WAIT?... I HATE WAITING!

I don't know if you are like me, but I hate waiting for things to happen. I know the word "hate" is strong, but it appropriately fits my feelings about it. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe if I didn't "hate" it SO much, I wouldn't have to endure it SO much. Who knows? Whatever. All I know is that I feel like the times of "waiting" in my life have been there mostly to teach me patience, to be content in the present. There is a wonderful freedom I can sense in someone who is content in the moment, who can live each day content in whatever that day may bring. My husband is THAT person. My son is THAT person. Me?... not so much. I seem to always be looking ahead. I am a visionary. That's how the Lord made me. But in my IMPATIENCE, I have gone before Him in things more times than I can count. We all know if something is out of God's timing, it's out of His blessing, even if the vision is from Him. So "waiting" for me has been a very humiliating yet crucial thing for me to learn. Waiting and being content in the waiting have proved to be important... for my mental health, my emotional health, spiritual health, my family life, and for my relationship to myself AND God.

Waiting... ugh.

I have to say though... when I look back on my life FULL of lessons learning to wait on God, I see something freeing that has happened to me. That freedom I sense in those content in the "now", I now see is being formed in me. When impatience is FINALLY broken, then waiting becomes a wonderful grace. It frees me to enjoy my life daily and see the wonder in the day to day. I love the simple things. The temptation of having to prove that my dreams are from God by "making it happen" is broken. This is freedom. This is LIFE.

Waiting doesn't mean sitting idle looking for our vision, our dreams, to fall out of the sky. That's nuttiness. No. Waiting is active, it's actually very active. Our day to day, living in connection with the Lord and being faithful with what we are given to do TODAY will prove to set you on a course that you can look back on someday and see was tied to a bigger picture all along. Your life is a tapestry... one patch sown at a time. Some folks get impatient. Want the work done now. Want the dream now. Want the breakthrough now. NOW. NOW. NOW. But God has a bigger picture in mind than what we really can comprehend. When the time has come and the vision has finally come into the blessing of the Lord, ONLY THEN can we see what the "waiting" was all about. Wow, finally, your vision has come into His time AND His will, which means... HIS BLESSING! YES! Then and only then, can you see that the "day to day" was brilliant strokes of the Master Painter. Those tiny strokes were making the most foundational and crucial parts of the painting, of the masterpiece. Without those tiny strokes the whole painting wouldn't, COULDN'T be as the Creator intended.

Waiting... ahhhh.

Only then can we reflect on "waiting" and say... ahhhh, how great thou art.

Habakkuk 2:3
"For the vision is yet for an appointed time;
But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie.
Though it tarries, wait for it;
Because it will surely come, it will not tarry."



Kim Winston Bigler
FREEtheINSIDE Ministries

(this entry is dedicated to the precious folks at Northlake First Assembly of God)