God's Work in the Waiting

As we follow Jesus, we will often find ourselves waiting.

We wait for promises to be fulfilled, we wait for clarity on next steps, we wait for answers to our questions, or we simply wait for a new season in the middle of the monotony of life.

I’ve recently been reflecting on the role of waiting as we follow Jesus (see my posts on how 90% of Life is Waiting and 3 Prayers to Pray While You’re Waiting) and today I want to reflect a little bit deeper…

How is God at work when we wait? Why does God keep us in the wilderness for so long before moving us to the Promised Land? What is the deeper work that the Holy Spirit might be doing in our hearts that we should pay attention to when we wait?

I’ve come to conclude this: waiting is always an invitation to die with Christ.

I suppose that might not initially sound like good news, but when we frame it around the good news that because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross, death is always the necessary doorway to resurrection in our lives. Perhaps it is good news after all!

Listen to the words of Jesus:

In other words, Jesus actually makes the prerequisite for following him that the disciples must be willing to go to the cross with Him.

We make a mistake if we think that embracing the message of the cross is only a one-time event. It’s not just a historical event, nor is it just something we say we believe in when we decide to follow Jesus, and then move on to other aspects of faith.

I like what John Wimber says: “The way in is the way on.”

In other words, the cross is the beginning, middle, and end of discipleship to Jesus. The way we get into the kingdom (the cross) is also the way we move through the kingdom! Following Jesus will always lead to a cross. We are invited to say, like Paul, “I die every day!” (1 Cor 15:31).

Paul also says “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (2 Corinthians 2:2). When Paul says “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1), many scholars argue that he’s not asking the Corinthians to imitate him generically (i.e. to dress the way he dresses or talk the way he talks), but rather he’s asking them to imitate him specifically in the way that he imitates Jesus’s death and resurrection as the moral framework through which he makes decisions (see 1 Cor 10). In other words, Paul might say “die to yourself the way that I am modeling how to die to myself as a framework for living in Christ!” The way in is the way on!

It is often in waiting seasons that God most profoundly reveals the meaning of the cross in deeper ways to us as waiting invites us to a process of death and resurrection.

In fact, I would argue that God does His deepest work of transformation in waiting seasons because we are invited to die!

But what does that look like practically for us? I know for me, in waiting seasons I’ve been invited to die to many of these things:

• my preferences

• my need for clarity

• my need to feel certainty

• control

• my tendency to manipulate circumstances

• trust in self rather than God

• fear of the future

• my perfectionism and need to do everything the “perfect” way

• my fear of being disappointed in God

• things I’ve trusted in other than God — finances, relationships, habits, coping mechanisms, etc.

Is God inviting you to die to any of these things today?

Jesus says:

The good news is that if you’re being invited to die, there’s always a resurrection on the other side.

So, I’d love to invite us to pray today:

• Begin by taking some deep breaths in and out. Perhaps as you breathe in pray “Come,” and as you breathe out pray “Holy Spirit.”

• Once you feel settled, begin to identify what God might be inviting you to die to in whatever waiting season you find yourself in.

• Then, simply let the Holy Spirit do His good work in you. Perhaps you could pray along the lines of Paul in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”

• Ask, is there any way God might want to bring resurrection as you surrender this area to Him?

For anyone who finds themselves in a waiting season, I am praying with and for you! Feel free to hit “reply” and let me know if there is any way that I can support you in prayer.