007 - Psalm 27, Part III

If I’m honest, patience isn’t really my strength.

I’ll often drive 20 minutes out of my way to avoid sitting in traffic for 15. If anything I order online takes longer than two days to get to me, I complain about it. And why wait for someone else to do something when I can just do it myself?

I used to play my impatience off as independence. But now, I know it’s just impatience. And if you were to dig down a little deeper, you would discover that my impatience is just a need for control. I don’t like feeling helpless or useless or like I’m not in control of my life. It reminds me that I’m not as strong or tough or smart or capable as I like to think that I am.

Which is why the third part of Psalm 27:14 is the hardest for me. Be strong, I can get on board with. Take heart, yep, I’m there. But wait on the Lord? That’s a bit trickier. I don’t like to wait. And I especially don’t like to wait when it feels like I’ve already been waiting forever and nothing is changing, nothing is happening.

Wait on the Lord

I believe God calls us to be active participants in the work He is doing in this world. It’s in the Bible, actually. So it makes sense that when the people around us are sick or hurting or afraid (or when we ourselves are sick or hurting or afraid), patience goes out the window and we take matters into our own hands. We are, after all, made in the image of a God who didn’t wait for us to figure it out on our own but instead stepped directly into our mess and literally took it into his own hands.

But it’s so easy for me to believe that His work is up to us alone to carry out, as though He’s placed it on our shoulders and taken a step back. And the truth is that I’m not God. There are some things that He’s called me to do. But there are some things that are left up to Him alone to accomplish.

Because there comes a point when I’ve done all I, a puny little human, can do. And no matter how much I worry or plan or try to do more, I just can’t. All I can do is pray and wait for God to do what only He can do. And in those moments, when I finally come to the end of myself – to the end of my strength, my ability, my control – I realize that that’s where I should have been the entire time. Not trying to fight a battle that isn’t mine on my own feet, but sitting at His, watching Him fight for me.

So when I’ve done everything I can do, my responsibility in that moment as His follower is to simply wait. Wait on the Lord. And as I wait, I trust that He isn’t sitting on the sidelines of my life or of the world, but that He’s active, working and reigning and turning the bad things into good ones.

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Published in the 007 - June 23 issue of TuesdayTribe

Written by Hannah Hladek