What room are you living in at the moment? If you’re in the kitchen, let’s get together for tea or a latte? Sound good? There are a number of rooms in a house, but currently I seem to be adapting long term to the “waiting room” … God’s waiting room.
As humans, we don’t care for waiting rooms, do we. We could dress up the terminology by referring to them as “lounges.” Yes, that sounds better, but the fact is that you do the same thing there too. You may lounge around, but you’re still “waiting.”
What’s the purpose for waiting do you think? To be more specific, what are the benefits of waiting for God? I don’t know about you, but I find that I can be encouraged if I consider the “benefits of waiting for Him.”
I’ve messed up enough in life by acting on impulse (the wrong impulse) or if too much time has elapsed, move things along myself. I think that term is referred to as “manipulation.”
God has His own plans and purposes, doesn’t He. My impatience can thwart the effectiveness He has in mind while I’m in the “waiting room.”
If you’re a baker, you know that you can’t rush a cake to rise. You can observe some limited action by turning on the oven light and watch things in slow-motion which doesn’t help the rising process. Or, you can busy yourself with another activity and keep opening the door to observe the progress. But regardless of your human scheming, it’s best to wait until the timer goes off, indicating that your cake is done.
By waiting, you have a finished product that looks good, tastes good and delicious enough to serve a friend. None of that would happen if you “rushed the cake to rise and come together.”
The Lord Jesus is helping me piece this illustration together so my heart and mind can rest more comfortably in the “oven time of my current circumstance.”
Waiting reminds me of the GPS’s we use in our cars. If there’s an unknown, untraveled route we need to take, our hand-held GPS devices sure come into play. Remember years ago, when we actually held a map in our hands to determine the route from where we were to where we needed to be. It’s no wonder it took us longer to get there with the fiddling around with those creased maps.
Now we just type in the address of our destination and voila, all the information is available to us. However, for moment-by-moment directional steps are given one at a time. A GPS follower (that’s you and me) needs to complete the first piece of instructions before the following details are given.
Yep, it’s a step-by-step dialogue. And even there, you must wait in your seat for further particulars on how to navigate the best route.
Are you formulating in your mind the same illustration as I am about God’s guidance and direction for each of us. We may inaccurately feel that His timing isn’t right, yet He is always right on time…” His Time!” Meanwhile, day-by-day, hour-by-hour, moment-by-moment we do what needs to be done.
He is directing our steps and the steps of those He brings along our path for His reasons. In the very area of my anticipation, my Father weaves sideline information to encourage me in the journey.
Just yesterday morning I was reading my Bible and I was parking my vision in the book of 1 Kings, chapter 17, verse 2 where God was giving specific directions to Elijah. “Then the word of the Lord came to him saying, “Get away from here and turn eastward, and hide by the Brook Cherith, He told Elijah to head East and hide by the Brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan.”
Then instructions were passed along as to drink water from that brook. For there was no dew or rain for about six months.
This was no surprise to God, but God had plans for Elijah and part of the map puzzle was for this man of God to have some liquid refreshment. Not only would there be something to drink, but in that there were no cafes along the route, God has other methods.
You can check out the following in your Bible (1 Kings 17: 3,4). God’s next go-to directives were that God would be providing the cuisine delivery. But it wouldn’t be through a human resource. He orchestrated the delivery to be through ravens!
Am I joking? No, look for yourself at verse 4.
“And it will be that you shall drink from the brook, and I (God) have commanded the ravens to feed you there.”
1 Samuel 17:6 “The ravens brought him (Elijah) bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the brook.”
I think it might be a good time to pause there and look for application to our lives about this information.
At first, I asked the Lord what can I take away from this portion of His directive to Elijah. Plain and simple, God can use anyone or anything to accomplish His provision. It also conveyed to me that God doesn’t operate on our terms or in our ways. He is God and I sometimes forget that. He made the ravens and He made Elijah and he can operate “out of the box” whenever He wishes to. God is not limited by our expectations.
In these two verses alone was a “sermonette for me.” That being, don’t expect God to respond to your prayer request in the manner in which you imagine, or through the vehicle you’d expect. In the mystery of His will, He does His work in ways that may seem foreign to us.
And as I think about that, it tells me that He is unlimited in how He desires to meet our need. So, I guess we need to stop trying to pin-point God’s Modusoperandi of how He will handle what we are waiting on Him for.
The important fact that came next in these verses is that Elijah did exactly what God told him to do. I often think of GPS as God’s Positioning System. 1 Kings 17:5 “So he (Elijah) went and did according to the word of the Lord….”
Results were: Elijah was obedient to this request. It wasn’t complicated, but it was a clear instruction. Elijah didn’t require further instruction.
Then in verse 6 came another set of directives, but not for Elijah, but for the “ravens of choice.” Well, there we have it. God can, through his sovereignty and providence, orchestrate whatever or whoever to do His bidding to provide for Elijah.
We (me too) can often read a sentence too rapidly and miss the deeper understanding of God and His ways. Here’s an appropriate time to pull out a verse from Isaiah 55:9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Here’s a thought: God can do whatever He wants to answer our prayer and meet our needs. Remember – He is God, and I am not.
As we slip down to a latter time frame when the brook “dried up” we see God positioning another assignment for Elijah.
1 King 17:8 “Then the word of the Lord came to him (Elijah) saying, “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. See I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.”
“The way of faith is step-by-step obedience before the Lord, as He instructs. His servants obey one command, and then He gives another. Christians need not ask about tomorrow when today is before them. 1 Kings 17:2-5 Jeremiah Study Bible Commentary
This widow had next to nothing as she was preparing, what she thought would be her and her son’s last meal.
Elijah came to her asking for a little water in a cup and while she was getting that ready, Elijah put in another request for a “morsel of bread in her hand.”
Her response was not expected by Elijah, for she advised him that she only had a handful of flour in a bin, and a little oil in a jar…. That isn’t exactly a loaf of bread to share with this stranger. In other words, she was preparing what she thought was a last meal for two. Now Elijah appears on the scene, per God’s “divine assignment.”
Can you notice, as I do, this doesn’t make sense! Or does it?!
Here again are more surprises. 1 Kings 17:13-16
“And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said, but make me a small cake from it first, and bring it to me; and afterward make some for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord God of Israel: The bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry, until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth.
So, she went away and did according to the word of Elijah; and she and he and her household ate for many days. The bin of flour was not used up, nor did the jar of oil run dry, according to the word of the Lord which He spoke by Elijah.”
Speaking about a “divine pantry!” God more than supplied her needs.
“The widow’s resources were too limited to meet the need in her own family. But Elijah asked her to act in faith, feeding him first, and when she put God first, He provided.” Jeremiah Study Bible Commentary
There’s much more to the story as later the widow’s son became ill. Elijah must have been invited to rent an upstairs room in her home. She told Elijah how sick her son was and that he had just died.
“Elijah said to her, “Give me your son.” So, he took him out of her arms and carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his own bed. Then he cried out to the Lord and said, “O Lord my God, have You also brought tragedy on the widow with whom I lodge, by killing her son?” And he stretched himself out on the child three times, and cried out to the Lord and said, “O Lord my God, I pray, let this child’s soul come back to him.”
Then the Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came back to him, and he revived. And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper room into the house, and gave him to his mother. And Elijah said, “See, your son lives!” Then the woman said to Elijah. “Now by this I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is the truth.”
“This is the first time in the Bible when a servant of God raises a dead person to life.” Jeremiah Study Bible Commentary
“Sometimes God uses unusual circumstances to test a person’s faith. He told Elijah to go to an unlikely place, Zarephath, the very center of Baal worship and home of Queen Jezebel….at an unlikely time – when the king of Israel (Ahab) was hunting him with the intent of killing him.
Then the Lord sent him to an unlikely person – a poor Gentile widow from a Baal-worshipping nation. In addition to testing Elijah’s faith, the circumstances provided an opportunity for God to demonstrate His power and His compassion to those outside of Israel.” Jeremiah Study Bible Commentary
Now that we’ve sat awhile in the waiting room of these verses, what does all this tell us about God and His working in our individual lives?
I came away with a few thoughts to ponder:
God has His own ways and His own timetable.
He has His own purposes in our lives and the lives of those He brings to us.
God is God and He knows what’s best for all concerned.
God is unlimited as to how and when He answers prayer.
God can use the most unlikely ways to accomplish His desired end.
God can use the most unlikely people to accomplish His desired end.
God can use the most unlikely circumstance to accomplish His desired end.
Stay close to Him and alert to His promptings.
His ways may never make sense to us humans.
He is always at work, even when we think He isn’t.
DON’T PUT GOD IN A BOX….
as He will break out into His own plans anyway
Cups of Cold Water 