Wait For The Lord

To wait for the Lord is a common theme mentioned in the Psalms. This is because waiting produces good fruit and when done in faith it never disappoints. For in our intentional waiting, we give the Holy Spirit permission and time to move and act. The psalmists knew this about God’s nature, which is why they wrote about it so often. Although we can never fully know the plans of God, we can understand that there is grace for the soul who waits for the Lord.

The word “wait” comes from the Hebrew qavah, which means “to wait, hope for, look, expect.” In our fast paced, busy culture when we think of waiting we tend to get agitated. Depending on the circumstances, being asked or forced to wait produces anxiety, worry, stress, and sometimes even anger in us. But we must remember that this reaction to waiting is from the world; it is not from God. How then have we strayed so far from God in our perception of waiting?

There was a point in my own life when waiting was taught to me in a big way. During the financial crash of the real estate market, my husband who is in real estate saw a 70% decrease in his income in one year. At that time I was a stay at home mom to 2 young children and was pregnant with our 3rd child. This was a tremendous hardship for us. We had to learn how to receive financial help from others, which is always very humbling. Family and friends where buying us groceries, paying some of our bills, and that Christmas they even gave us gift cards so that we could purchase gifts for our children. Needless to say it was a very stressful time for our family, as we woke up each morning worrying about what we were going to do to get ourselves out of this situation.

Although we were struggling, I felt the Lord very close to me at that time. As my heart yearned for a solution to our situation, there was something deep down that kept telling me to wait. At the time I didn’t know why, but I can see now what the Lord was doing. As family and friends who loved us dearly were continuing to offer short term solutions to our problems, the Lord kept telling me to wait. It was in this intentional waiting that I learned to truly trust in God. This is where I learned that all of my attempts to fix things were pale in comparison to what God could do in our lives.

This being said, waiting is not a passive thing. It doesn’t mean that we sit back and let the world or God do all the work for us. As in the Hebrew meaning of the word, waiting is active, it is hopeful expectation. To look or expect are active, purposeful, roles that we enter into. It’s the difference between a watchdog sleeping and one that on guard. To wait for the Lord is to be on guard for the active presence and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. When we wait in this way, we will be ready for the fruits of the Holy Spirit that will no doubt come.

The Psalms teach us that waiting produces the following fruits: integrity, uprightness, strength, courage, protection, patience, inheritance of the land, hope, salvation, counsel, longing devotion, and the overriding promise for those who wait is that the Lord will exalt them. All of these fruits build upon the virtue of fortitude. They all deepen our faith, hope and love of God. They all draw us into the Sacred Heart of Jesus where we will be set on fire with His burning charity and purified of all the ways we have separated ourselves from God. In the waiting comes the Holy Spirit to renew, restore and inspire. In the waiting we surrender ourselves to the will of God and allow his providence to be our guide.

As my family was stuck in financial distress and unable to find a solution to our problems, we had two options in front of us: we could turn away from God and be angry, depressed, and anxious about our situation as we frantically searched for a solution, or we could surrender to the Lord and radically trust in Him, waiting for God to give us direction. As we chose to wait and trust in God in a new way, the Lord began to slowly open doors for us. These doors weren’t anything that we’d ever have expected to be our solution because they didn’t immediate fix our problem, but they were what led us to being more financially secure in the long term. These doors have also been what have lead to us to unlock some of our charisms that the Holy Spirit was wanting to use in and through us all along. When we choose to enter into the waiting with the Lord, it allowed the Holy Spirit to do the work of salvation, the work of restoration, and the work of bringing about newness of life in our lives.

If you are currently in a period of waiting, take heart. Place your hope in the Lord with reckless abandon. Surrender your life to Him and pray for the grace that your eyes may be opened to see the Holy Spirit at work in your life. In order to wait with the Lord we must remain in the present moment where the Holy Spirit lives. We cannot dwell on the past, nor can we be anxious about the future, but we must lift the veil in order to see the Lord here present with us today, in this very moment, in this very season of life, right where we are.

I can honestly say that in my choosing to wait with the Lord, the Lord showed up. Although he didn’t produce immediate results to my prayers in the way I was asking, He was present to my hardship, as he walked alongside me and taught me to trust more fully in Him. If we learn anything from the Psalms about waiting, it is that so many fruits are promised to those who wait in hope. And although waiting is never easy, it always bears a heavenly reward.

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