When we think of waiting we often think of waiting for a bus, or waiting for something to arrive. I am sure we all remember Christmas Eve as children and the anticipation and expectation we felt as the ‘Big Day’ dawned and we couldn’t wait to see what presents we had received. Waiting in God is very different. It isn’t just ‘waiting FOR’ something or someone, but ‘waiting IN’ and ‘waiting UPON’.

God is not a quick fix slot machine. Everything he does flows out of a relationship premise. It is not just what he is doing FOR us, but what he is doing IN us and THROUGH us that is of paramount importance. Unlike man, he looks at the inner man, not the outer make-up. He discerns the heart, not just directs the hand.

In understanding God, and dealing with the frustration of anticipation and expectation, if we can learn to let go, then we will find the ‘waiting game’ much more bearable. There is no short cut antidote to pain. And in patience, the pain of process is very real and very deep. But in the process, there is a purpose. There is no guarantee that what we are waiting FOR will happen, we cannot force God into a corner. But when we learn to wait IN Him, and wait UPON Him, then we enter worship, we enter dependency, we enter intimacy in the midst of brokenness.

‘I counsel you to buy of me gold tried in the fire’, the book of revelation says. When we ‘worship through waiting’ then we learn some very important relationship truths:

1. That there are no idols we can hold before God as no.1
2. That we create space for Lordship in the midst of longsuffering
3. That we allow possibility to come into impossibility. Miracles are cultivated in the pages of an open book. By definition – when we let go, we invite God.