When we think about the action “waiting on the Lord,” many of us think about being still and waiting, doing nothing. We try to wait until the Lord invades our life with a miracle. Does that happen? Yes, that can happen. But waiting on the Lord is so much more than inactively waiting for God to show up.
Waiting is a dangerous place if we do not understand Godly waiting. I have spoken before in this teaching class from Habakkuk about placing ourselves in the high place, a place of overview. If you think of it, it’s like sitting in an ambush, spying on the Word coming. Or like a hunter that goes into the wild and hides in the bushes, waiting for his prey to come into his line of fire.
The picture we have of waiting on God is sitting in the lazy boy waiting for God’s promises to come to pass. But when a hunter is waiting for a prey, he has to wait patiently for it. Maybe it is helpful to mention a surfer waiting for the best wave to catch. Catching the wave is all about reading the move of the water and sliding into the wave at the right timing to flow with it. It is very much like catching the wave of the Holy Spirit.
Psalm 37:7
Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!
The more I have grown in the Lord, the more I come to see that we as human beings run at about 74 rpm (heartbeats) while God can be going at 33 rpm; therefore, we may feel God is not doing anything at times. God is like the biggest waves in the sea — when they move, everything around them moves too. Sometimes the wave is so big that you may be in it, but you don’t have a clue because you were not watchful for the move of the waters; when the wave came under you and lifted you, you missed it.
Waiting on God is an art form — like the hunter waits and the surfer waits, they do not know the size or the impact of what is coming next. They just have to watch and SEE what the Lord brings their way.
Metaphors can be a powerful thing to help you focus on what you need at that moment in your life.
The surfer is not waiting for all the waves of the sea; he is waiting for the one wave. He is not watching all the waves. He is watching the next wave; maybe two or three behind it too, but as the waves get closer, he watches the one he wants to catch. We sometimes can’t focus on hearing God because we are trying to listen to all the radio frequencies at the same time, so we hear too much at once. WHEN WE HEAR TOO MUCH, WE CANNOT BE STILL. That verse in Psalm 37:7 starts with BE STILL. Before we can learn to truly hear from God, we need to learn to focus on that one thing. Focus on God. So many try to sit down and relax, then their mind goes berserk, and there is no peace of mind. We need to learn not only to de-clutter our life, but our mind and thoughts need to be de-cluttered so we can focus on the Lord.
Before going into a place of hearing God or sitting in the ambush or in anticipation of His Word coming. Try to get rid of all the things that cause you to worry and bring pressure on your mind. When your mind is racing, its harder to hear God. For some, there are things you need to do every day, and you are stressful until you do them. For others, you just need to pray and worship to cast your cares upon the Lord before you can sit in ambush. For me, I often go up to the mountains where I have oversight of the city, and there I sit in ambush looking over the city; God speaks to me from that place. As I walk up to the mountain and climb it, that is a great way to focus and de-clutter my mind. As I get up there, I have left the lowlands and the valleys of doubt and fear. Up there, I am alone with my thoughts and God, in a place where I personally find it easier to focus on heavenly things. I have my prayer rooms, my car, my secret places; my life is a prayer wherever I am. There is just something that helps my mind personally when I have a huge overview over the land to see bigger and to view greater than the small things I would fight; in the tiny secret places, they wouldn’t even cross my mind. I am sharing this to help you SEE.
There is this thing about God and the Holy Spirit; they are always moving, always new. Many of us have had God encounters; some have had many, others have had few. Maybe some of you in here are just starting on your journey with living in God encounters. As I have shared before, we are simple creatures and we tend to want to always repeat what works. Just look at the churches; so many of the church themes and programs today are because something worked one day in the past; we think we can just repeat that to impress God and have a revival. We are naive thinking that God is impressed with a program or a setup.
We can’t be looking for God to always be in the old ways. God and the moves of God are always changing. I am not looking to have the same encounters with God that I had 25 years ago. I am looking to see God in the now, not in the past. Certainly, we can visit the past, learn from it, and use those keys to enter into God’s presence, but the encounters of the past are not the encounters of the future. God is in the now; do you perceive it? Are you ready to sit down in ambush before God to catch His wave… oh I meant to say catch His voice to you today?