Wait and Hope

My mother-in-law asked me this weekend if I felt “God was silent” in regards to our current situation. Her question got right to the heart of me and caused a brief cathartic moment. The backdrop to her question is our desire to find a place to call home, or, more specifically, my search for a job. To date, there isn’t much to report; I’ve yet to have a conversation with any church, which means the chances are slim we’ll know where we’re headed when our baby arrives come April.

Now, I’ve dealt with uncertainty before and usually it doesn’t bother me. Shoot, Anna and I drove out to Pasadena two weeks after getting married without any definite place to sleep – nor did we have an apartment set up. But the reality of a “baby on the way” automatically brings up all kinds of insecurities and a desperate need to have things settled. Which brings us back to the question of whether or not God is silent or unconcerned about us.

Well, I thought honestly about our situation. My first inclination was to answer, “yes,” because I couldn’t immediately call to mind God giving a clear sign – written in the sky above. But, the more I thought, the more I realized God hasn’t been silent; God’s been patient. The more I look at what’s going on around me, the more I see God has given daily bread – a small measure of grace here to lift us through a week or a transitory job to carry us through a month.

I was completely reassured of God’s patience this morning at a topical class at church. We were looking at Mark, chapter one, and specifically at instances of Jesus healing people of illness and casting out demons. We got to talking about Jesus commanding demons not to tell anyone of who He was, which begged the reasonable question, “Why would Jesus not want people to know about Him?” I’m not sure what the commentaries or biblical scholars say, but our inquisitive minds eventually settled up this answer: Jesus was patient; demons and Satan are not.

And the more I got to thinking about this trend, the more I realized that the Bible is saturated with God’s patience and, conversely, with demonic impatience. Almost everytime (perhaps everytime) the devil appears, the goal is to force God’s hand, to hurry up God’s timetable. Satan knows who Jesus is, but Satan’s error is trying to hurry up Jesus’ ministry. It’s not that the devil is proposing wrong solutions; the devil is just proposing the right solution at the wrong time.

That’s why the devil is so seductive (as Anna just said), and that’s why we, as humans, so frequently take the devil’s bait. I think it can be confidently said that many sins are committed because people get tired of waiting for God to act. The lives of the Israelites are plagued with the sin of “let’s act because God isn’t acting fast enough.” Idols were made to worship before Moses could tell the people how to truly worship, Israelites buy into the success of other peoples because they grow tired of waiting for God to give them success.

Or, just as dangerous as trying to act for God is a second grave danger: making God answer our demands and destroy our every fear. As an illustration of this wayward trend, Pastor Tony found himself watching a TBN program the other evening and was struck to hear pastors praying for God to “reveal” or “prove” Godself by answering needs … for money or healing or whatever. He pointed out the disturbing similarity between such “prayers” and the very words of Satan’s temptation in the desert when he beseeched Jesus to prove who He was. And as Tony pointed this out, I was forced back into my contemplation: is God silent or is God patient? Or, perhaps a more striking question, “Am I still concerned about serving God or have I begun to assume God will serve me. A slippery slope from discipleship to paganism this road is.

Faith is so often a cultivation of waiting and hoping. This is what I’m trying to remind myself as I continue to wait and hope for God to act. It’s not easy, and I’m not saying I do it well. Not even Jesus did it without great consternation while suffering tremendous stress. But, I’m thankful that Jesus did do it and that He was patient enough to wait on God. May my attitude be like that of Christ Jesus; may yours be as well.

Wes