Hope Waits

Yesterday’s journey ended with the Woman at the Well in a dilemma. God told her to wait.

So what would “hope” look like in her immediate context? Hoping in God, she would choose delayed gratification over immediate gratification. She would accept her singleness, clinging to God and trusting His timing.

Hope waits. Hope is the refusal to demand heaven now.

Waiting Defined

If hope leads to waiting, what then is waiting? Waiting is trusting God’s future provision without working to provide for myself. Waiting is refusing to take over while refusing to give up.

Waiting refuses self-rescue.

You’ll never see waiting as one of the stages of grieving in any research study because it is not natural in a fallen world. It is supernatural.

I do a lot of ministry to ministers. A couple of years ago I was working with a pastor and his wife (we’ll call them Tim and Terri) in a situation where the pastor was fired, frankly, without cause. No moral failure. No doctrinal error. This pastor had been at the church for over 20 years. It was the only home his three teenage daughters knew.

We worked through the candor, complaint, cry, and comfort process. When it came time for waiting, he battled. Everything in him wanted, almost desperately needed, to regroup. He was ready to take a church, any church, on the rebound. He was ready to take a job, any job, on the rebound.

However, I counseled him to wait before making any long-term commitments to a new ministry position because I sensed that he was motivated by a desire for self-rescue, for regrouping, not by a desire to wait on God.

Waiting Biblically Supported

Was my counsel godly or ungodly? Wise or foolish? Too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly good? Can we find biblical support for the principle of waiting rather than regrouping?

We’ll be back tomorrow for answers to these important questions.