Friday, September 28, 2012

Waiting

Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.   PSalm 27:14

Waiting time is not wasted time!  Contrary to popular opinion, good things really do come to those who wait. Our challenge to waiting is maintaining an eternal perspective.  Such a perspective doesn’t come apart from renewing our minds through the truth of God’s word.  After all, you don’t see with your eyes, you see with your mind.

Paul in the book of Colossians encourages us to do this:  Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Colossians 3:1

The phrase set your hearts on is actually one word, which means to undertake a diligent, active, single-minded investigation.  When was the last time you did that in regards to Heaven and eternity? This command, like every one in the Scriptures implies that what is commanded won’t come naturally. I don’t have to command my daughters to eat candy! Most commands assume a resistance to obeying them, which establishes the necessity for the command. 

CS Lewis aptly spoke to the benefit of this other worldly mindset: If you read history, you will find that Christians who did most for the present world, were just those who thought most of the next.  The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men and women who built up the middle ages, the English evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with heaven. (in Mere Christianity, pg. 118)

These past two weeks, I have been in conversations with some amazing character-filled people who are undergoing severe trials and all of them have pointed to their convictions regarding eternity, driven by the word of God, as the source buoying their hope, character and strength.

So waiting, in God’s economy is never wasted.  Rather it is encouraged! Maybe that is why in the Bible, some 135 times we are brought into stories of waiting or instructed to wait.  Whatever it is that you so desperately want, but eludes you, whatever pain seems to inundate you today and erode your hope, whatever grief you carry through this day and into tomorrow, be encouraged that this life is a vapor.  The prelude, really.  Before we as followers of Jesus know it, we will be really living – fully alive in the presence of God. 

This weekend we continue through Luke in Chapter 10.  John Becker will be speaking this week as we unveil a dream of PCC’s in adopting an unreached people group.  It promises to be a tremendous weekend together.  I can’t wait!

I love being your pastor!