Waiting on God
A friend of mine recently shared with me something they heard at a conference. The speaker was talking about how inaccurate it is for us to ever say that we are waiting on God. I almost started to get a little defensive, because I feel like I am currently “waiting on God” to show me how I am supposed to accomplish something that my bank account is saying is impossible.
Then my friend went on to tell me how the speaker explained that God is everywhere all of the time. God goes before us, goes with us, and goes behind us… so how are we the ones waiting on Him?
Typing that out just now reminded me of something I saw in my prayer time a couple of weeks ago. I was sipping on my coffee and listening to one of my playlists on YouTube. There’s this one song that I absolutely love sung by Steffany Gretzinger called “Out of the Nest”. Actually, it’s a moment of prophetic worship in the middle of them singing “King of My Heart”. This song always has a way of making me feel bolder, but on this day there was one particular line that caught my attention and held it for a while. The line says, “Cause He can put you out of the nest and catch you too, yes.”
When the song finished, I turned off my music and sat in silence, trying to figure out the how behind those words. In the silence, I began to see something play out in my mind. I was standing on a cliff, looking out at the horizon. Then, I saw myself take a few steps back before proceeding to run towards the edge and do a nose dive. As I’m diving downward—to what you would typically think to be my death—I glanced to my side and saw Jesus right beside me. Finally, I watched as He caught me at the bottom.
I remember writing in my journal that morning about the beauty of that moment. I had this realization that He could put me out of the nest, let me fall, then be in position to catch me because He put Himself out of the nest too, never leaving my side, and I found so much comfort in that.
But now, thinking about how God goes before us, with us, and behind us, I can see that scene play out a little differently. Before, I only saw God going with me. Now, when I go back to that moment when I’m diving downward and see Jesus right beside me, I look down and see Him at the bottom of the cliff waiting to catch me. Then, when I get to the bottom, I look back at the top of the cliff and He’s there watching me. NOW, I can see that He was always in all three places, but at the time I was too focused on the falling to see Him anywhere else.
So, maybe this whole “waiting on God” business is really our way of explaining away fear. I mean, think about it. If God goes before us, goes with us, and goes behind us, then His part is already done, which means He must be the one waiting on us.
Waiting on us for what, you ask? Well… what has God asked you to do? What cliff of life has He asked you to nose-dive from?
Sitting here, looking at that question, I’m having to ask myself the same thing. Is there something I’m scared to do right now that could be causing my little dilemma? Not that I can think of. However, if I look deeper, I know that there is at least one thing I feel like God wants me to do, but I haven’t started doing it yet. From my point of view, that one thing has absolutely nothing to do with my current struggle. So, in my mind, doing that thing isn’t going to help me right now.
But. What if, sometimes, God doesn’t allow us to move forward in any area, until we are obedient in that one area?
Let’s look at it like this… Imagine each area of your life being an intricately designed line of dominos. One line for relationships, one for finances, one for family, etc. You get the picture. Each line is carefully and purposefully woven into each other. Now the whole purpose of the design is for there to be a beautiful picture once all of the dominos are laying flat. Your only job is to obey when God tells you to tip over the first domino in each line, when He tells you. So far, you’ve done that. He said to tip that one over and you did. He said to tip another one over and you did. You’ve tipped over so many starter dominos that you almost start to get bored with this whole process. Sure, there may have been different challenges to each first domino, but you still always got the job done. That is until He tells you to tip over a specific one. It didn’t look important. It looked like it was a line all on its own, having nothing to do with the rest of the picture. Really, it kind of looked out of place. So, you left it alone, thinking it didn’t matter. But, then you tip over the next one He tells you to tip, and you notice that the dominos only fall to a certain point. That’s when you realize that line and several others couldn’t finish laying down because of that one line you decided to skip. You didn’t notice that this seemingly insignificant line of dominos had a small branch that came off its side and weaved itself into all of the other lines.
Maybe it is possible that one case of delayed obedience (aka disobedience) could cause all other movement to cease.
Hhm. I guess I’ve got a domino to go tip over.