Waiting for the Lord

We can sometimes feel that we aren’t making any difference. Perhaps we thought and prayed about how to vote in the General Election, but ended up with an MP, or a government, which we did not choose.

That can be true in church life as well, or a difficult situation at work; however hard we pray, and seek to do the right thing, we are not seeing any progress. We might be tempted to give up, stop praying, and doubt whether God cares about the situation. Or perhaps be tempted to take matters into our own hands and get angry, vent our frustration, and respond in a less than godly way.

We need to be reminded that we live before an audience of One. The Lord sees us, and He knows our situation. We will be judged not on whether we transformed the church, or the nation, or succeeded in all of our plans, but whether we were faithful amidst the challenges we faced. Have we done what is right, or sinfully remained silent or inactive? Have we prayed and committed ourselves to Him? Have we responded in a godly way?

We are not promised that our godly desires, ambitions and plans will always succeed. Think of the heroes and heroines of the faith in Hebrews 11 who died without receiving what was promised. Very often the godly are a persecuted minority. But we are not to fret when evil people prosper; Psalms 37 and 73 remind us that their success will be short-lived. In light of the final judgment we should not envy but rather pity them. Nor are we to feel sorry for ourselves that our situation is challenging – think of the apostle Paul who had such resilient faith in the sovereignty and good purposes of God that he was able to rejoice even in his prison cell as he committed himself into the Lord’s hands (Phil. 1:12ff, and also Acts 16:25).

We long, of course, for better days. We want to see revival in the church, and the mighty work of the Spirit in our nation bringing many conversions and moral reformation. We want to see Christ’s kingdom extended in all the nations of the world. We are called to be urgent and insistent in our godly ambitions and our prayers – to give the Lord no rest (Isa. 62:6ff). But we are not guaranteed to see all of our prayers answered in our lifetime. The Scriptures teach us that while the Lord can transform a situation in a moment, His purposes unfold over centuries and millennia. In the meantime we are to be faithful in the season in which we are called to live.

And the Lord is pleased with such patient faith. We may be despised and held in low esteem by the world, but to the Lord we are precious (Mal. 3:16ff). We will see at the end of all things that the first will be last, and the last first. And in the end the Lord Jesus Christ will be honoured in all the earth.