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You aren’t in prison, but you may be infertile or inactive or in limbo
or in between jobs or in search of health, help, a house, or a spouse.
.
Are you in God’s waiting room? If so, here is what you need to know: while you wait, God works. “My Father is always at His work, Jesus said.” God never twiddles His thumbs. He never stops. He takes no vacations. He rested on the seventh day of creation but got back to work on the eighth and hasn’t stopped since.
.
Max
Lucado
So here I sit in the waiting room.
The receptionist
took my name, recorded my insurance data, and gestured to a chair. “Please have a seat. We will call you when
the doctor is ready.”
I look around.
A mother holds a sleeping baby.
A fellow dressed in a suit thumbs through
Time magazine.
A woman with a newspaper looks at her
watch, sighs, and continues the task of the hour: waiting.
The waiting room.
Not the examination room. That’s down the
hall.
Not the consultation room. That’s on the
other side of the wall.
Not the treatment room. Exams,
consultations, and treatments all come later.
The task at hand is the name of the room:
the waiting room.
We in the waiting room understand our
assignment: to wait.
We don’t treat each other.
I don’t ask the nurse for a stethoscope or
blood pressure cuff.
I don’t pull up a
chair next to the woman with the newspaper and say, “Tell me what prescriptions you are taking.”
That’s the job of the nurse. My job is to
wait. So I do.
Can’t say that I like it. Time moves like
an Alaskan glacier.
The clock ticks every five minutes, not
every second.
Someone pressed the pause button. Life in
slo-mo.
We don’t like to wait.
We are the giddyup generation. We weave
through traffic, looking for the faster lane.
We frown at the person who takes eleven
items into the ten-item express checkout.
We drum our fingers
while the song downloads or the microwave heats our coffee. “Come on, come on.”
We want six-pack abs in ten minutes and
minute rice in thirty seconds. We don’t like to wait. Not on the doctor, the
traffic, or the pizza.
Not on God?
Take a moment and look around you. Do you
realize where we sit? This planet is God’s waiting room.
The young couple in the corner? Waiting to
get pregnant.
The fellow with the briefcase? He has
résumés all over the country, waiting on work.
The elderly woman with the cane? A widow.
Been waiting a year for one tearless day.
Waiting. Waiting on God to give, help,
heal.
Waiting on God to come. We indwell the land
betwixt prayer offered and prayer answered.
The land of waiting.
If anyone knew the furniture of God’s
waiting room, Joseph did.
One problem with reading his story is its
brevity.
We can read the Genesis account from start
to finish in less than an hour, which gives the impression that all these
challenges took place before breakfast one morning.
We’d be wiser to pace our reading over a
couple of decades.
Take Genesis 37 into a dry cistern, and sit
there for a couple of hours while the sun beats down.
Recite the first verse of Genesis 39 over
and over for a couple of months:
Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt.
Joseph needed at least this much time to
walk the 750 miles from Dothan to Thebes.
Then there was the day or days or weeks on
the auction block.
Add to that probably a decade in Potiphar’s
house, supervising the servants, doing his master’s bidding, learning Egyptian.
Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. Time moves
slowly in a foreign land.
And time stands still in a prison.
Joseph had asked the butler to put in a
good word for him.
“Remember me when it is well with you, and please show
kindness to me; make mention of me to Pharaoh, and get me out of this house… I
have done nothing here that they should put me into the dungeon.” — Genesis 40:14-15
We can almost hear
the butler reply, “Certainly, I will
mention you to Pharaoh. First chance I get. You’ll be hearing from me.”
Joseph hurried back to his cell and
collected his belongings. He wanted to be ready when the call came.
A day passed. Then two. Then a week… a
month. Six months. No word.
As it turned out,
“Pharaoh’s cup-bearer… promptly forgot all about
Joseph, never giving him another thought.” — Genesis 40:23 NLT
On the page of your Bible, the uninked
space between that verse and the next is scarcely wider than a hair ribbon.
It takes your eyes only a split second to
see it. Yet it took Joseph two years to experience it.
Genesis 41 starts like this:
“Two years passed and Pharaoh had a dream.” — Genesis 41:1 MSG
Two years! Twenty-four months of silence.
One hundred and four weeks of waiting.
Seven hundred and thirty days of wondering.
Two thousand one hundred and ninety meals
alone.
Seventeen thousand five hundred and twenty
hours of listening for God yet hearing nothing but silence.
Plenty of time to grow bitter, cynical,
angry. Folks have given up on God for lesser reasons in shorter times.
Not Joseph. On a day that began like any
other, he heard a stirring at the dungeon entrance.
Loud, impatient
voices demanded, “We are here for the
Hebrew! Pharaoh wants the Hebrew!”
Joseph looked up
from his corner to see the prison master, white-faced and stammering. “Get up! Hurry, get up!”
Two guards from the court were on his
heels.
Joseph remembered them from his days in
Potiphar’s service.
They took him by the elbows and marched him
out of the hole.
He squinted at the brilliant sunlight. They
walked him across a courtyard into a room.
Attendants flocked around him. They removed
his soiled clothing, washed his body, and shaved his beard.
They dressed him in a white robe and new
sandals. The guards reappeared and walked him into the throne room.
And so it was that Joseph and Pharaoh
looked into each other’s eyes for the first time.
The king hadn’t slept well the night
before. Dreams troubled his rest.
He heard of
Joseph’s skill. “They say you can
interpret dreams. My counselors are mute as stones. Can you help me?”
Joseph’s last two encounters hadn’t ended
so well.
Mrs. Potiphar lied about him. The butler
forgot about him.
In both cases Joseph had mentioned the name
of God. Perhaps he should hedge his bets and keep his faith under wraps.
He didn’t.
“Not I, but God. God will set Pharaoh’s mind at ease.” — Genesis 41:16 MSG
Joseph emerged from his prison cell
bragging on God. Jail time didn’t devastate his faith; it deepened it.
And you?
You aren’t in prison, but you may be
infertile or inactive or in limbo or in between jobs or in search of health,
help, a house, or a spouse.
Are you in God’s waiting room? If so, here
is what you need to know: while you wait, God works.
“My Father is always at His work, Jesus said.” — John 5:17 NIV
God never twiddles His thumbs. He never
stops. He takes no vacations.
He rested on the seventh day of creation
but got back to work on the eighth and hasn’t stopped since. Just because you
are idle, don’t assume God is.
Joseph’s story appeared to stall out in
chapter 40. Our hero was in shackles. The train was off the tracks. History was
in a holding pattern.
But while Joseph was waiting, God was
working. He assembled the characters.
God placed the butler in Joseph’s care. He
stirred the sleep of the king with odd dreams.
He confused Pharaoh’s counselors. And at
just the right time, God called Joseph to duty.
He’s working for
you as well. “Be still, and know that I
am God” reads the sign on God’s waiting room wall.
You can be glad because God is good. You
can be still because He is active. You can rest because He is busy.
What if you give up? Lose faith? Walk away?
Don’t.
For Heaven’s sake, don’t.
All of Heaven is warring on your behalf.
Above and around you at this very instant, God’s messengers are at work.
Keep waiting.
“Those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall
run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.” —
Isaiah 40:31
Fresh strength. Renewed vigor. Legs that
don’t grow weary.
Delight yourself in God, and He will bring
rest to your soul.
You’ll get through this waiting room season
just fine. Pay careful note, and you will detect the most wonderful surprise.
The doctor will
step out of his office and take the seat next to yours. “Just thought I’d keep you company while you are waiting.”
Not every physician will do that, but yours
will. After all, He is the Great Physician.
Your
Turn
I’m in a waiting season. How about you?
Sometimes it seems like I pray and I look
for an answer… and nothing is happening.
Is that true for you, too?
But, even though we do not see it, God is
on the move working on our behalf!
Let’s wait on Him and let Him renew our
strength.
Come share your thoughts on waiting on our blog. We want to hear from you! ~ Laurie McClure, Faith.Full
Excerpted with permission from You’ll Get Through This by Max Lucado.
Max Lucado
Since
entering the ministry in 1978, Max Lucado has served churches in Miami,
Florida; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and San Antonio, Texas. He currently serves as
Senior Minister of Oak Hills Church in San Antonio. He is America’s bestselling
inspirational author with more than 130 million books in print. Follow his
website at MaxLucado.com Facebook.com/MaxLucado Instagram.com/MaxLucado
Twitter.com/MaxLucado
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