in the waiting

What is the value in stillness & waiting?

It is estimated that the average millennial picks up the smartphone 150 times a day. This is purely technology addiction.

Technology has also altered human physiology.

Most of us are not wired to wait or to be still, and Lord knows our world today is anything but patient or quiet, nor does it encourage stillness. We are bombarded with noise and activity, things that literally suck up the minutes and hours of our days.

It makes us question; do we really have the same 24 hours each day we have always had, or have we lost some of the 168 hours we are supposed to have each week? I feel certain our days are much shorter than they used to be.

“The quantity of information [noise] that we are exposed to every single day is astounding. We take in five times more information [now]than we did in 1986. With our attention spans eroded to approximately eight seconds in our digital landscape, we have learned that to consume is to skim. Most of the text content is forced to be skipped.”

“About 73% of Americans report feeling a certain degree of information overload, yet we continue to interface with it on a variety of devices and media, both professional and social. It is estimated that the average millennial picks up the smartphone 150 times a day. This is purely technology addiction.”

“The internet age has changed the general attention span.” (Article by: VA Mohamad Ashrof)

This is our world in 2021. I believe if there was ever a time or need for stillness and waiting, that time is NOW!

THIS is why we need stillness and to learn the value of it, and to understand the value of waiting. How in the world could we ever hear God’s voice in this much noise? How could we even find Him here in all the busyness?

So what does it mean to wait? The word “wait” appears 154 times in the King James Version Bible in both the Old and New Testaments. God uses seasons of waiting to prepare us for what's coming, to draw us closer to Him, and to make sure His promises are fulfilled at the proper time.

The truth is, Waiting is one of the hardest things in our walk with Christ. Yet the bible is clear, just because you are waiting on your breakthrough, it does not mean that you are doing nothing. I speak more to that below in, what takes place in the waiting.

Stillness means to stop striving, stop fighting, relax. It also means to “put your hands down”. Let go and let God take the wheel.

If we want to experience true intimacy with God, we must learn to quiet the clatter, stop trying to control, and enter His stillness.

What happens in the stillness?

photo credit: amuel Martins @samuelmartins7

“Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.” (Psalm 37:7). Scripture implies that stillness involves waiting and that blessings follow those who wait on God.

“Peace! Be still! And the wind ceased.” (Mark 4:39). Jesus connects stillness with peace. When we experience extended periods of stillness with God, our RPM’s slow down, our inner turmoil is quietened, and a deep peace that passes understanding permeates our body, mind, and soul.

“Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations and in all the earth.” (Psalm 46:10). The Psalmist declares that we come to know God and His ways in stillness and that He is glorified, and worship is experienced through God-focused stillness.

“He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.” (Psalm 23: 2-3) Scripture associates’ stillness with rest and healing. When we are sick the doctor usually prescribes that we be still through bed rest. When we suffer broken bones, they are placed in a cast or sling to immobilize the bones. Why? Because stillness promotes healing. When we are still before God, we experience life-giving healing and wholeness that only He can provide.

“Now therefore stand still and see this great thing that the Lord will do before your eyes.” (1 Samuel 12:16). In stillness we slow down enough to notice where God is obviously at work in our lives, the lives of others, and in the world. It was while Samuel was lying still in the Temple (1 Samuel 3:3-4) that God spoke to him. Likewise it is in the midst of stillness that we hear God’s voice speaking to us and respond to His call upon our lives. (Above paraphrased from Sacred Structures)

What happens in the waiting?

photo credit: Levi Meir Clancy @levimeirclancy

“‘My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the LORD. ‘And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.” (Isaiah 55:8) (NLT)

“Have you ever faced a big challenge in your life? Something that couldn’t be solved [quickly, or easily, without a miracle]?

If you haven’t, you will. And when that time comes, you’ll have a choice. You can wait on God’s timing and his way. Or you can take matters into your own hands and try to make a miracle happen yourself.

But the truth is that miracles don’t come from the places you expect them. And they don’t come as a result of your own effort. The source of a miracle is always unexpected. Your way of making things happen is always second best—God’s way is best.

If you could understand God, you would be God. But you’re not.” (paraphrased from Rick Warren)

“The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.” (Lamentations 3:25) (ESV)

When we wait upon the Lord, we’re trusting God to tell us what our goals are. We’re allowing him to take charge. We’re trusting that what he has planned for our life is far better than anything we could have ever imagined.

When we do this, God provides all that we need, exactly when we need it. We can find our strength in him.

It’s important to note here, the difference between having our strength renewed and getting everything we want. God providing our needs exactly when we need something does not mean having our prayers answered exactly as we requested. God is not Santa Claus.

The point is that We wait. We trust. And even in the waiting, we have all that we need while we are following Jesus.

The waiting serves a purpose. God wants us to become more and more like his Son, Jesus- and he knows what it will take for us to get there. He never promised that it would be easy. But he did promise that he will always be with us and that we can trust him.” (Deuteronomy. 31:6) (paraphrased from What it Means to Wait...)

Our deepest roots and foundations are secured through days, months, even years of stillness and waiting.

Only when I learned to be still, and to appreciate stillness did my soul quiet down enough to connect to the strength and growth that is available to me through Christ.

In stillness, when I am just being, and mentally focusing on God’s word, tuning out the noise of this world, this is when my spirit and soul are fed. Just “being still” with God.

Personally, the struggle for me is in the waiting, not the being still part. I love quiet, and I am a person who requires a lot of “still” time, but the waiting?

The waiting can be torture, but as Christ continues to grow and stretch me, I am learning to appreciate the trust that grows in the waiting. With age, I am gaining the wisdom and discernment to know that God is always doing something in the waiting.

In the waiting God works on me, or someone else involved in, or who will be involved in, my life. He is preparing me (or us) for what is to come. There is a tremendous amount of peace that comes when I let go and trust Him in the waiting, because in reality, I know who truly holds my future and it isn’t me.

Letting go of burdens I wasn’t meant to carry gives me peace, and He will carry your burdens too.

Seek stillness with God, every day, and in time, the roots of your faith will deepen and grow in strength. You will learn to trust and be assured of His trustworthiness and faithfulness, and like me, you will begin to identify and see God working in your life.

He wants you to identify His work in your life.

Generally speaking, it isn’t instantaneous. It requires patience and an intimate relationship with Christ that comes through spending time with Him in His word, time spent in prayer, and in stillness.

photo credit: Gift Habeshaw @gift_habeshaw

In writing this and thinking back over my life, I read through old journals and tried to simplify and narrow down the things I have learned about being still and waiting, and what I have learned in the stillness and the waiting.

Here are five of the most powerful lessons I have learned about the value in stillness & waiting.

1. God is an incredibly patient God. Reading through scripture opened my eyes to the unbelievable patience He has with us and just how intentionally He works on us, and He works on our behalf in the waiting. Time and time again God spared people because of His patience. Therefore, patience is a strength I desperately need to acquire. If it’s a strong characteristic of God’s, then it is of tremendous value for me to learn. Not working on my ability to wait, in my mind, disrespects God.

2. Strangely enough, in the stillness and waiting I experience peace because it requires surrender and trust in God and His perfect plan. There are many in my life whom I love dearly, and I desire for them to know the Lord, but it isn’t a priority to them. This used to keep me up at night and cause tremendous stress and anxiety. As I have grown in my faith, I have learned that I can trust God with this daily prayer and let go of the tremendous burden I carried, knowing He will carry this burden for me. It’s in the stillness that He comforts and reassures me that He cares as much for them, even more so, than I do.

There is peace in letting God carry what is too big for us to carry.

3. Contrary to popular belief, waiting can develop patience, and it’s in stillness and quiet that this happens. We may live in a noisy world that says faster, faster, but God does not operate in the world’s noise, time, or schedule. I have many examples of this, but here are two that are fairly recent and perfect examples of this in my life.

The first example was waiting to date until my sons were raised. It was difficult to wait. Waiting was contrary to what the world expected. I remember people saying I should date and remarry while I was young and looked “the best” I would ever look, but in my quiet time of prayer, bible study, and stillness I developed a relationship with Christ that was sufficient for me during that time of my life.

It was in the waiting that I healed. I grew stronger, my roots got healthier and stronger, I learned to be patient, and when the time was right to date, I did not feel like I had to jump into anything. I had learned by that point if it were God’s will, it would be, and if not, He would fill that void.

Y’all know, He did fill that void with my awesome hubby Greg, but it was 16 years in the waiting. 😊

The second example is still quite fresh. I recently wrote about this in a previous blog, surrender.

When I was unjustly fired four years ago, one week before my wedding, I had every reason and a strong case to sue the company, and should have, but chose not to. I truly believed somehow God would redeem that wrong. I just needed to be patient.

I am excited to share with you that within a few days of being exactly four years ago that I was fired, my manager from that company, (not the one who fired me) he has hired me to come and work for him where he currently manages a different team.

FOUR years God was working this out. I start my new job with McGraw Hill, July 26, 2021!

4. Waiting develops perseverance. It requires me to pursue God and His will, and to trust that He is working things out in the waiting no matter how long or difficult the waiting period may be. In order to know His voice and discern to the best of my ability when it is His will, I must also persevere and be consistent in my times of stillness and quiet. It requires me to keep seeking to know His will and to see the work He is faithfully doing in me or in a particular situation.

Through perseverance my roots continue to grow, and my foundation grows more and more solid, and I am not as vulnerable to be shaken by the storms of life.

5. Waiting proves God’s power because the strength to wait comes from Him. I do not have it in myself to wait years to see results or to experience redemption, but through the power of Christ I am able to wait. Through the confidence and strength developed in my quiet and stillness time with Him, I develop the mental muscle I need to trust in His timing, knowing it is always the best timing.

“We live in an instant world. Internet, pictures, updates, texts — they have all altered our minds, making us think at a faster rate and causing us to expect things at a quicker pace.

Because of this, sometimes we can hear from God and think that whatever He has spoken is going to happen instantly. Yet most of the time, it’s a process, which is actually (and maybe frustratingly) a good thing! The process is ordained by God to help mold us into the people He has called us to be.” ~Christine Caine

…” but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40:31

Do not grow weary in the stillness and waiting.

We are all a continual work in progress. I have days where I am so impatient, I can make coffee nervous.

God promises us that he will be faithful to complete what He started in us. We just have to do our part and meet Him halfway.

I am reminded of a childhood song I learned at church.

He's still working on me
To make me what I need to be
It took him just a week to make the moon and stars
The sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars
How loving and patient He must be
'Cause He's still workin' on me

There really ought to be a sign upon my heart
Don't judge him yet, there's an unfinished part
But I'll be better just according to His plan
Fashioned by the Master's loving hands

(Adorable 6 year old singing this song)

Something to consider: “When God helps you grow spiritually, he doesn’t just snap his fingers so that it happens instantly. He does it incrementally. When God wants to make a mushroom, he takes six hours, but when he wants to make an oak tree, he takes 60 years. Do you want to be a mushroom or an oak tree?” -Rick Warren