Do you find it hard to stand still? To wait upon the Lord? As a mother of five, I’ve always dreamed about standing still, or sitting still. But when I do have to stand still, to wait upon God, I get restless. 

Right now, many of us have lost jobs, or we are now working from home, and we can’t visit anywhere due to COVID-19. In fact, if you live in Metropolitan Melbourne, you can’t travel more than 5km from your home for shopping or exercise. New Zealand has also returned to restrictions too.

So there are many of us who are standing still, to some extent. There’s not much we can do except to wait for either a vaccine to be developed, or for the number of positive cases to go down so we can move about safely, and hope there isn’t another wave of infections.

Are you starting to feel restless? Impatient? 

Has God ever brought you to a point where you can’t go forward or backward, and there is nothing that you can do about it but just to wait for Him to open a door? A sermon I recently heard started with the question: What do you do when there is nothing that you can do? 

In our busy modern culture we like action. We want things done quickly. With so much technology at our fingertips, it actually encourages our impatience. But what if you act hastily, or you forget to seek God for wisdom and guidance. Are you in the habit of reacting so quickly that you forget to enquire of the Lord first?  

The alternative of action is to give up. Some of us may feel like throwing in the towel because we’ve been standing still for too long. We might feel that God has been holding out on us, and that it’s better to just give in and follow the ways of the world than try to remain faithful to God.

Or perhaps you may feel like giving up on praying for people because nothing has happened so far. Or to give up on your job because it’s hard to stay faithful to your principles in that workplace. 

So we either act hastily, or we give up. But what if there is a third option? How about standing still and waiting for God? In the Bible, we read a few occasions where God told His people to stand still: Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord (Exodus 14:13); Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth (Psalm 46:10). 

God is not the only one who tells us to stand still and wait. The Psalmist testifies too: For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation, For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him (Psalm 62:1,5 ESV).

Despite these exhortations we still find it hard to wait upon God because it doesn’t suit our schedule, or our plans. And we don’t like to be kept waiting for too long. As in Victoria right now, where people are experiencing Stage 4 lockdown restrictions, and hundreds of thousands of people can’t go to work. So what do we do?

Let’s take encouragement from Isaiah 64:4: No eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him . God is great in wisdom and He stands with us in the waiting. Even when we have to stand still for a very long time, God is for us and with us, working out His perfect plan and purposes in our lives. 

John Piper says: “Waiting on the Lord is the opposite of running ahead of the Lord, and it’s the opposite of bailing out on the Lord. It’s staying at your appointed place while he says ‘stay’, or it’s going at his appointed pace when he says ‘go’. It’s not impetuous, and it’s not despairing.”

We can be like David and remind ourselves, “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” (Psalm 27:14).

Lord, forgive me for failing to wait upon You. Forgive me for my impatience. Help me to remember that because You love me, Your plans for me are perfect. Help me to use this time waiting wisely, to develop patience, and seek You more in prayer and praise. Amen.