if and how

the tension of waiting for God’s answers

Knightley jumped to my lap but only for the split-second required to use it as a launching pad to my desk – specifically, to my laptop, where she typed gvbbb and then sneezed into my water. I brushed her away and she ran back across the laptop again toward the other side of the desk and, I kid you not, typed worworkk.

“I’m trying,” I told her, as she settled onto the corner of my desk.

I think I mentioned a few months ago the struggle of staring at a blank page, but this page I’m typing on isn’t blank; it has paragraphs and good ideas and important thoughts running upwards of 1100 words so far. But I’m not sure which ones go together and which ones should be shared, and some need combined in the right way. So this here is where I sit in the tension of waiting, knowing that God has those answers and that at some point this whole piece will come together, because it always does.

It always does. And that’s a miracle, because almost every time I sit here, I still wonder if and how it will. Maybe this will be the post that breaks me, the one that shows I can’t really do this. Maybe this will be the one that proves I’ve used up all the words out of thin air, and there really is nothing left to say. But it always comes together (sometimes better than others), because He always comes through.

He does. I can say that with confidence because I have a spreadsheet of posts I’ve written for the last eleven years, and this one will be #429. You would think by now I wouldn’t still wonder about the “if and how”...but I do, almost every time.

Because to get the point of it coming together, I have to sit in the discomfort of staring at this screen and praying about the words, and willing my fingers to start typing long enough to find those answers.

So that’s what I’m doing, and it helps that Knightley has settled down to nap peacefully, although I sorta like having her to blame for my lack of productivity.

In one of our intercessor’s meetings recently we talked about revival being marked with joy, and the theme of waiting became prominent. As we pray and wait for revival, we want to steward the tension of waiting well. Grace came up repeatedly, too – because revival is His doing, not ours, not something we contrive. And as I think about it, I wonder if grace really came up more that week, or if I just noticed it more because it’s the school He has me in right now. Sort of like when you learn a new vocabulary word, and then suddenly you start seeing it everywhere.

The only way waiting and joy go together is when they’re bound with hope. And hope only comes through grace, because we know He will do the thing we can’t. If we could do it, it would already be done, and that’s why we’re sitting in the tension of waiting.

And so I sit here typing, bound by hope – knowing He is bringing the words together, watching Him do the thing I can’t, and knowing that He will finish it because I’ve seen Him do it so many times before.

While we’re waiting, the Lord is instilling routines and habits we need to maintain the breakthrough. Waiting with hope is never just killing time; it’s work and intentional discipline, peppered with discovery and revelation. While we’re waiting, we’re enduring the scales and routines, creating muscle memory so the attitudes and structure we need are ingrained for later when we won’t have the time or motivation to develop them.

Because there will be a later when we need those things. And it may not feel like it, but this time beforehand is developing them in us.

This tension you’re sitting in, friend, will have a “later” to it, and He will come through, and the thing you’re waiting on that you can’t achieve or figure out will be resolved because that is what He does.

He does it every time.

So this is me preaching to myself as we sit here in this waiting. It’s like a fast, because the discomfort does something in us that fasting does, too: We fast from the quick answer, the easy certainty, the ability to figure it out. And the waiting refines us as we trust in His willingness, ability, and desire to do what we can’t do for ourselves...in other words, as we trust in His grace.