Waiting on God is not always correct
I can hear you all now. What? Are you kidding me?
The Bible says we are to wait on him. Of course that is completely correct, but like everything else in Christianity and the Bible, you have to follow the procedure correctly or all bets are off.
It would be like trying to make Brownies but not following one of the steps of the recipe like not putting in baking Soda, or not pre-heating the oven. In order for the Brownies to turn out correctly, you have to follow the recipe and do the steps in the correct order. it is the same with your walk with God, you have to do the things God says the way he tells you to do them, and in the correct order.
One of the biggies is waiting on him. We are supposed to not take on things for ourselves and wait on Him. Many seem to make the mistake of waiting on Him when he never said to do that. For example, as Christians, we want to do the right thing, and we want to do what God tells us to do. We often want and expect God to part the heavens like in that movie, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".
In the movie, God parts the clouds of heaven and tells the Monty Python crew exactly what he wants them to do. We often expect God to do this same thing in our lives. When this does not happen, we become paralyzed and do nothing at all mainly out of fear that we will do something wrong and God will wack us up aside our head in disgust and say something like: "You idiot, that is not what I told you to do."
These days God does not often give such specific and detailed instructions to people. He still can and does, but more often than not, he does not. Either God gives more general instructions like Find a job, or says nothing. When I say he says nothing, Im saying that he already gave us instructions to follow and He expects us to do those.
Things like; Feed the Hungry, Clothe the Naked, Take care of your family (Find a job, Make Money to support them) and other such commands that you will find in the Bible.
Maybe God told you to go find a job to support your family and the Kingdom, but he just did not tell you what job to get. In these instances, God does not provide the details and expects us to figure out the specifics on our own. Sure, he will step in as needed, and often does, but if God told us everything we should do in our lives, exactly when and where to do them, we would not learn. Its like my daughter. She is 15 now.
I sometimes just give her the generalities of what to do, and expect her to figure out the where, when and how. I do this because she will be an adult soon and needs to learn to do things on her own. If I told her all the details, she would not have to use her noodle to decide things on her own, she would not learn how to do these things for herself, and she would remain a child. We are God's children and he treats us much the same.
Another mistake we make is to not recognize God's Voice. He does not often speak to us directly. His normal MO is to use others, and other methods to speak to us. Friends, Family, the Bible, Movies, Songs and most anything else He chooses to use to get through to us. Even Donkeys!
Here is a story about a man that was determined he had to wait on God instead of accept the help God was sending to him through others.
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There was once a man named Bob, who lived in his home in a valley. One day a terrible flood came. The flood waters rose up to the eaves of his home. So Bob climbed out his window and up to his roof. As Bob sat on his roof shivering in the rain, he prayed;
“God please help me. Please rescue me.”
The very next instant he heard a man shouting from below. The shout below came from a man in a rowboat. When the man saw Bob, he yelled up to him to come down so he could take him to safety. But Bob yelled down to the man in the boat.
“I am waiting on God to help me.”
So, reluctantly, the man rowed away.
Again Bob prayed.
“God please help me. Please rescue me.”
The very next instant he heard a man shouting from above. The shout came from a man in a helicopter. When the man saw Bob, he yelled down to him that he would send him down a ladder so he could take him to safety. Bob yelled up to the man in the helicopter.
“I cannot go with you. I am waiting on God to help me.”
So, reluctantly, the man flew away.
Again Bob prayed.
“God please help me. Please rescue me.”
The flood waters were getting higher and higher and were now almost to the top of the roof, lapping Bob’s feet. Once again Bob cried out to God.
“God please help me. Please rescue me. If you don’t come soon, I will surely die”
The very next instant he heard a man shouting from below. The shout came from a man in a speed boat. The man in the boat shouted up to Bob and told him to jump down and he would take him to safety. But Bob yelled down to the man in the boat.
“I am waiting on God to help me.”
So, reluctantly, the man sped away.
A few minutes later, the waters rose up over Bob’s head and he drowned. When he arrived in heaven he demanded an audience with God. When he talked to God face to face, he was very angry and said;
“See here God. I was always taught that you answer prayer, but I prayed and you did not answer me”
God replied;
“Yes I did answer you my son. I sent two boats and a helicopter. What more did you want?”
The moral of the story is that God works through people. In other words, He works through us.
You and me.
Everyone has problems and issues that they want God to resolve for them. We go to God for money, food, clothes, a job etc…
We pray to God and ask, but we expect God to part the clouds and drop the answer from heaven in a cute little parachute with a note on it that reads “(Phillip), this is your answer from God.”
Just like Bob in our story above, we pray expectantly, but we don’t recognize His answer when it comes. In the story above, Bob prayed, but Bob expected God to come down physically from heaven and personally save him.