Wait for the Lord....

Wait for the Lord;

Be strong, and let your heart take courage;

Wait for the Lord!

Psalm 27:14

A commentary on waiting...........

I'm reading a book by Paul David Tripp entitled "A Shelter in the Time of Storm."  It's a group of meditations on God and trouble based on Psalm 27.  The section I read this morning is about waiting and why we struggle to "be strong, and let [our] hearts take courage."  Mr. Tripp addresses the question with this:

"Perhaps the answer is found in Romans 4:18-21.

• "In hope against hope he believed, so that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken, "SO SHALL YOUR DESCENDANTS BE."  Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb; yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform."

Why did Abraham grow stronger in faith as he waited those many long years?  It isn't because he played mental denial games.  No, the passage makes it very clear that he faced the facts of the situation head on.  In his time of waiting, Abraham had a very different experience than we often do, because Abraham did something that we often fail to do.  Here it is: the temptation, in times of waiting, is to focus on the thing we are waiting for, all the obstacles that are in the way, our inability to make it happen, and all of the other people who haven't seemed to have had to wait.  Along with this we rehearse to ourselves how essential the thing is and how much we are daily losing in its absence.  All of this increases our feelings of helplessness, our tendency to think our situation is hopeless, and our judgment that waiting is futile.

While it's true that Abraham considered the facts, they weren't the focus of his meditation.  No, his focus was on the God who had made this promise. Every day Abraham would get up and remind himself that the God who had made the promises on which he was waiting was absolutely able to deliver them.  The God who made heaven and earth would have no trouble causing an old woman to deliver a promised child!  Abraham didn't fill his mind with his own weakness and the seeming futility of the situation. No, he filled his mind again and again with the glory of God's immeasurable power, and as he did, he grew stronger and stronger in faith."

This brought me encouragement in truth and I wanted to share it with all of you.