Proverbs says that hope deferred makes the heart sick (13:12). I have been asking God and waiting on Him for fulfillment of some deep desires for years now and my heart has often felt sick during this wait. These past four years have been particularly hard but I know my God and he tells me that as I trust him with everything, literally delighting in him, he can then trust me with the desires in my heart (Psalm 37:3-7). In pondering the concept of ‘waiting’ found in that passage I discovered an excerpt from Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy, to be not only accurate but also as if he wrote it specifically for me.
“Prayer as kingdom praying is an arrangement explicitly instituted by God in order that we as individuals may count, and count for much, as we learn step by step how to govern, to reign with him in his kingdom. To enter and to learn this reign is what gives the individual life its intended significance. This high calling also explains why prayer frequently requires much effort, continuous effort, and on some matters possibly years and years of effort. Prayer is, above all, a means of forming character. It combines freedom and power with service and love. What God gets out of our lives – and, indeed, what we get out of our lives – is simply the person we become. It is God’s intention that we should grow into the kind of person he could empower to do what we want to do. Then we are ready to “reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 22:5).
And a major element in this training is experience in waiting for God to move, not leaping ahead and taking things into our own hands. Out of this waiting experience there comes a form of character that is priceless before God, a character that can be empowered to do as one chooses. This explains why James says that patience in trials will make us “fully functional” (teleion), “perfect” (1:4).”
(photo by PSchrock)
