What On Earth are We Waiting For?

Waiting is one of the spiritual disciplines of the Christian walk, and yet most of us don't wait on the Lord well. But what if Jesus wants to shift our perspective on waiting? What if waiting becomes a gift, a place where we can learn to worship Him more freely? 

While we are children of the Lord and have the privilege of asking our Father for things, we are also His servants. And it is the pleasure of the servant to wait on their King - to wait for His direction and will. While there is a time and place in waiting on the Lord to cry with David, "How long, O Lord?" (Psalm 13:1), there is also a time to say with Isaiah, "We have waited for You eagerly; Your name, and remembering You, is the desire of our souls." 

Scriptures Referenced:

• Isaiah 25:8-9
• Isaiah 26:7-8
• Psalm 62:5-8
• Lamentations 3:19-26
• Romans 8:22-25
• Philippians 3:20-21
• 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

You can find me on Instagram / Threads

Transcript

Carrie 0:07

Hey everyone, welcome to a brand new episode of Honey from the Rock. I am Carrie, your host, and as usual, I am so glad you're here, and I am really looking forward to today's episode. But before I jump into it, I want to share some things that I have coming down the pike for the show because I'm so excited about them, and I firmly believe that the episodes I have coming up in the next month are going to bless you and encourage you and challenge you in your walk with Jesus in so many good ways. So at the end of July, I will be airing an interview with my friend Roy Baldwin, who I worked with at Focus uh many years ago. Roy is a man of integrity. He is a disciple of Jesus who loves the Lord and is just really honest and vulnerable in his wrestle with the Lord. Uh him and his family have faced a lot of trials, a lot of ups and downs. And I have had the privilege of sometimes seeing that up close, but also just watching him uh and and and reading his blog and and reading how he kind of wrestles and processes through difficult things with the Lord. And so I can't wait for you to hear this episode. It's going to bless you. I just I just know it in the best way possible. And I'm so thankful to Roy for coming on the show. I can't wait for you all to um hear him and hear his story. And then in August, I have a two-part interview with my wonderful friend Nicole, who I have known for eons. And she has a new book coming out in September called Something Good Will Grow. We are talking about that book. We are talking about her testimony, which is incredible and powerful. Friends, this woman has walked through the fire with the Lord. Uh, some really devastating and and difficult things, and yet she is just a beacon of the light of the Lord and his love, his goodness. And her testimony really is one that out of some really horrible and horrific things, the Lord has brought beautiful things. And I just know her um her story will, I I just I know it's going to minister to you, and I'm so excited about it. And the other thing outside of these two amazing people who I've interviewed for the show, and again, just thank you to Nicole and Roy for being so gracious with your time. But on top of that, I recorded videos, which is something I know I said I was gonna start doing like 10 episodes ago. And uh, so I will be dropping the audio for Honey from the Rock still on um Wednesdays, but starting Fridays at the end of the month with with Roy's interview, I will be doing a video drop on YouTube on Fridays. And so even as I'm still away from social media, I'm not doing Instagram, I'm not doing threads, um, I know that the Lord's calling me to start um publishing videos on YouTube, and so I'm going to do that and I'm working on building a um presence, I believe on Substack. I think that's where I finally landed, where each week with each episode, it's great to listen to an episode and I and I bring up a lot of scripture, but I also I want I want us to go deeper. And so along with videos, I'm going to be rolling out a blog post each Wednesday that has the verses and the things that I've talked about, but also um a short Bible study that goes with each episode. And if it's something that you want to do just to encourage you to dig deeper into the word, you know, maybe the Lord's um touched your heart in a certain way or has said, hey, I want to deal with a certain thing. And if it's through listening to these episodes, I just want there to be a place where you can dig, dig deeper in the word in that way. So those are some really fun things that are coming, that are just coming down the pipeline. I'm very excited about them. I also have to get them done. So, so I would appreciate your prayers because the last few weeks have been kind of crazy. Um, good crazy, busy, crazy, not oh my gosh, like I'm talking about how busy my life is and just I'm so important. Ew, no. Um, just a lot of good things happening. And all of a sudden, you know, you find yourself in a place where you're like, where has time gone? Time has ceased to have any meaning because I don't even know what today is. So I would appreciate your continued prayers for the show, for the Lord, um, in his graciousness to give me wisdom and discernment as I show up each week and share from my story, walking with the Lord, um, as I share his word. Again, I'm I'm so thankful for those of you who tune in every single week, who download the podcast and uh and just supporting me in that way. And I hope that some of the things that I am starting to do to make a newsletter and and go a little bit deeper with Bible study and put some videos on YouTube will uh continue to bless you and encourage you in in your walk with Jesus. And, you know, and once you start watching me on video, hopefully give you a laugh because I can make some really weird facial expressions. So I really hope that you um are looking forward to it as much as I am. So, with all of that said, you know, I mean, I could make a really terrible pun about how I've made you wait to talk about waiting, but I won't do it. You're welcome, even though kind of just did. It's fine. But I actually, when I was, again, just trying to prepare for this episode, I was asking the Lord, and originally I told my mom that I was gonna do this podcast episode on prayer. So surprise, mom, it's not. Um, because I I took a drive this this evening to kind of clear my head. I've been working on a lot of projects and have had to do a lot of content writing for a client and a friend. And and it my head, you just hit those points where you're just cloudy, you know, and you're tired and you're exhausted. And I had started to try and record an episode and I just deleted it because I was like, this is so dumb, Carrie. You are not even making any sense. And um, and I knew that I hadn't quite hit the place where I'd landed on on the direction that the Lord wanted. And and it it was discomfort, but not because I was afraid to share things. It was like, I just don't feel like maybe I've examined prayer in the way I want to talk about it deep enough and and really done my due diligence to make sure that I'm sharing and explaining from scripture in a deep biblical way about what I want to share. And so I decided to take a drive. And as I was driving, I was listening to some worship music and just praising the Lord and and I started noodling on worship and waiting. Um, because I know in in the lives of a lot of people that I know, there's a lot of good things happening, but there's also um still a lot of uncertainty, uh, a lot of difficulty, um, a lot of struggle in things that the Lord is calling, um calling people to do. And and yet there also seems to be like, I don't know how to put it, I think there's there's way, there's the knowledge that the Lord is giving that something is coming. And it's kind of like the end goal has been revealed, and yet there's a certain amount of steps between where I am, I can speak this to this in my own life, where there's a certain amount of steps I have to walk. I know what the Lord is calling me to um to a certain degree, and yet there are things I have to walk through and things I have to wait on the Lord for uh before I can get to this, uh, to this end goal that I that I know the Lord's calling me to. And it seems to be, again, a common theme in the lives of people around me, just conversations I've had with friends and family. And so I was doing some research, digging into the word, and just wanted to look at at how scripture talks about waiting. Because I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday, and we were talking about a multitude of subjects, so I can't even remember how this came up. Um, but somehow we got on the subject of waiting on the Lord. And I think, and my friend wasn't saying this, but as I was mulling it over later and thinking about our conversation and conversations that I've had with other people about waiting on the Lord, I was noticing a pattern, not only in how my friends talked about waiting, but how I was talking about waiting. And waiting kind of gets a bad rap, right? It's kind of just like this drudgery, awful thing where we're just like, oh my gosh, we're just sitting here waiting on the Lord and He's not doing anything, right? And and that's kind of how we feel. And um we're we're so focused on kind of maybe what the Lord has shown us. Hey, I'm leading you in this direction, and he's given us a glimpse of what he has for us, and and yet we know that we can't grab hold of it yet. And so we often treat waiting like it, like sitting in the waiting room at a doctor's office, which I mean, also I can completely acknowledge is legitimately the worst because don't even get me started on the injustice of charging me for me being late, but you know, doctors can run late and whatever. Anyway, that is so beyond, like that's not even close to the point. But as we were having this conversation yesterday, I the Lord, I could feel the Lord really challenging me on my perception of waiting. And in that conversation, all of a sudden, I just looked at my friend, I said, you know, I'm thinking about this. And because it's it's falling in line with several other things where the Lord is trying to challenge the way that I've always thought um about things in terms of, you know, just how I talk about things, how I talk about myself, how I talk about the Lord, um, my perspective, my my risk, my risk assessment of myself in the faith, and not in a reckless way, but sometimes in a way where I have been too reticent to really take that step of faith that the Lord's required me to, or I've been too hasty and have gone down paths that are absolutely not the Lord. And I've learned in both of them. But there's just several places where I can I can feel the Lord's gentle challenge to say, where does that actually come from? Where is that thought process coming from? And is it actually in me? Or is that something that you think is me and you've kind of conformed some scripture to your own, to your own mind? And so as I was talking with this friend, all of a sudden I just looked at her and I said, I, you know, I'm really tired of talking about waiting or talking about difficulty in in a negative light. And that probably sounds really funny. And please understand, I'm not negating hard. I'm not negating the suffering of this life and and the exhaustion that it can bring, the um, the multitudes of tears that it can bring, the heartbreak, the devastation, the grief, the loss. I have walked through it in my life, and I have, I have had to wrestle through it. I have had many nights where I have cried myself to sleep, weeping out to the Lord, how long do I, how long am I gonna stay here? And I have not, there have been a lot of times in my life that I have not waited well. And me asking the Lord, how long is am I gonna stay here? is not necessarily me not waiting well. But there have definitely been times where I've been impatient, where I've moved forward when I knew the Lord was saying stop, or I've stopped when I knew the Lord was saying going forward. But also, I think there's been plenty of times when I've had to wait on the Lord and I've just kind of waited on him like a spoiled child. Where instead of, you know, in the dichotomy of the kingdom, being a child of the king, you know, I am a child of the living God, and yet I'm also a servant. I'm also a servant in his kingdom, that these two dichotomies exist, and that as a servant of the Lord, it should actually be my pleasure to wait on my king and and to wait to see what his will is, to wait and see what he will say to me in any particular matter, to see how he wants to move. And it really hit me in this conversation yesterday. Who am I to say that waiting on the Lord is difficult? Because in the times where I have really complained about waiting on the Lord, yes, there have been lots of times where it has been difficult and I've needed an answer, and I have just felt that silence from heaven, and I'm not negating that. But there have also been plenty of times where my attitude and my heart disposition has been wrong towards the Lord. And my waiting on him and the difficulty that I've expressed about waiting on him has come more from my unmet expectation that he should have answered me about five minutes ago. And I think we have to be honest about that. Just as much as there is so much goodness in being honest about the difficulty and not hiding, um, not putting on a mask and just saying everything is fine and everything is great and God's gonna work it out and he'll take care of it. But being vulnerable with the Lord to say, Lord, I'm struggling, help me to walk in truth, Lord, I'm wrestling with this. It's hard. I don't understand. I'm crying out to you. I can't discern your presence. It feels like the heaven is shut up. There's definitely a time and a place for that. But I think we also need to be in a state of making sure and examining and asking the Lord to examine our hearts and show us where is some of the difficulty in the waiting my own fault? Because I've put a wrong expectation on you. I've decided that what I'm waiting for, even, is something that you owe me, or I've prayed for something and automatically assumed that it was your will. And now that I have to wait for it, I'm mad about it. And there's a lot of that. There's been a lot of that in my Christian walk. There, particularly um years ago in relationships where I was in a season where I really wanted to be married, and I, you know, dated, I and I have no problem with that. Like I dated a a few dudes um in my 20s and early 30s. And but there were times when I was impatient and went out with guys that I knew the Lord was saying not to go out with, and and knew that I was dancing on lines in those relationships, and the Lord would the Holy Spirit was like, excuse me, what are you doing? Because it was putting me in positions of being unequally yoked. And we do things like that when we're young and dumb. We do things like that when we're middle-aged and dumb, as I can attest, as I can attest. But I think in conversations around some of the spiritual disciplines of Christianity, the things that we walk through, as much as we place value on being authentic and being vulnerable and not putting a mask on things and being honest about how hard things are, I think we have to put equal weight and value on also examining our hearts and saying, when I say I'm waiting on the Lord and I'm starting to get frustrated that it doesn't look like he's coming through and it doesn't look like he's gonna do what I've asked him to do, or whatever my disposition is, what is the disposition in which I'm waiting? Am I waiting in worship? Am I worshiping him? Am I waiting? Am I trusting him as the overwhelming lies come in often from from the devil who likes to try and convince us that the Lord's forgotten about us? That he a theme that I have constantly talked about on this show, that he's gonna be good to those people over there, but he's not gonna be good to me. Um, or as good to me, goodness is gonna look different and it's going to actually look worse comparatively. Something that I have struggled with mightily. Um, and the Lord is is helping me see just how untrue that is. Um, am I am I waiting in gratitude? And in and gratitude, yes, for anticipating that Lord, you are gonna move and you are gonna do your will, but also gratitude that where I am and that I have the privilege to sit and wait on the Lord, it gives me the opportunity to look at my life right now and thank the Lord for how many things he has already done, to worship him for his character, to be so thankful for who he is, that he decided to come, he decided to rescue me and redeem me, that he's given me the opportunity to come to him and know him and walk with him. And so as I was reading in scripture, I wanted to look up the word wait and I wanted to see how how waiting was talked about in relation to the Lord, both in the old and new testament. And so I'm going to read some verses to you. And as I read them, I I will read them slowly, and I pray that we would sit and we would meditate on these verses. Lord Jesus, that we would see your character, Father, Holy Spirit, that we would, we would discern the truth of your word and we would let it burrow into our hearts and our minds and our souls and our spirits, that your powerful word of truth, Lord, would would start to separate um the thoughts and intents of our hearts so that Lord, we can see areas where our disposition in waiting is not right towards you. And Lord, that in in our hearts and in our minds and in our souls and our spirits, we would, we would become aligned with you and your word and your work and your will and not live out of an expectation that says, because Lord, I've asked you for something, you gotta do it, right? Lord, that we would learn how to pray according to your will. That and but that we would also know that as your children, we can come and we can ask. We have freedom to ask you for things, Lord Jesus, but in our freedom of asking, it is also, it should be our joy and privilege to submit to what you choose to do as best and good and right and true and beautiful. And so I will start with uh Isaiah 25, 8 through 9. And as I read these verses again, contemplate the character of the Lord, contemplate how the authors of these verses, how the Holy Spirit talks about waiting in relation to the Lord. Isaiah 25, 8 through 9. He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces, and he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken, and it will be said on that day, Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited, that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited. Let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation. Isaiah 26, 7 through 8. The way of the righteous is smooth. O upright one, make the path of the righteous level. Indeed, while following the way of your judgments, Lord, we have waited eagerly for you. Your name and remembering you is the desire of our souls. I love these two sections out of Isaiah because they actually come in the context of the return, the second advent of the Messiah. Yeah, I love the picture in Isaiah 25, he will swallow up death for all time. Jesus has done that, and we will see the fruition of that when he returns. But again, notice how he talks about waiting. This is the Lord for whom we have waited, uh, that he might save us. This is our God for whom we have waited. Let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation. And then in Isaiah 20. I love the picture. We have waited for you eagerly. For your name and remembering you is the desire of our souls. This is the picture that the Lord gives us of what waiting for him looks like. Whether it's waiting for him to do earthly things, waiting for him to reveal his will being done on earth as it is in heaven, or waiting for his return. Whatever we're waiting for, look at the words that he uses here. Eagerly, the desire of our souls, rejoicing and being glad. Um I just I things that I want to tuck away and be taught by the Holy Spirit to continue to learn how to wait well on the Lord. The next verse is from Psalm 62, 5 through 8. My soul, wait in silence for God alone, for my hope is from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my refuge. I will not be shaken. My salvation and my glory rest on God. The rock of my strength, my refuge is in God. Trust in him at all times, you people. Pour out your hearts before him. God is a refuge for us. And I find that section of scripture so interesting because at the beginning of that section, he says, wait in silence for the Lord. And then at the same time, at the end, he says, Pour out your hearts, hearts before him. And I think we can do both. In in our silence, we can we can pour out our heart to the Lord. We we can we can trust in him, that he is our rock, that we wait for him. And and in our waiting, that we can have hope, that we can know that the Lord is our rock, our salvation. He's our referee, refuge. In our waiting, we can make the choice to trust the Lord and not be shaken. To know that our salvation is in the Lord, that our glory rests. Like any glory that's in my life is because of the Lord. It rests on him. And that waiting leads to trust. I think I love that in this in this psalm. That trust in him at all times, you people, pour your hearts out before him. God is a refuge for us. And then I want to read some verses that are so famous. Again, verses that we read, and I think sometimes we read them and they lose their meaning. But as we're talking in the context of the Lord, waiting on the Lord, and wherever you are with Jesus, whatever you are waiting on him for, let these words sink into your bones. Let them sink into the fabric of your heart. You know, let the Holy Spirit weave the truth of this word into you, not as something that you've just heard again and again and again, but as as as the truth of the Lord, as the living word that is the person of Jesus Himself. So Lamentations 3, 19 through 26. Remember my misery and my homelessness, the wormwood and the bitterness. My soul certainly remembers and is bent over within me. I recall this to my mind, therefore I wait. The Lord's acts of mercy indeed do not end, for his compassions do not fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore I wait for him. The Lord is good to those who await him, to the person who seeks him. It is good that he waits silently for the salvation of the Lord. There is so much in these verses, but I just want to encourage you. I one of the key things I think in this whole section is the Lord is my portion, therefore I wait for him. As we wait on the Lord, like I said earlier, it's it's not just anticipating what he's going to do, but in the waiting, there's so much good in looking around and saying, Lord, I'm waiting for you to work in this area, but I can look and see all of these things that you have already done in my life. You are my portion, Lord. Thank you for giving yourself to me. And I can I can hold on to you and I will wait, Lord, and I will wait faithfully. It's good for me to wait in silence. And and the context of the beginning of the verse here, I mean, Lamentations is a book of weeping and grief and lament because of the destruction of Jerusalem and coming back out of exile and seeing what has happened to Jeremiah's people, to Israel, to Judah, and what has happened because of their disobedience and because of the judgment of the Lord that's come. And yet I love that he weaves in there the Lord's acts of mercy, they don't end. His compassion does not fail. They are new every morning. Let the truth of that sink into you as you wait. And then out of the New Testament, I pulled a couple of different verses. Uh, this first section is out of Romans 8, 23 through 25. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only that, but also we ourselves having the first fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved. But hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he has already seen? But if we hope for what we do not see through perseverance, we wait eagerly for it. And again, the context of waiting, going back to Isaiah 25, you know, we are not only are we waiting for the Lord to act in our everyday life, and for we're waiting on the Lord to see the fruition of the call that He's put on us and the things that He's requiring us to do and how He will pull certain things together. But at the very base of our being, in the very depths of our souls, if we belong to Jesus, then the depths of our soul, the waiting that we are experiencing is that groaning with creation, that we wait to see the fruition of our adoption into the family of Jesus, to fully see him face to face, to know that we've done what he's called us to do. We've fallen, we've gotten up, we've wrestled, we've fought for the Lord, we've repented, we've worshiped, we've ministered, we've preached his gospel, we've lived it out, we've we've picked up our cross, and and we have pursued the Lord with everything we have. And and and in all of it, it we woven through all of it is the longing, the longing for the fruition, the fullness of time to come for our adoption. And I just think that is so beautiful. But again, Paul uses that picture of hoping. We hope in the waiting. Hope and waiting are so integral to each other, they're so entwined together. And then Paul echoes what he says in Romans in Philippians 3, 20 through 21. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our lowly condition into conformity with his glorious body by the exertion of the power that he has, even to subject all things to himself. Gosh, what an amazing picture. Like this, again, this is what we are ultimately what we are waiting for. Yes, in the practicalities of life, but ultimately all waiting in Jesus has its root in we are waiting to see what he has promised come to full fruition, that we will be with him forever, that we will have new bodies, that we will live in a new heaven and a new earth, that there will be no more tears, no more suffering, no more death, and that all things will be old things will be passed away, and everything that the Lord has made new will find its fullness and beauty and glory in him. And so, my friends, wherever you find yourself waiting on the Lord, I pray that you are encouraged to take a different look at what waiting on the Lord really means. That we can wrestle with the Lord in our waiting, we can absolutely ask him how long things are gonna take, and yet that we can come to a place where we can say, I will wait patiently for the Lord. I will believe that his mercies are new every morning. In the waiting, Lord, I, you know, ask the Lord to help you. And I'm asking the Lord to help me how to wait well on him, to have a perspective shift, to say, not only is there space, Lord, for me to question and to wrestle, like I said just a couple of minutes ago, how long, O Lord? And and that we need to grieve and and we need to not hide from the Lord and the difficulty of some of the things that he requires us to walk through. But at the same time, that we would also grow in saying, Okay, Lord, I choose to wait in trust. I will wait knowing that you are my rock and my refuge. You are my salvation. You are good and you are kind. There is a day coming where you will wipe every tear from every eye where death will be destroyed. But until then, Lord, as I walk out what you've called me to do, I'm going to trust you. I'm going to hold on to hope. I'm not going to give in to despair. You know, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, I want to start looking at some of the difficulties and the things and the and the waiting and the wrestle as momentary, these are momentary light afflictions, and they're nothing compared to the eternal weight of glory that I will enter into with you when you call me home or when you return. And so, my friends, wherever you find yourself in waiting with the Lord, I pray that you are encouraged. I pray that the Lord is challenging you in good ways, and that as you wait, you can look around and you can see the faithfulness and the goodness of the Lord, that he is your rock, your shield, your fortress. That you can say with Isaiah, Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited, that he might save us, that we have waited eagerly for you, your name, and that remembering you, Lord, is the desire of our souls. Amen.