5. Live While You’re Waiting
THE HALLWAY OUTSIDE THE UROLOGY LAB
GREENOAKS REHAB HOSPITAL
NOVEMBER 1968
This morning when the aide came to put me on the gurney to go to Urology Lab, I was honest-to-goodness excited. I’ve been stuck in my room for what seems like ages now, waiting for the surgery on my pressure sore to heal. The idea of going anywhere, even to the other side of the hospital, sounded a whole lot better than biding time in my bed, looking out the window, or watching “The Price Is Right.”New hallways to go down. New corners to turn. New rooms to look into as I pass by. New faces to see.
But I’ve been parked here outside of Urology for more than two hours now, and the novelty wore off long ago. I am tired of waiting. Tired of watching the clock above the door. It seems I’m always waiting. When I was at City Hospital, I waited to come here to Greenoaks. Once I got here, I waited to go to PT. At PT, I waited my turn for treatment. Once done, I waited for someone to push me back to my room.
I’m always waiting—for lunch, for dinner, for a visitor to come by, for my doctor to see me, and now … for a urology exam. I am so sick and tired of lying around and waiting. Is anything ever going to happen? Will it ever get better? Will I ever smile? Will I ever be able to quit waiting?!
FORTY-PLUS YEARS LATER
God, are You there?
Silence.
Are You listening?
More silence.
Ummm … am I getting the idea that You’re asking me to wait? Is that what I’m supposed to do? Just—sit here and WAIT?
A very long silence.
Why is it, God, that when I want to charge ahead, You insist I wait? And at other times—when I feel like waiting—You push me forward?
Deafening silence.
You had hoped God wouldn’t do this. Not now, not at this time, not in this situation. But He has, and it’s exasperating. He replies to your questions with long, drawn-out periods of silence. No answers, no directions, no warm fuzzies, no whispers in the night, no road sign pointing, “This is the way, walk ye in it.” Just … waiting.
Okay. If I have to sit here and wait, then I’ll … I’ll. . . .
Before you know it, you’ve created your own noise, activity, and excitement—anything but that grating stillness which seems to rub against the grain of your soul.
Oswald Chambers has observed, “When we are in an unhealthy state physically or emotionally, we always want thrills. And in the spiritual domain, if we insist on getting thrills … it will end in the destruction of spirituality.”
But I’m tired of waiting! you say.
Ah, the Spirit of Christ hasn’t forgotten you. He’s listening. Finally you heave a deep sigh. I’m at the end of my rope. I yield to You, Lord.
And in that moment … the Spirit begins to work in your situation. Ignoring your frenzy and bypassing your busyness, God quietly elbows His way into your activity, whispering…
Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.
(Psalm 46:10)
Be Still
The Hebrew word God speaks here is raphah.
Can you hear it? Can you hear it in your agitation, anxiety, and worry? A friend of mine who was going through a period of deep anxiety—a season of his life when his stomach was tied in knots and his thoughts kept churning nonstop—thought he actually heard God speak this directly to his heart.
“It seemed like the words came from outside me,” he explained, “cutting through that fog of worry and mental turmoil with the force of a command. I’ve never heard God speak so clearly to me—before or since.”
What he heard so clearly were the words, “Hush! Be still!” Which is a pretty good English translation of “Raphah!”
The New American Standard Bible translates this term “Cease striving.” Among the definitions for raphah are terms like “abate,” “cease,” “forsake,” “leave,” and “let alone.” One commentator noted that raphah “means to let fall; to let hang down; then, to be relaxed, slackened, especially the hands: It is also employed in the sense of not making an effort; not putting forth exertion; and then would express the idea of leaving matters with God, or of being without anxiety about the issue.”
In contemporary lingo, we might hear someone say, “Oh, would you give it a rest?”
It’s so very difficult in this era to find places and occasions that lend themselves to being still and setting aside our activities. And chances are, even if we found such places and times, we wouldn’t like them! We’re not used to it. Silence seems like something foreign, something alien to the world as we know it. In our cars, traveling from here to there, we flip on the CD player or tune in on the endless drone of talk radio. Or maybe we’re doing the talk-talk-talking to people on our hands-free cell phone. When we’re alone in the house, we turn the TV on even if we’re not watching it—just to have some background noise. Just look around! So many people you see at airports or in shopping malls have tiny cell phones clipped to their ears or iPod ear buds tucked into ear canals.
“Be still and know that I am God”? How can we consider any such thing when we are never still?
May I suggest taking an hour—or even twenty minutes—to get outside and find that stillness in His creation today? You may not be near a desert or the mountains, but locate a place of quiet, a scene of icicle silence. A park covered in snow. A tree wearing icy diamonds in the sunlight. A distant woods across a field. Or perhaps a pink and orange sunset from your back porch. Take in the beauty around you … then join in with the landscape and be still before God in wordless worship.
But the Lord’s word here implies more than an absence of sound. It speaks of relaxing our convulsive grip on all the details of life, and placing our concerns, worries, fears, and burdens into the hands of God Himself. And then leaving them there!
I love David’s words in Psalm 131. He says:
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
A child who hasn’t been weaned frets and fusses for his mother’s breast. But a weaned child is content to be close to his mother and rest quietly in her arms. David says, in effect, “I’ve forced myself to stop fretting about things I can’t control or really do anything about. I’ve stopped trying to put everything together and figure everything out. I’ve given up trying to be a junior god in a miniature universe, and I’m going to still and quiet my troubled soul so that I can simply rest all these things in Your hands.”
That is one of the best ways I can think of to know God in a deeper way.
To be still and … wait.
I have learned that lesson from spending years in forced bed rest. Up in my wheelchair, I can at least flail my arms or shrug my shoulders. But on my bed, gravity works against me and, for that reason, I’m even more paralyzed when lying down.
And here is a ruby, hard-won. My enforced stillness has led me into a deeper firsthand knowledge of God through prayer.
It may only be seven o’clock in the evening when I’m put into bed, and I may not go to sleep until eleven. That leaves me with hours each day to still myself … and pray. Sometimes I’m amazed that, from my bed, I can help set into motion the cogs and wheels of God’s workings in the world. Through my prayers I may change the destiny of a life—or even a nation. Lying on my bed, I can hasten the day of the Lord’s return. I don’t move a muscle in those hours, but I help move the hand of God here and abroad.
Here is how I begin each night. I settle my mind and my heart to become as still as my body (which may take a while!). In the quietness, I invite the Spirit of God to speak to me. I press my weakness up against His strength, my ignorance up against His knowledge, my fears and concerns up against His calmness and tranquility.
And we speak to one another in the stillness.
“An intercessor,” says Hannah Hurnard, “means one who is in such vital contact with God and with his fellowmen that he is like a live wire closing the gap between the saving power of God and the sinful men who have been cut off from that power.”
Even though you have a hard time believing that any worthwhile activity can exist in stillness, God begins to do His hushed work in your heart.
And more than that, He gives you Himself, His intimacy as you search for a balm for your grief and answers to your deepest longings. It dawns on you that “rush” is wrong nearly every time.
It’s a command; it’s a charge: “Keep silence before me, … and let the people renew their strength” (Isaiah 41:1 KJV).
It’s a bidding, a mandate: “Be silent, all mankind, before the Lord” (Zechariah 2:13 TLB).
When we do, when we are, wonder of wonders! We hear “a still, small voice.” God’s answer comes only through waiting.
But It Isn’t Easy
Most of my friends with disabilities would agree that one of the hardest disciplines any of us must grapple with is patience. It’s one of those lessons we have to relearn every day, many times over.
On the mornings that Ken teaches, for instance, a friend comes to our house to do my morning routine and see me off to work. Often my friend will say something like “What a lovely day!” Or “I don’t think it’s going to be nearly as hot today as it was yesterday.”
When I hear comments like that, I want to bounce out of bed, head for the backyard, and appraise the day for myself. I want to breathe some of that fresh morning air. I want to see my roses while they’re still covered with dew.
But it’s simply not possible. I might as well wish to fly out the window like a little bird. My morning routine—including exercises and bathing—chews up an hour or more before I can even get into my wheelchair. So be patient, I must!
It’s during such moments of waiting I think of all that has to be done. Do you identify with that? Sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office you remember half a dozen phone calls you need to make. Parked in a long line of stop-and-go traffic on the freeway you think of all the stuff you need to pick up at the market on the way home—and the time is getting late.
It’s a fact. Waiting is not an easy thing to do.
Unfortunately, most of us associate the word with phrases like “hanging around” or “killing time.” We get a mental picture of leaning up against a wall with our arms folded, yawning, occasionally glancing at our watch.
But there’s far more to waiting than lounging around until we receive what we hope for. George Matheson wrote insightfully about the manner in which we should wait.
We commonly associate patience with lying down. We think of it as the angel that guards the couch of the invalid. Yet there is a patience that I believe to be even more difficult—the patience that can run. To lie down in the time of grief, to be quiet under the stroke of adverse fortune, implies a great strength. But I know of something that implies a strength greater still. It is the power to work under stress, to continue under hardship, to have anguish in your spirit and still perform daily tasks.
This is a Christ-like thing. The hardest thing is that most of us are called to exercise patience, not in the sick-bed, but in the street.
Waiting is something more than “counting flowers on the wall,”as the old song goes. It takes courage to live out our patience on the street, to wait and yet still remain active and involved.
“Wait on the Lord,” Psalm 27:14 tells us, “be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the Lord!” (NKJV).
By implication, then, we can deduce that if we refuse to wait on Him, He will not bless us with “good courage” or strengthen our hearts. And our slide from anxiety to despair picks up speed.
Those times we find ourselves having to wait on others may be perfect opportunities to train ourselves to wait on the Lord. Instead of fidgeting and fuming, we could use such moments to pull Bible verses out of our memory, or learn more of God’s Word.
I’m not talking about the mechanical repetition of words, but actually weaving biblical truth into the fabric of our day.
Wait on the Lord in prayer as you sit on the freeway, sharing with Him the anxiety of so many jobs to be done in such a short time. Watch your frustrations melt into praise as you sing hymns and choruses for His ears alone.
By exercising this kind of patience, rooted in God’s Word, we can say with the psalmist, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope” (Psalm 130:5).
Waiting for His Timing
Waiting for the Lord means putting His desires before our own, believing that He will meet our needs with generosity and love in His good time.
You may find yourself mightily tempted to do something on the spur of the moment. It may be an important decision. A desire you want gratified. A choice you don’t feel like putting off. Or something you just want now.
Your itchiness to have things your way has you ready to settle for something of lower quality or less value. It could be a special purchase. Or a choice in jobs. Or a relationship. It could be a crossroads in your ministry. And the truth is—you really don’t want to check in with the Lord, discern His mind and His desires, and wait for His green light.
Ah, but while we may regret a hasty decision a million times over, we will never regret waiting for the Lord. You can never go wrong as you wait and pray and still yourself in His presence, seeking His mind and heart.
He will end up giving you something better.
He will give you rubies of wisdom you couldn’t obtain any other way.
And He will give you Himself.
When you have apprehended Him in a new, fresh way, it will all become clear. The choice will be obvious. The waiting will be worth it.
What you might provide for yourself by your effort, in your wisdom, and in your timing cannot be compared to what God has for you in His plan and in His timing.
Are you at a crossroads of decision in your life? Are you dealing with a desire that’s pushing you to hurry? Fight, fight, fight the temptation to run ahead of Him. Lay your desires and petitions at His feet, and wait for His peace.
So…
if you’re single and waiting for marriage…
if you’re a preteen and waiting for high school…
if you’re stuck in your career and waiting for a break…
if you’re parked in a wheelchair and waiting for a push…
if you’re married and waiting for your husband to change…
keep your head held high and place all your expectations in the Lord, rather than in uncertain, changeable circumstances.
Here is another ruby—hard-won wisdom the Lord has given me after four decades in a wheelchair. We don’t wait to live. We have to keep living while we’re waiting.
It takes courage to wait patiently and yet get out there and embrace life. But you can do it. Lean on God and courage will never be in short supply.
I remember a telephone call from several years ago that reminds me of “giving God time.” The call came into the counseling department of the Dutch Christian Television Network. “I am a quadriplegic,”the caller said. “I had said I would kill myself in ten years if I could not find help. It is now the tenth year. This is my only hope.”
The young man had called in response to one of my programs on TV in the Netherlands. He had heard my message of hope and trusted that somehow people could respond to his needs. Contacts were made, help organized, and now we wait for God to heal the young man’s heart.
We were all saddened and shocked by this story. It was hard to imagine no one being able to help this person and give him relief these past ten years. But what was just as shocking to me was the man’s patience. He gave himself (and God) ten years! Most people in his situation rarely take such a long-term view of their circumstances. They want relief and they want it now.
The discouraged people that grab God’s attention are those who intentionally set out to wait. Like the psalmist, they know it may take a while. They not only wait; they watch. They watch because they know that God will answer. Rather than standing on a street corner of life, waiting for God, they go about their days unencumbered. They are productive, joyful people, knowing that God will come in due time.
Wait. Wait patiently and eagerly. But in the meantime get busy with what you know to be your responsibilities.
Continue to live while you are waiting.
Waiting in Prayer
When our Wheels for the World team was in Peru, we met Angelica Ramirez, a twenty-five-year-old woman who had cerebral palsy and epilepsy since birth. For most of her life, she had laid in bed all day—her only entertainment was watching a shaft of sun move across her room. On the morning of our wheelchair distribution, Angelica’s mother wrapped her daughter in a white mattress so her brother could carry her down the mountain. They were hoping to receive a wheelchair.
Our team happened to have a recliner wheelchair with an extended headrest (we don’t usually take these sorts of highly customized chairs on trips). As Angelica was placed in this particular chair, everyone gasped. It fit perfectly. When our team gave Angelica’s mother a Bible in the Spanish language, she broke down and began sobbing. “God has answered my prayer!” she said through an interpreter.
We smiled, thinking she meant the Bible. But the woman shook her head and explained, “I want you to understand that I have been praying twenty years for a wheelchair for my daughter and today—Gloria al Dios—God has answered my plea. Now I can take my daughter to church. I won’t have to worry about carrying her!”
Twenty years?
If God answers your prayer immediately, be thankful; if it’s denied, be patient; if you are to wait, remain eager and expectant. Angelica’s story taught me something fresh about laying our requests before God: He invites us to have an expectant attitude when we pray. He wants us to be hopeful and eager—even if the answer is delayed for twenty years! Why such a delay? Only God knows, but I know this: He provided a perfect wheelchair hand-tailored for Angelica, and that Peruvian mother experienced twenty times the joy.
Strength While You Wait
Years ago my family and I took a camping trip up into the nature reserve of Jasper Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. I remember boarding a chairlift that cabled us to the top of a huge glacier-scarred mountain overlooking a broad expanse of pine forest below. There our eyes met the spectacle of wild, rugged terrain and turquoise lakes shimmering in the sun. We shivered inside our down jackets, half from the icy cold and half from the awesome view. We yelled our delight to one another over the violent roaring of the wind at the mountaintop.
I marveled at the sight of a soaring eagle moving far across the wooded valley. Just a tiny speck against the distant mountain range. I watched as the eagle circled and dived, admiring his grace and ease.
Eagles seem to go with big things—mountains, canyons, great depths, immense heights. It’s always at the most stupendous and alluring spectacles of nature that we find them.
God talks about eagles. In one of the most well-loved passages of the Old Testament, He uses their flight to describe the adventure that will unfold to the suffering Christian who waits for Him.
Though youths grow weary and tired,
And vigorous young men stumble badly,
Yet those who wait for the LORD
Will gain new strength;
They will mount up with wings like eagles,
They will run and not get tired,
They will walk and not become weary.
(Isaiah 40:30–31 NASB)
Does this sound like wearisome waiting to you? Does this sound like “shooting half the day before real action begins”?
Think of a really good waiter in an excellent restaurant. What does it mean that he “waits on you”? It certainly isn’t a laid-back, ho-hum affair. Not if he wants a tip! A first-rate waiter will be quick to respond to your call and diligent to “check in on you” during the course of the meal to make sure you’re enjoying it and have everything that you desire. That’s active waiting. And that’s how we should wait on God.
Good morning, Lord, is there anything I can do for You this morning?
Is there anything I can bring to You to meet any of Your desires?
Can I serve You in some special way this day?
Thinking back to that famous eagle passage in Isaiah 40—it’s not as though we first wait and then finally get the chance to mount up with wings, run without tiring, and walk without weariness. No, those good things actually happen while we are waiting! Waiting on God is an active, confident trusting—an instant obedience.
Isaiah promises a new and exciting perspective when we wait on the Lord. Waiting on God gives us the kind of perspective that an eagle must have who mounts up above the trees, lakes, and mountains. Our surroundings come into focus. Our horizons are broadened. We see our place in the scheme of things.
When the Bible talks about waiting on God in my suffering, it means confidently trusting that God knows how much I need and can take. It means looking expectantly toward the time when He will free me from my burdens.
But not get weary? Not get tired or stumble?
How can that be when these are the very trademarks of those who suffer? Yet God’s promise is clear. Those who wait for Him in their distress will receive strength and endurance which others know nothing about.
Because I know that one day I’ll receive a new body, I am now “able to mount up with wings like an eagle.” It is my hope that makes me soar. It is my expectancy and anticipation that give me endurance and strength.
My body is now held by the limits of this wheelchair. But the waiting hope I have in God’s future for me gives me the freedom to soar to heights of joy and explore the canyon depths of God’s tender mercies.
All in all, it’s worth the wait.
But you must return to your God;
maintain love and justice,
and wait for your God always.
(Hosea 12:6)
Creation Waits
In significant ways, mostly beyond our understanding, Creation itself is waiting.
Romans 8:19 tells us that “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.” J. B. Phillips renders it like this: “The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own.”
On tiptoe! … In some mysterious way, the flowers and plants and animals and seascapes and landscapes wait with excited expectancy for a glory yet to be revealed. Paul tells a little more about this anticipation.
The world of creation cannot as yet see reality, not because it chooses to be blind, but because in God’s purpose it has been so limited—yet it has been given hope. And the hope is that in the end the whole of created life will be rescued from the tyranny of change and decay, and have its share in that magnificent liberty which can only belong to the children of God!(Romans 8:20–21 Phillips)
One day the earth will be liberated. The whole creation, like us, is “groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8:22). I sense this whenever I see smog, a junkyard, a forest that’s been clear-cut and not replanted, or even a dead raccoon on the road.
When I drive the coastal mountains just a stone’s throw from my home and marvel at the jutted, jagged rocks and canyons, I’m vividly aware I’m in the middle of earthquake country. Mud slides and aftershock happen all the time around here. These hills are restless.
Even though this little jewel of a blue planet has been scarred and denuded, abused and polluted, it will not be abandoned.
God doesn’t waste things. He redeems them.
This passage in Romans 8 reveals the Lord’s intentions for this blue marble of His. The earth upon which we trod is the earth that Christ will bring into His glorious freedom.
Something’s coming … something better.
If you want to know what this something is, study Revelation and Isaiah. “The wolf will live with the lamb” (Isaiah 11:6), and “the burning sand will become a pool” (Isaiah 35:7). We will have a part in liberating the new earth—perhaps uplifting the poor of Kurdistan, reforesting the hills of Lebanon, or planting trees along the Amazon. We may clear the slums of Rio de Janeiro, get rid of nuclear waste, and teach the nations how to worship God and how to beat their swords into plowshares.
God won’t abandon the earth. He will redeem it.
The creation is groaning and longing for the day when God will release it from its bondage and usher in a new era with Christ as King.
Have you ever been out in nature and sensed something … almost wistful? God’s handiwork in mountains, seas, skies, and forests is mind-boggling. But the Bible tells us that—as lovely and amazing as our world may be—we do not live in the creation God originally intended. When, as a result of man’s rebellion and sin, the curse of God fell like a shadow across our world, much that was wondrous, delightful, beautiful, and fairly shimmering with potential and possibility has fallen into bondage.
But it will not always be so.
Can you hear the sighing in the wind?
Can you feel the heavy silence in the mountains?
Can you sense the restless longing in the sea?
Something’s coming … something better.
But consider this: if the creation has an earnest expectation, surely we believers—the sons and daughters of God—should have nothing less! If the whole inanimate and brute creation is eagerly expecting, earnestly looking forward to the appearing of Jesus and all that means, the same kind of hope should be much more evident in you and me.
Watchman on the Wall
What do you think of when you think of “eager expectation”? The psalmist tried to express it with a simple word picture.
I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
(Psalm 130:5–6)
Picture a lonely, middle-aged sentry on night duty, pacing back and forth on the top of Jerusalem’s wall, as the long hours drag on. His feet are tired, his back aches, and the cold night air has seeped into his bones. There’s no one to talk to, nothing stirring, and no sound but a chilly wind whistling along the stone parapets.
With no real way of marking the passage of time, those dark hours seem endless. After his hundredth revolution around the wall, he begins to glance toward the east—but it’s just as black and star-strewn as the sky in the west. Back and forth, up and down, round and round, his sandals make a soft crunching noise as he paces.
And on every trip around the walls, he looks toward the east. Could the stars be fading just a bit along the horizon? Could there be just the slightest hint of gray? Is it his imagination, or did he hear a songbird in the date palms far below? Won’t morning ever come?
What have you waited for with eager expectation? What sets your heart to yearning?
A pregnancy and a child to hold in your arms?
A letter from a sweetheart in a distant city?
A day when you can walk away from a tedious job and retire with a boat and a fishing pole?
Christmas morning when you were a child, and the chance to tear open those beautiful, mysterious gift boxes under the tree?
An all-clear result from a CT scan looking for recurrent cancer?
Your first solo flight in a private plane?
An end to a long military tour of duty in a faraway place and a plane ticket home?
A friend of mine remembers spending a few childhood days with a young cousin at his grandparents’ house out in the country. Both of them became homesick, but the little cousin most of all. On the day his parents and family were to return for him, he sat in his grandfather’s rocking chair by the big picture window in the living room … just rocking back and forth and staring at the gravel road out in front of the house.
When his grandfather passed by several times and saw him sitting there, still as a stone, gazing intently at the gravel road winding into the distance, he said to the little boy, “Bill, I swear, you’re going to look a hole right through that window.”
Little Bill was on tiptoes waiting for that familiar 1954 blue-and-white Ford station wagon to come rolling along that country road in a cloud of dust. The Bible says that we too should wait “on tiptoes”for the day when Jesus returns for His own, calling us to heaven, and when He finally returns to earth to set things right. Do you find yourself longing and looking forward to the glorious appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ?
We mustn’t wait in a dull sort of way with an indifferent attitude. We must rejoice in our hope—in spite of our suffering, in the face of whatever difficult life circumstances we may be enduring. It’s that joy that makes you eagerly expect—like a big St. Bernard when he strains at his leash. Anticipation means stretching our necks. Yearning. Fervently hoping.
If that’s the sort of attitude that nature has about the coming of that great day, you and I can learn a thing or two from the creation around us. Next time when you see a ray of sunlight suddenly pierce through a heavy, dark, afternoon sky, think about Romans 8:19.
If nature waits on tiptoe for the coming of Jesus, you and I shouldn’t be caught flat-footed!