Waiting and Is Jesus Enough?

Waiting. Every one is waiting for something. Sometimes waiting is exciting like when you're waiting in eager anticipation for something good to arrive or happen. Sometimes waiting is nerve wracking like when you're waiting for information that will have immediate or lasting implications. Sometimes waiting is annoying, especially if your wait is caused by an inefficiency of some kind. And then, sometimes, waiting is just plain, painfully hard. 

Even if you call Jesus your Savior and live your life open handed, surrendered to His will for you, and you know that our God is a God who DELIVERS us, who is WITH us, who is FOR us, and who LOVES us, it is still sometimes hard to wait on Him. There are fewer things that make my eyebrows narrow quite like Christians dismissing real, tangible suffering with a pat on the back and telling you to read your Bible some more. So if you've been on the receiving end of that pat, I've been there too. 

I can't tell you how many people close to me are in hard seasons of waiting right now. If you're one of them you're probably thinking I'm writing about you. But I'm not, because there are so many of you!!

Waiting for direction. Waiting for a job. Waiting for meaningful and true friendships. Waiting for your forever soulmate. Waiting for the person you married to repent and come back from what it is they're doing. Waiting for a diagnosis. Waiting for a child. Waiting for restoration of your family. Waiting for the house to sell. Waiting for progress. Waiting for acceptance. Waiting for a cure. Waiting for freedom.

There is a difference in how we wait though. 

There is passive waiting, which involves doing nothing. Example: waiting for the leaves to change color in the Fall. Is there anything you can do to make the leaves change color? No. There is absolutely nothing you can do to make all of the leaves on the oak tree in your yard turn from green to orangey-brown. You understand this. So, you just wait for it to happen and do absolutely nothing to expedite the process. 

Some people take this approach in their waiting season. A relevant example is an election. Some people choose to keep political opinions to themselves. They do not go out and campaign, or put a bumper stick on their car, or have conversations with other people about present issues and candidates. Instead, they sit back and wait until November 4th, assuming what they think and what their one little ballot could do mean nothing. That is passive waiting. 

I remember getting into a heated conversation with a fellow new nursing graduate about voting. We were in a critical care internship together, and she was all up in arms about something that had to do with public health, and I for some reason felt it necessary to point out to her that if she really cared that much about the issue she was going on and on about she'd better be showing up to the polls every election cycle. I didn't realize what a big fuss I was making about it until the day of our final exam, when one of the proctors asked me why I was so passionate about voting. To be honest, I don't remember what I said to him. I was already a puddle of nerves about the verbal exam, but I hope I said something about the privilege it is, the sacrifices that were made for it, and the power every vote has.

But what about those of us who don't just passively wait whether it's so our candidate will be elected, or for the house to sell, or reconciliation to be made, or to be granted an interview for a job? What about those of us who find ourselves in a season of waiting, but we aren't just sitting back doing nothing. We're doing "all the right things," we love and trust and serve God, but it's still not happening for us.

A mentor of mine recently reminded me that the answer is two-fold. 

1. It doesn't always happen. 

I'm going to say it again, because it's the hard truth.

It doesn't always happen.

What you are waiting for you might not happen.

We can pray with authority. We can trust. We can follow Biblical principles that apply to the situation, but there is no formula in the Bible that says do x, y, and z, and you'll have that plot of land you're dreaming about putting an outreach for foster children on / your prodigal child will come home / your body will conceive a child / your application to the program will be accepted. 

I remember when I was a teen realizing that Jeremiah 29:11 wasn't written to people in the 21st century. I had trusted that verse to mean that no harm would ever come to me because God's plans for me were not to harm me but for a full (translation in American lingo: comfortable and successful) life. This realization made me dizzy. You mean I couldn't pick and choose verses out of the Bible and take them out of context and apply them to every situation in my life at my whimsy? No, Lindsay-girl, you can't.

Not too long after that, I'd be car-jacked at gun point in Africa with nine other people, and I'd better understand the connection between this two-fold answer.

Point #1 is what we're waiting for doesn't always happen. 

Point #2 is BUT GOD.

But God IS. 

But God LIVES. 

But God LOVES. 

But God, even in our darkest, deepest seasons of waiting, of barely making it to the next hour of the day, will not forsake us.

My mentor posed the question, "If NOT, is Jesus still enough?" 

If whatever it is you're waiting for never happens, is Jesus enough?

The truth is, I wish it could all be comfortable down here on earth. I wish everyone had a success story. I wish nobody felt beat down or discouraged. I wish everyone really did get along. I wish abuse didn't exist. I wish people were never hungry and that children never prayed that a family would want them. 

I wish we didn't have to ask the question, "Is Jesus enough?"

He is enough. And just like how your season of waiting is unique to you, how the Lord will work in and through it, is unique too. 

There isn't a single situation in the Bible where the way God showed up doesn't take me by surprise. 

Makes woman out of dust. 

Talks though a burning bush and a donkey and out of thin air.

Transports a guy from the middle of the ocean to land literally via the belly of a big fish. 

Basically the entire story of Job.

The Devil's previous position as Heaven's worship leader.

Feeds thousands of people with a few tiny sardines and a handful crackers, TWICE.

And the situations where He didn't show up, they take me by surprise too. Babies thrown into a river full of crocodiles. His own cousin's head being chopped off and put on a silver plate. The fact that He himself hung naked on a stick makes me sick to my stomach.

But God.

Even when God doesn't show up the way we want Him to, the way we expect him to, is He enough just by being who He is?

Only you can answer that question for yourself. But, I hope and pray that you find Him to be all that He is.

Until next time,

<3 Lindsay