stand by and not use each day that he has blessed us with. Writing these posts has been a really good way for me to actively wait, and I pray God will reveal to all of us ways that we can all do the same! Thank you to everyone who has read my first blog post, and thank you to all who read this one! It’s a little longer, but hopefully you found something meaningful in it. As always, reach out to me if you want to talk more about something I’ve written!