Another Thought About Waiting

We recently concluded a short series on "Waiting on the Lord," which was personally challenging for me. Based on conversations I had with several of you, it was a timely topic for many of us. It is one of those topics that is hard to talk about, and even harder to practice. But there's one big point about waiting that I didn't even think of until ten minutes after the series was over, as I was speaking to one of you in the foyer.

I hate it when I do that! But it's an enormous point about waiting that is worth bringing up. I apologize for failing to include it in the series.

One of the big lessons Lynne and I have learned through experience about waiting on the Lord is that sometimes the Lord wants us to wait because He's waiting on us to be ready for His answer. We've seen this in our own lives more than a few times.

One of those instances was a hard period of waiting without knowing exactly what we were waiting for. I had just finished my degree at Talbot School of Theology and was serving part-time on staff at a church in La Mirada, CA. A part-time pastor's salary doesn't pay the rent in LA, so something had to change.

Three years prior, I had halted my career in software in order to go to seminary full-time. We downsized into a little apartment, I worked through all the coursework over those three years, I was serving at this church, and Lynne had been working to support us (but took the last year off in order to take classes, too). But now, with a shiny new diploma, I was ready for God to plant us right into our next assignment. I got my curriculum vitae all polished up, scoured the various sources looking for churches who needed someone a lot like me, and hit the electronic pavement in the hunt.

It was painfully unproductive. Hurdle 1 was finding a church that seemed like a good fit in theology and style. Of all the churches on the lists, about 1 in 20 fit this criteria. Hurdle 2 was finding such a church that would maybe be interested in someone with very little experience, which thinned the list even faster. Hurdle 3 was finding a way to make my paperwork make it as far as initial contact, which cut the remaining list about in half. Hurdle 4 was coming away from the phone interview excited about that fellowship, with a hope that they paid enough to live on. That happened with about one-third of the phone interviews.

Getting past Hurdle 4 was rare. This was not like job-shopping in software, which is what I was used to. It bruises the ego (at best) to know that 99 out of 100 churches don't like you as a pastor.

In the meantime, Lynne was struggling to get an interview, too. The market had dried up soon after she resigned.

After 9 months of this waiting, I decided to start looking again back in the software industry. I call this process "rubbing salt in the wound," because no one would touch someone who had been out of the business for almost four years. Pursuing both fronts, there was a whole lot of waiting and dead ends.

I had set aside a job, a career, and a steady paycheck. God was supposed to honor that, right? What was He waiting for? Because I was sick of waiting. Turns out, He was waiting for me to be ready for His answer.

His answer was a perfect description of what I said I didn't want - to be the solo pastor of a small church far from family in a small town, an hour from any echo of modern life, and two hours from the real deal. But one dead end after another slowly chipped away at the things I was unwilling to do. Every single candidating process that went anywhere served to open me up piece by piece for what God had in store. If God had revealed His answer as I stepped off the platform with my new degree in hand, I would not have been ready.

God waiting more than a year until I was ready for His answer. I waited on the Lord, quite fitfully, as He was at work in me to make me ready for His answer.

Sometimes we have to wait on the Lord because He's patiently waiting on us to be able to receive what He has to give us.