When Life's on Hold

When Life's on Hold
Three ways to find worth in your wait.
Faith Tibbetts McDonald

Give me more than a minute to scan the tabloid headlines in the grocery store check-out line, and I become a frenzied, toe-tapping, scowling creep. In one such moment, I actually considered jamming my cart into the heels of a shopper who cut in line.

Conditioned by our instant-messaging, fast-food eating, "need it now" culture, I've developed an intolerance for waiting. Sometimes, I'm so intent on reaching a goal or straining toward a coveted destination, I forget the Bible considers waiting good: "It is good to wait patiently for the Lord to save us," says Lamentations 3:26 (CEV).

Our lives include different types of waiting that span a variety of circumstances. Some waits are merely annoying inconveniences. Others are rife with threats.

I experienced both the morning of September 11, 2001. I began the day in a doctor's waiting room with my daughter, who was scheduled for an 8:30 checkup. By 9:30, the embarrassed receptionist apologized profusely for the delay. As it turned out, the doctor wasn't even in the building. Fuming over wasted time and our subsequent tardiness, I left and headed for my daughter's school. Abruptly, news reports of terrorist attacks jarred the morning's first wait into perspective. My minor inconvenience no longer concerned me as I entered a more emotionally arduous wait for word from my husband who was visiting Philadelphia and staying near places being evacuated in case of another attack. Much more agonizing was the wait of those whose loved ones never came home that day. When the wait is inexplicable and steeped in suffering, we have to cling to God.

I've learned this lesson from watching my friend Lisa. While in his early thirties, Lisa's husband was severely debilitated by a crippling disease. At its onset, I waited with Lisa for a miracle that didn't come. Her husband now lives apart from his family in a nursing home where he's surrounded by dying people twice his age. I've prayed. I've cried. I've accused God of turning his back on Lisa and her family. Each time, God gently turns my face to gaze on him, not the circumstance.

In a wait that doesn't seem to end, we must look beyond our surroundings to God and trust him with the outcome. While the wait is grueling, God never puts us on hold to tend to more urgent matters; his purpose always is being fulfilled in our waiting.

From God's perspective, waiting is an exercise he's designed to help us develop patience, a sign of spiritual maturity. The New Testament writer James urges us to "Let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing" (James 1:4, NKJV).

Sometimes waiting builds our character; other times it's God's way of granting us a much-needed rest. For example, last year my job ended abruptly. While I looked for another, my less-hectic schedule provided opportunities for me to enjoy my family, exercise more, and dabble in projects. I was thankful for the breather when, as suddenly as the first job ended, another employment opportunity opened up. God knows when we're exhausted, and he wants us to have time to catch our breath. Psalm 23:2, 3 reminds us, "He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul."

If you're going through a waiting period, here are three ways to profit from it:
1. Wait quietly.
When I was growing up, our family traveled three long days by car from Canada to New England every other summer to visit relatives. I was the child who trumpeted in time with the mile markers: "Are we there yet?"

Today we live in the busiest, noisiest time in history. But God encourages his waiting ones to be still and spend time being quiet. I've learned to quell my fretting about wasting time waiting by thinking about God's promises. While between jobs, I returned repeatedly to this verse from Psalm 16:5: "Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure." Knowing God had secured my future, I could wait quietly for him to reveal his plan.

I often write helpful Scriptures on index cards and carry them with me. When my thoughts become disquieted, I read the verses and ask God to help me see his perspective on waiting.

In the Christian classic Abundant Living, author E. Stanley Jones says it's in spending quiet time with God that a Christian gains poise and power. Jones says, "One translator interprets the command, 'Be still, and know that I am God' this way: 'Be silent to God, and he will mold you.' Be silent to God, and he will make you become the instrument of his purposes. [In silence] an all-wise Mind will brood over your mind, awakening it, stimulating it, and making it creative."

When I'm silent before God, I know most vividly he hasn't deserted my friend Lisa and her husband. God has a message in your wait, and in silence you can hear it clearly.

2. Wait hopefully.
I pull out all the stops when it comes to waiting despairingly. When my doctor leaves me a message to call his office, I panic. While dialing his number, I convince myself he's going to tell me I've contracted an incurable disease.

When I'm called to wait, I think the worst. But the Bible reminds us to wait hopefully. "No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame … you are God my Savior," says Psalm 25:3,5. Biblical hope isn't a wishy-washy, "I hope this will turn out for good, but maybe it won't" attitude. Biblical hope is the confident assurance that God's in charge—no matter what.

We can have the same hope the Old Testament patriarch Abraham had awaiting the fulfillment of God's promise he would become the father of many nations. The Bible says, "Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed … he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead … yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised" (Romans 4:18-20).

3. Wait obediently.
As a child, I'd stealthily unwrap, then rewrap, the Christmas gifts my parents had purchased for me. I couldn't bear waiting until Christmas morning to open them! However, I've learned the only waiting that's beneficial is obedient waiting, which takes place by aligning my actions as closely as I can with scriptural principles and asking God to adjust my attitude.

My friend Lisa, whose husband is living in a nursing home, endures her wait, knowing its culmination most likely will happen in eternity, when Jesus wipes away her tears and relieves her husband's suffering (Revelation 21:4). Lisa says the only way to wait obediently is to focus on God.

How does she do this? "When I'm overwhelmed, I cry to God in sheer desperation," she says, "and he always comes through. Sometimes he uses the words of a song, sometimes it's something one of my kids says. When I cry to God, he does whatever it takes to encourage me."

As we wait on God, we must stay obedient. As I wait for God to change my teen's heart, I must learn to put aside sarcasm—a tool I'm too often tempted to use—and allow God's love to work through me. When the wait's too much to bear, I surrender it to God by setting aside time to visit a scenic place—I'm partial to beaches. There I concentrate on God's magnificence, then surrender the wait to him by physically acting out the motion of handing my wait over from my hands to his. When I'm later plagued by worry or questions, I think back to the day on the beach when I surrendered the wait, and I remind myself I've given it to him. He'll come through.
voices a servant's cry. The Psalm brims with the promise that those who obey God's statutes will be satisfied. They will not wait in vain. While you wait, live according to God's Word, seek him, and meditate on his message.

Faith Tibbetts McDonald, a university writing instructor and freelance writer, lives in Pennsylvania.
Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian Woman magazine.

Prayers That Move the Heart of God

Prayers That Move the Heart of God
How to cultivate a meaningful conversation with the Lord.
Nancy Guthrie

That's one of the big differences between God's parenting and mine. God doesn't give me everything I repeatedly ask for when he knows it's not best for me. But a shallow reading of Luke 11:9-10 could lead me to think otherwise. There Jesus says, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."

Is the way to get what I want from God through wearing him down, or getting as many people as possible to ask God for it? What kinds of prayer really move the heart and hand of God?

Secret-Formula Prayer vs. Seeking Prayer
As his parent, I don't want Matt to try to get what he wants by constantly begging me for it or getting everyone he knows to gang up on me. I want to hear his heart on the matter, and I want him to hear mine. I want us to have a conversation. Isn't that how it is with our heavenly Father? Prayer is about a conversation with our loving God—not about wearing him down to get what we want.

There's so much to want—healed bodies, restored relationships, changed circumstances. But asking, seeking, and knocking aren't secret formulas for getting what we want from God; they're ways to get more of God. As I listen to God speak to me through his Word, he gives me more of himself in fuller, newer ways. Then, if healing doesn't come, if the relationship remains broken, or if the pressures increase, I have the opportunity to discover for myself he is enough. His presence is enough. His purpose is enough.

If you truly want to move God's heart, put aside secret-formula prayer and instead begin to practice prayer that seeks the Giver more than the gifts.
Prayer is changing me from someone who knew a lot about God into someone who's experiencing God in deep, though sometimes difficult, ways.

Superficial Prayer vs. Significant Prayer
Sometimes I catch myself "chatting" with God, limiting my prayers to superficial things and surface issues, never getting to the heart of the matter. And I've noticed that when others offer prayer requests, they're rarely about spiritual needs. We ask God to heal physical ailments, provide safe travel, and to "be with us."

Of course God cares about these things. But prayer is spiritual work toward a spiritual end. God wants to rub off our rough edges and clean up our character. So why do we settle for talking to him only about the superficial stuff? When our prayers move from the superficial to the significant, we invite God to do no less than a deep, transforming, igniting work in our life and in the lives of those for whom we're praying.

I've often found myself slipping into superficial mode in my prayers for Matt—asking God to keep him safe or to bless his day at school. But I really don't want to settle for those things. So my prayers have moved from the superficial to the significant. I'm asking God to shape Matt's character—even if it requires some struggle. I'm begging the Holy Spirit to ignite in Matt a passion for holiness and a love for God's Word. These are things that really matter. This is what significant prayer is all about.

Showy Prayer vs. Secret Prayer
Several years ago, at a friend's wedding, a college friend described me to her other friends as "a prayer warrior." Her comment surprised me because I knew it wasn't true. I guess I'd made a great impression with my public prayers at our weekly Bible study group in college. But the truth was, there wasn't much private prayer going on in my life.

If I'm not careful, I still can make prayer all about impressing others with my pseudo-spirituality. That's "showy prayer"—prayer that's more for others' ears than for God's. Jesus warned against this: "When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the doors and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you" (Matthew 6:5-6).

Showy prayer uses put-on voices, lofty words, and spiritual-sounding phrases; simple prayer is authentic and humble. I can perform public prayers or make claims of private prayer, and settle for the applause of people; or I can go to a secret place, shut the door, and commune with God. It's in that secret place with him you and I find our most blessed reward—not impressing others, but cultivating true intimacy with him.

Insistent Prayer vs. Submissive Prayer
Nothing's taught me more about prayer than Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. According to Hebrews 5:7-8, "during the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered."

This moves me, because I know what it's like to offer prayers with loud cries and tears, to come before God with a broken heart and a desperate need. Several years ago, physicians told my husband and me that because of a rare metabolic disorder, our newborn daughter, Hope, would live for only two or three months.

Time seemed to be slipping away so quickly when one day, as I rocked Hope in the nursery we'd prepared for her—tears spilling down my face—I thought, I'll ask God to give Hope more time. It seemed such a modest prayer; I'd already surrendered any insistence God heal her completely. But even as that prayer formed in my mind, I sensed God calling me to submit to his perfect timing. So my prayer instead became, Give me strength to make the most of every day you give me with Hope. Show me how to rest in your plan for her life and mine.

In Hope's life and death, I learned what it is to pray to a God who has the power to make another way … but chooses not to. It helps to know Jesus understands what this feels like. Like Jesus, I've wrestled with God's plan for my life even as I've sought to submit to it. But Jesus shows me how to obey when God's answer to my sincere, reverent prayer is "no." I also see Jesus' example of obedience.

I've learned that submissive prayer is prayer that welcomes God to work in and through my suffering rather than begs him to take it away. It's thanking God for what he gives me rather than resenting him for what I lose. Submissive prayer is changing me from someone who knew a lot about God into someone who's experiencing God in deep, though sometimes difficult, ways.

Too often I still find myself merely going through the motions of prayer, but I want to pray in a way that's authentic, sincere, and effective. I'm learning to go to my heavenly Father in the way I want my son to come to me. I want to hear what Matt wants and needs. I want to respond. I want to be active in his life, doing what I know is best for him.

Our heavenly Father's no different. He has no need for a show or secret formulas, and he's not interested in keeping things superficial. He loves it when we come to him—and he simply wants to talk with us.

Nancy Guthrie is the author of Holding On to Hope: A Pathway Through Suffering to the Heart of God and The One Year Book of Hope (both Tyndale).
Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian Woman magazine.