Post 22: When God Says “Wait”

Our Path Marked Healing: Waiting, Wailing, Weaving, and Worshipping

The second half of our path is marked “healing.” Healing is a term that describes the second phase in historic soul care. Today, we use terms like encouraging, enlightening, helping people to see the larger story of God’s perspective, infusing hope, etc.

I like to picture healing with the powerful image of celebrating the resurrection. We are moving from grieving to hope like the Apostle Paul was in 2 Corinthians 1:9-10.

“Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.”

From Here to Eternity

Once we’ve climbed in the casket, we then celebrate the resurrection by finding hope in God’s higher plan and loving purposes. It is possible to hope in the midst of grief.

Sustaining says, “Life is bad.” Healing says, “God is good.” In sustaining, we enter the smaller earthly story of hurt. In healing, we enter the larger, heavenly story of hope.

Healing celebrates the resurrection by exploring waiting, wailing, weaving, and worshipping. These four biblical stages contrast with and expand upon the one stage in the world’s process called “acceptance.”

Stage Five: Waiting—Trusting with Faith Rather Than Regrouping with Self-Sufficiency

You’re in a casket. Finally, you’ve come face-to-face with death and with utter human hopelessness. Do you want to stay there? No! Frantic to escape? Yes! You cry out to God for help. What’s he say? “Wait.”

Now you’re at a faith-point. “I trust Him; I trust Him not. I’ll wait; I’ll not wait.”

Which will it be? Will you wait or regroup? Will you wait on God or will you self-sufficiently depend upon yourself?

Regrouping Described: The Woman at the Well

John 4 illustrates the contrast between waiting and regrouping. The woman at the well was in a husband-casket. One husband left the scene, “Encore! Encore!” she’d shout, bringing the curtain down on another failed marriage. Frantically she searched time after time for a man she could have—a man she could desperately clutch who would meet her desperate needs by desperately desiring her above all else.

We don’t know what came next for her after she surrendered her thirsts to Christ. Certainly, if she were to live out her new Christ-life, she would have to change her habitual pattern of regrouping through “having” a man.

Suppose that she took her longing to God in prayer. Presuppose God told her to stop living with this man who was not her husband. Don’t you think that on a human plane she would experience excruciating emptiness, starving hunger?

So she prays to God, “Father, I know that all I need is You and what You choose to provide. I’m cleaning up my life. Would You please send me a godly man.”

God says, “Wait. Delay your gratification. Don’t get involved with a man.”

Everything inside her—her flesh-habituated past way of surviving, her cistern-digging style of relating—craves satisfaction now. If she regroups, she grasps yet another husband on the rebound. She takes matters into her own hands.

And What Would Hope Look Like?

What would hope look like in her context? In ours? In yours?

You know what’s coming. Now is when I say…

“Come back tomorrow to define and find hope.”

Longing to Entrust Ourselves to Our Father

When we say that we long for Father, we mean that we long to enjoy him and also that we long to entrust ourselves to him (Psalm 40:11; Psalm 62:11-12; Isaiah 6:1-3; Psalm 63:1-8). Entrust implies that we rely upon and place our confidence in Father’s faithful strength to keep us safe and secure. The cry, “Abba, Father,” represents our most basic relationship with God—a relationship of intimate trust. For believers, this means that every second that we trust God, we are fulfilling our purpose. Every time we cling to God, we glorify him while achieving our destiny.

Longing to Engage in Our Father’s Good Purposes

We revel in Father when we enjoy him, we take refuge in Father when we entrust ourselves to him, and we respect him when we engage in our Father’s good purposes. We long for the applause of heaven.

The Apostle Paul, awaiting his martyrdom, reminds his protégé, Timothy, that he has engaged in God’s purposes, and now longs for God’s high-five.

You take over. I’m about to die, my life an offering on God’s altar. This is the only race worth running. I’ve run hard right to the finish, believed all the way. All that’s left now is the shouting—God’s applause! Depend on it, he’s an honest judge. He’ll do right not only by me, but by everyone eager for his coming (Eugene Peterson, The Message, p. 2172, 2 Timothy 4:6-8).

Father fashioned our souls to long for His “Well done thou good and faithful servant!” His pleasure with us is our pleasure (Luke 3:22; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17).

Longing to Emulate and Reflect Our Father

We long to enjoy Father, entrust ourselves to Him, engage in His purposes, and we long to emulate or reflect Him. We want to hear God say, “That’s my boy! That’s my girl!” We want people to say of us, “Like Father, like son and daughter.” Our souls experience shalom when we fulfill our destiny of mirroring Father (Romans 8:28-29; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Ephesians 5:1-2).

Longing to Exalt Our Father

Some may be ready to mount a protest. “What about exalting God? Doesn’t the Westminster Confession of Faith teach that our chief duty is to glorify God and love Him forever? You’ve got the love Him part, what about the glorify Him part?”

Totally true. We long to exalt Father. However, how do children exalt and honor parents? Is it not by enjoying parents, trusting parents, engaging in parents’ purposes, and emulating or imitating parents? When we enjoy, entrust, engage, and emulate, then we exalt our Father. We glorify God by loving Him forever.

If people notice that my son wants to be with me, smiles as we talk, enjoys my presence, then they think, “Must be a pretty cool dad.” As Piper reminds us, “Never forget that God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him” (Piper, The Pleasures of God, p. 14).

If people observe my daughter trusting me, depending upon me, believing in me, then they say, “Great father.” If people see that my children join me in my values, living for Christ like I try to, then they comment, “Wow! Some parent.” If people find my children following my lifestyle examples, reflecting something good in me, then they respond, “He must be quite a man.”

People will honor our Father when we enjoy Him, entrust ourselves to Him, engage in His good purposes, and emulate His character. God will be honored and we will be at peace. Our longings satisfied. Our thirsts quenched.

How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?

So, how’s your spiritual love life? Prayerfully ponder:

*Who do I trust in to keep me safe and secure?

*Who do I cry to and cling to?

*In what ways do I long for the applause of heaven?

*What will it mean to me to hear God’s “Well done!” and to receive God’s high five?

*When people look at me, do they say, “Life Heavenly Father, like son or daughter”?

*How well am I exalting God by enjoying, entrusting, engaging in His purposes and emulating Him?

*How well am I glorifying God by loving Him forever?

Somehow during the centuries we have come to believe that what makes us human is our mind. Many people seem to know the definition of a human being as a reasoning animal. But what makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love. It is our heart that is made in the image and likeness of God (Robert Durback, Seed of Hope: A Henri Nouwen Reader, p. 197).

Henry Scougal and John Piper more accurately, I think, dissect relational reality. “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love” (Scougal, The Life of God, p. 62).

How else do we assess the beauty of an invisible heart than by what it loves? Someone might suggest, “By what it thinks.” But clear and accurate thought is beautiful only in the service of right affections. The devil himself is quite an able intellect. But he loves all the wrong things. Therefore his thinking serves evil and his soul is squalid. Or perhaps someone would suggest that we can assess the beauty of a soul by what it wills. Yes, but there is half-hearted willing and whole-hearted willing. You don’t judge the glory of a soul by what it wills to do with lukewarm interest, or with mere teeth-gritting determination. To know a soul’s proportions you need to know its passions. The true dimensions of a soul are seen in its delights. Not what we dutifully will but what we passionately want reveals our excellence or evil (Piper, The Pleasures of God, p. 18, emphasis added).

Face-to-Face, Faith Beings: We Are Worshipping Beings

Designed by God, we are face-to-face beings. In relationship to God, we are faith beings. Faith is the core of the original human personality. That core involves entrusting ourselves to Someone who transcends us, yet draws near to us. In the innermost chamber of our soul resides a worshipping being; the ability to worship from the heart is what makes us human.

By these descriptions, there are no atheists. Everyone must put their trust in Someone or Something. Even Madelyn Murray O’Hair. Consider these excerpts from her diary, found by the IRS in 1999.

A 1959 entry reveals an almost pathetic despair: “The whole idiotic hopelessness of human relations descends upon me. Tonight I cried and cried, but even then, feeling nothing.”

1973 New Year’s Wish List: A mink coat, Cadillac, cook, housekeeper. “In 1974 I will run for the governor of Texas, and in 1976, the president of the United States.” Ironic that in 1976 we elected one of the most committed Christians ever to be president.

In 1977 she wrote: “I have failed in marriage, motherhood, and as a politician.”

One poignant phrase appears again and again. In half a dozen places, O’Hair writes, “Somebody, somewhere, love me.”

Reflecting on her words, Chuck Colson writes:

How telling that this hostile and abrasive person, who harbored nothing but hatred for God and his people, who believed human beings were merely the product of a cosmic accident, would nevertheless cry out to the great void for someone just to love her. What a powerful example of the fundamental truth that we are made for a relationship of love with our Creator, and that we can never fully escape from our true identity and purpose. No matter how much we may deny it intellectually, our nature still cries out for the love we were made to share. To paraphrase the famous words of St. Augustine, even the most bitter atheist is restless until she finds her rest in God (Colson, Prison Fellowship Ministry, 1999).

God is our primal relationship, whether we face it or not, whether we like Him or not. We always live oriented toward God—either with our faces or our backs oriented to Him.

How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?

So, how’s your spiritual love life? Prayerfully ponder:

*If our ability to love is what makes us human, then how human am I? How loving am I?

*If the worth of the soul is measured by the object of its love, then of how much worth is my soul? Who or what is the object of my love?

*If we can assess the beauty of our heart by what we love, then how beautiful is my heart? Who or what do I love?

*Am I loving all the right things or all the wrong things?

*Who or what does my soul delight in? Who or what is my soul passionate about?

*Who or what do I entrust my soul to?

*We are made for a love relationship with our Creator. Is my face turned toward Him or is my back turned toward Him?

Hunger Was God’s Idea

Hunger was God’s idea. He created us with a soul that thirsts for what only relationships can quench. The Hebrew word for soul comes from a word that means “throat”—the organ through which we take in nourishment, fill our hunger, and quench our thirst. The Hebrews used physical body parts to represent immaterial aspects of our personality. Proverbs 25:25 is one example: “Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land.”

As the throat craves physical satisfaction, so the soul craves personal, relational satisfaction. We long for and are motivated by a thirst for intimate involvement and union. These longings for relationship are part of our essential being as created in God’s image.

Love is to the soul what breathing is to the lungs and food is to the stomach. Without connection, we shrivel; we starve to death. With mutual, risky, giving, grace relationships we thrive. The exact center of our being is our capacity to give and receive in relationships.

What motivates us to do what we do? What impels us? In training counselors, I like to tell them, “Go where the action is.” The action is relational because we are relationally motivated. We pursue what we perceive to be pleasing.

“We have an immense void inside that craves satisfaction from powers and persons and pleasures outside ourselves. Yearning and longing and desire are the very stuff of our nature” (John Piper, The Pleasures of God, p. 48).

As the Puritan writer, Henry Scougal, reminded us, “the soul of man has in it a raging and inextinguishable thirst” (Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, p. 108). We’re motivated to quench our relational thirsts.

Worship: The Holy of Holies of the Soul

We were born desiring worship. In our original design, God implanted in us a fundamental nature that must worship.

When I began working toward my doctorate at Kent State University, I decided to develop relationships as a precursor to sharing my faith. Or so I thought. Two weeks into my initial semester, our professor assigned a paper on humanistic psychology. As the class discussed our viewpoints, our professor encouraged me to share my position. “Bob, you wrote an interesting paper contrasting humanistic psychology with Christian thinking.” So much for my “go slow” approach. During the ensuing discussion, one student was particularly vocal against my views.

About a month later, in a course on counseling the culturally different, a Native American presented the guest lecture. Toward the end of her talk, she invited us to stand to worship the spirit of the four winds. Two students remained seated—myself and the woman who had vocally opposed my views in the other class. As soon as class ended, she marched up to me to thank me for not standing. “You gave me the courage of my convictions. But to be honest, I’m not sure what I believe in. You seem so strong and sincere in your faith. Could we talk about your relationship to God?”

This young woman exposed her fundamental spiritual nature. I could have said of her what Paul said of the people of Athens, “I see that in every way you are very religious” (Acts 17:22).