.Wait.

I feel like we are currently in the "school" of waiting. Waiting for a new job for Lew, waiting to figure out where we are going to live...eventually :)...waiting to decide if we should buy or rent a home...waiting on more children...

I think we are always "waiting" for something. But certain seasons the waiting seems more daunting and wearisome. But in each season I am SO aware of how God's grace carries me through the waiting and how much I am learning in the process. It's so easy to be looking forward to the outcome...the thing we are waiting for. But really it's the process that bears the sweetest fruit. These 2 things encouraged me so much this morning as we continue to wait:

Wait on the Lord. -Psalm 27:14

It may seem an easy thing to wait, but it is one of the postures which a Christian soldier learns not without years of teaching. Marching and quick-marching are much easier to God's warriors than standing still. There are hours of perplexity when the most willing spirit, anxiously desirous to serve the Lord, knows not what part to take. Then what shall it do? Vex itself by despair? Fly back in cowardice, turn to the right hand in fear, or rush forward in presumption? No, but simply wait. Wait in prayer, however. Call upon God, and spread the case before Him; tell Him your difficulty, and plead His promise of aid. In dilemmas between one duty and another, it is sweet to be humble as a child, and wait with simplicity of soul upon the Lord. It is sure to be well with us when we feel and know our own folly, and are heartily willing to be guided by the will of God. But wait in faith. Express your unstaggering confidence in Him; for unfaithful, untrusting waiting, is but an insult to the Lord. Believe that if He keep you tarrying even till midnight, yet He will come at the right time; the vision shall come and shall not tarry. Wait in quiet patience, not rebelling because you are under the affliction, but blessing your God for it. Never murmur against the second cause, as the children of Israel did against Moses; never wish you could go back to the world again, but accept the case as it is, and put it as it stands, simply and with your whole heart, without any self-will, into the hand of your covenant God, saying, "Now, Lord, not my will, but Thine be done. I know not what to do; I am brought to extremities, but I will wait until Thou shalt cleave the floods, or drive back my foes. I will wait, if Thou keep me many a day, for my heart is fixed upon Thee alone, O God, and my spirit waiteth for Thee in the full conviction that Thou wilt yet be my joy and my salvation, my refuge and my strong tower."


And one more from a friends blog

“…waiting is living through those moments when you do not understand what God is doing and you have no power to change your circumstances for the better…So much of our daily comfort comes from the fact that we are able to make sense of our circumstances… Waiting is hard for us because we tie our hearts to other glories. We so often live for the glory of human acceptance, of personal achievement, of power and position, of possessions and places, and of comfort and pleasure. So when God’s glory requires that these things be withheld from us – things we look to for identity, meaning, and purpose – we find waiting a grueling, burdensome experience. Waiting means surrendering your glory. Waiting means submitting to His glory. Waiting means understanding that you were given life and breath for the glory of another. Waiting gives you opportunity to forsake the delusion of you own glory and rest in the God of awesome glory. Only when you do that will you find what you seek, and what you were meant to have: lasting identity, meaning and purpose, and peace in Christ…”