But let’s get real; waiting is difficult. We don’t like waiting in line, waiting for test results, waiting for that right person to show up in our lives, or waiting for the next chapter to begin. Whatever it is, we have trouble waiting.

So isn’t it interesting how many times God tells us to wait. It is mentioned over 100 times in the Bible, depending on translation and context. Wait on Him. Wait on His timing, His plan, His presence. It says our strength will be renewed, we will soar like eagles, we won’t be weary or grow faint. How is that possible by just waiting?

Our culture has conditioned us to believe that our time is our most valuable commodity and that we need to be using every minute productively. We don’t have time to waste. And if we’re not managing our time with purpose, intention, setting goals and conquering them… then we’ve missed the mark. We should be consistently reading and learning, and perpetually bettering ourselves . . . eating well, working out, sleeping, drinking less alcohol and more water. The list goes on.

Do we even know how to slow down . . . take more time for people, for relationships, for pondering . . . and for waiting on God?

Sitting quietly alone in a room for minutes or hours . . . waiting on God sounds like a waste of time, doesn’t it?

Unless we’re making lists and figuring out agendas or planning our future . . . then are there really benefits to waiting?

We are too often tethered to our phones, connected to the world at the palm of our hands. But what if all the noise in our life . . . the busyness and mass communication  . . . is what is keeping us from hearing from God? And what if hearing from God is the single most important thing we could ever do? What if everything else adds up to nothing if we don’t hear from God? What if all our plans . . . our successes on paper . . . add up to nothing but zero if those things were never really a part of God’s purpose for our lives?

And what if . . . what if we got bold enough to really, really ask God to lead us in the purpose for our lives? What if we wanted to know what He had in mind for us before the dawn of time when we were just a twinkle in His eye?

Waiting can be painful. We get impatient. We quit too soon. We think we’re hearing nothing so we move on. But what if . . . in the silence . . . our hearts and minds are being renewed? What if that little act of waiting made all the difference in the world  . . . whether we could see the results right away or not?

What if we could look back one day and say . . . “you know, my life started to shift back a few years ago when I began sitting quietly everyday and waiting on God. I never heard a voice, yet it changed who I was and altered the direction my life was taking.”

Imagine if ten years from now we looked back and saw that the last ten years had been the most productive and most satisfying years of our lives . . . and beyond anything we could ever have imagined. What if those were our joyful years, our contented years, our gratifying years? Wouldn’t that make those years the most successful years of our lives?

What if our waiting on God made us into faithful, trusting, God-fearing individuals . . . in a land where faith is ridiculed and trust is hard to come by and fearing God has been forsaken.

Instead of making a list of resolutions for the new year, this year I just made one request. I asked God to renew my hunger for Him. I didn’t want to be dry . . . I wanted to be thirsty. I didn’t want to be comfortable sitting in my comfort zone . . . I wanted to be uprooted. He has answered. He didn’t even wait 24 hours to answer… He was pleased to do it, as though He had been waiting for me to ask.

As a result of that, I have made a commitment this year to wait on God in a new way . . . not asking for anything . . . not even expecting anything . . . but just with the attitude that my sitting there with Him . . . contemplating, meditating on the Word, listening . . . is somehow changing me from the inside out. I feel a shifting inside my soul.