Waiting on the Lord

You know, the phrase “wait on the LORD” occurs five times in the New King James Version of the Bible according to Bible Gateway.

Psalm 27:14
Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the LORD!

Psalm 37:9
For evildoers shall be cut off; But those who wait on the LORD, They shall inherit the earth.

Psalm 37:34
Wait on the LORD, And keep His way, And He shall exalt you to inherit the land; When the wicked are cut off, you shall see it.

Isaiah 8:17
And I will wait on the LORD, Who hides His face from the house of Jacob; And I will hope in Him.

Isaiah 40:31
But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.

Tomorrow is my 23rd birthday. You know, when I thought about how my life would go, I always imagined I would be married by 23, have a nice house, a nice job, and be beginning the work of raising a family to the glory of God. The thing is, I’m not married, I have a decent job, I own my own place now, and my life seems to be on hold. For once in my life, I have no idea where I am going in life. You see I’m the kind of person that knew what I wanted to major in when I was a junior in high school. I progressed rapidly through college thinking that when I got out, I could be married and get on with real life. The Lord evidently has other plans.

All of these verses made me think about waiting on the Lord. Look at the great promises associated with waiting on the Lord! He shall strengthen your heart, you shall inherit the land, you shall run and not grow weary—what wonderful promises! When I compare this attitude to mine of bitterness and anger at God for not having a wife, I see an utter disconnect. I should have suspected that the Word of God would have this effect though; it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. I should be joyful and thankful for all that I do have! There are plenty of people in the world who have it no where near as good as I do, and I’m here complaining about no wife.

For some reason, while I was going to spend some time in the restroom :-p, I decided to pick up Joshua Harris’s book “Boy meets Girl” and reread some section. I randomly flipped to the following section:

“David talked to his pastor, Kenneth, who listened patiently as he vented his frustration. ‘Dave, I think you’ve made an idol out of marriage,’ Kenneth told him.
‘No, no I’m past that!’ David protested. ‘I prayed about it. I evaluated my heart. I was content being single before I approached her.’
‘That’s good,’ Kenneth said. ‘But look at your response to her lack of interest: you grew bitter; you got angry. That leads me to think that you want marriage too much. It’s become a little substitute god in your life, and when you didn’t get it, you reacted sinfully.’
John Calvin wrote, ‘The evil in our desire typically does not lie in what we want, but in that we want it too much.’”

Instantly, I was reminded of my many conversations/arguments with the German about this very subject. As much as I wanted to say I wasn’t basing my happiness on this, my actions testified to something else. Look what I did after the latest rejection: I took 5 shots of 151, and started telling people it really wouldn’t matter if they came home to find me dead in my house. How utterly foolish could I be?!?! I knew people would care, but in my bitterness I didn’t want them to. I wanted to believe that nothing really mattered and that nothing I did to myself would really affect anyone else. Well Mr. German, I think you are and were right. I have made marriage into an idol. How to depose it I don’t know, but I do know it is there now.

Well as cheesy as it sounds, to those dear friends that saw me hit that valley in life, you will probably never know how much your words and friendship have meant to me. God has richly blessed me with Godly Christian friends who go deeper than just was meets the eye. I pray that God will reward you for your good deeds in unimaginable, amazing ways, in this life or the next.