Week 2: The Waiting
I think it is safe to say no one loves to wait. Through scripture, we read that our world is in a state of waiting and so our souls.
Waiting for answers
Waiting for peace
Waiting for healing
Waiting for restoration
Waiting for heaven
Waiting for COVID to end (but really).
Isn’t it interesting that the longer we wait for something the more amp we are to become weary? We begin to wonder if our prayers are being heard and impatiently question God’s promises.
Much like the Israelites, I can become impatient in waiting for God to act and choose to rely on my strength and strategies rather than trust in God’s power to prevail. But what I have come to realize about this need for control, is that in my efforts to find clarity, fight sin, or even experience freedom more often than not, leads me in a completely opposite direction:
Instead of clarity, I am more confused.
Instead of victory from sin, I struggle more than ever.
Instead of freedom, I feel defeated.
This is what counselors would define as willfulness.
Willfulness does not accept the present state of reality and, much like a child, responds with unproductive attempts to change the circumstances that are outside such control measures.
Willfulness rebels. It reacts, and it resists.
Does this feeling resonate with you in the waiting?
I have been recently convicted that this resistance in my heart attempts to exchange God’s sovereignty for what is ultimately idolatry. And the result of any such willful engagement is suffering.
Discouragement
Loneliness
Distress
Angry
Confusion
Resentment
How often are these the chains that weigh us down and weary our souls in the waiting? It is this state of emotional imprisonment that keeps us from experiencing God’s goodness.
It is here, I lack the ability to respond rationally.
Emotions muddle my consistency of trusting that
God‘s plan is much greater than I can see.
Here, I place God’s truths on trial,
As my head and my heart refuse to reconcile.
The Willful and Weary
As we step in the following 6 verses of our text in Psalm 107, we will see a similar story of those whose willfulness produced affliction and weariness was the result of resistance to God’s Word.
The author writes,
"Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,
prisoners in affliction and in irons,
for they had rebelled against the words of God,
and spurned the counsel of the Most High.
So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor;
they fell down, with none to help.
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
and burst their bonds apart.
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
For he shatters the doors of bronze
and cuts in two the bars of iron."
This story is one that challenges my soul to test and examine my ways, as the prophet Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations 3. For much like the weary prisoner, I too have become embittered with God in my waiting, I too have resisted God’s guidance and become weary in my attempts to break the bonds of my emotional distress.
Through the truths of this retelling, I pray we will name the weariness within our hearts, become more aware of how self-reliance produces spiritual suffering, and embrace the freedom found in surrendering to God’s steadfast love.
1. Distrust often leads us to dark spaces
“Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,
prisoners in affliction and in irons,”
In verse 10 we are given the setting of our second story. It is here the psalmist introduces those, in their resistance to God’s direction, became prisoners of affliction. This was a historical reference of the Israelites, who, by their willfulness against the Lord time and time again, fell into captivity due to their rebellion.
I know I can relate to this imagery in my own life. Often the waiting feels much like darkness. My inability to see prompts my soul to seek security outside of God's sufficiency. Additionally, my distrust in God’s direction leads me to discouragement and emotional distress. The phrase “shadow of death” mentioned here also helps us connect with the emotional implications of darkness. This poetic description of “Sheol”, is defined as a place of silence, death, and deep distress.
Oh, how often our distrust in divine dependency leads us to such dark places. I think of the Israelites as they came to the red sea, fleeing from their captivity in Egypt. Instead of placing their trust in the Lord, who had shown His power through plagues, they cry out in fear as Pharaoh's army approached saying,
“What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?
Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone;
let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better
for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”(Exodus 14:12)
As I read this narrative, I cannot help but think of how I tend to desire certainty over God’s sovereignty, foreknowledge over complete freedom. This distortion of distrust fuels our fears and blinds us to God’s power to part the seas and strengthen our souls.
Much like the Israelites, if our distrust is not dealt with it can lead to spiritual conflict.
2. Self-reliance gives way to spiritual conflict
“for they had rebelled against the words of God,
and spurned the counsel of the Most High.
So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor;
they fell down, with none to help.”
Here in verses 11 and 12, we read of how the root of self-sufficiency leads to a place of spiritual conflict. As we see in the Israelites' story throughout the Old Testament, their distrust often led to self-reliance and this willfulness was what ultimately distorted their view of God.
Within my spiritual journey, I have seen how easy it is to question God’s goodness and dismiss God’s directions when faced with discouragement or disappointments.
My willingness to trust, when weakened by this world, always resorts to self-reliance.
This is where spiritual conflict arises. Between our heart’s convictions and current emotional restrictions, we begin to question the very truth that God has said to be true.
“The space between what’s next and
all that is now is breaking me.
It is here, I begin to question my sustainability.
Asking God, “What is wrong with me?
And why does this space between often feel as though you have forsaken me.”
Have you ever felt this way? Struggling to see how your current season could be "God caring for you"?
Friend, here is what I am learning in the waiting.
It is not God's perceived distance but my willful resistance that clouds God’s deliverance. It is my choice of self-sufficiency that weakens my sustainability and it is my lack of willingness that denies God’s kindness.
3. Surrender is where we have to start
“Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
and burst their bonds apart.”
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
For he shatters the doors of bronze
and cuts in two the bars of iron.”
The ultimate truth found in these verses comes to a simple yet significant conclusion.
We must surrender.
Much like the position of the Wander, the Weary also find their rest in coming to the end of themselves and seeking to surrender their sufficiency for God’s sovereignty.
Moses calls the Israelites to this same posture in their distress and discouragement of waiting for God’s deliverance. He says,
“Fear not, stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord,
which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today,
you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”
Exodus 14:13-14
What I am coming to find in the spaces of waiting is that these are times I am called to not give way to the weariness that is grown in distrust but rather to stand firm in the faithfulness of my heavenly Father, who fights for me.
This is Surrender: To trust in the truth of God’s character despite the darkness of our present day. To reorient our souls to remain steadfast in the sight of struggle and to cry out for deliverance to the only One who has the power to call us our of darkness into glorious light (I Peter 2:9-10).
My we begin to pray as David did in Psalm 23,
"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,they comfort me..."(v.4)
Friends, may these truths enable us to walk through the valleys of deep distress, knowing that we do not wait without hope. In the assurance of God’s resurrection power, may we anticipate the coming glory of our Lord and Savior who will break the bonds of weariness once and for all.
"Dear weary soul, take heart,
You can trust the one who died for you!" -Unknown