Waiting on the Lord Devo #1

"Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. BE STILL before the Lord and wait patiently for him..." Psalm 37:4-7

This entire passage has been one of my long-time favorties. I love the promises of the Lord to his children.

As some of you know, we have been trying to get pregnant for over a year now. I know there are some girls in the church struggling with the same thing and unless you've been there you can't understand the fear, the pain and the emotional struggle to understand "why?". However, my faith would be nothing if I didn't turn to God in this time and KNOW that he is faithful, he is just and his timing is PERFECT.

This passage is especially poignent to my situation; to "BE STILL" before the Lord and to wait patiently for him" is the complete opposite of my natural tendencies. I like to talk about things, to get them off my chest even though I don't think God means literally to be quiet here. I do think he means to sit quietly before him in Spirit, in the quietness of our hearts so he can speak to us instead of trying to do things ourselves. Even though the pslam is talking about the wicked succeeding and not to worry about that but wait patiently for God to clear our names, etc, I also take the verse that talks about making "your righteousness to shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun" to mean that he WILL come, he WILL answer and his perfect will is going to be done if we let him.

The second part of that verse is to WAIT on the Lord. I looked this up on an online commentary and the definition they gave about waiting was "Be submissive-avoid petulance and murmerings, anger and rash doing." Goodness. Submission for me is impossible without God's help. We have learned our entire lives (especially as women through the media and examples in our lives, etc) to be strong, self-sufficient and independent. I went through Judy's Bible study about loving your husband, and submission was the underlying key topic. This is one of my weak points and something I struggle with tremedously, as the Lord knows. I came from a long line of "strong" independent women who aren't afraid to make their opinions known even when it might be better in some situations to be quiet. So being a "quiet, gentle" woman is not something that comes naturally to me but something I truly strive for. That's a whole other topic in itself!

I think the Lord is teaching me huge lessons through this waiting period in our lives. 1) To "consider it pure joy, my brothers whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perserverance. Perserverance must finish it's work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." James 1:2-4

AND

2) Waiting in faith in him (because he WILL come through as he says he's going to-even if it's not with the answer we want) and how to wait patiently for things. We are to trust "on" him to do the things that we cannot...just as the recent passage we studied in Matthew 6:27 talks about "Who by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" All we do is drive ourselves crazy (and everyone else around us!) when truly what God wants us to do is stop, quiet our hearts, draw close to him and hear his voice. Instead of worrying and thinking negative thoughts, we should "delight ourselves in the Lord" for then he will give us the desires of our hearts.

Isn't is amazing how the entire Bible ties together? These in-depth studies are amazing to me because it allows things to "click" in my mind. The bottom line in the things that we desire or seek after is that our number one focus should be seeking the kingdom of God. Then our sweet Jesus, who loves us so much and can't wait to shower blessings on us, will add all of the other things he knows we need and desire to our lives (Matt 6:33). But he has to be first in our hearts I believe in order to fully give us these tremendous blessings.

My prayer is that I can truly wait on the Lord during this time in my life; I hope that others of you that are going through similar situations are encouraged by this study! May God always be glorified.

Blessings! Shanna