LETTERS: IF WE DON'T WAIT, THE LORD WILL

To the editor:

Recently as I prayed for wisdom about a matter, the only answer I received from the Lord was wait. Wait for what? Wait upon the Lord was the reply. I searched the pages of my Bible like someone searching in the dictionary for the definition of a word. I kept getting the same answer: Wait upon the Lord. As I waited, I informed him that we're living in times when people don't like to wait on anything. "You know how I am about waiting," I explained to God. "I don't even like waiting for my letters to appear in the newspaper. People will run over you at intersections when driving a car, because they don't want to wait." The Lord's answer remained the same: Wait.

As I waited, I started making what I considered to be really good suggestions to the Lord in prayer concerning the matter. "We could do this, or perhaps we could do that. How do you like this idea?" I felt that I had to be doing something. I couldn't just sit and wait. I had heard my pastor say, "Do what you can do, and the Lord will do what you can't do." I think what my pastor said was a very wise statement, and I agree with it. Surely God did not intend for me to just wait and pray. Nevertheless, that seemed to be the Lord's message loud and clear. After I accepted God's answer and felt content to just wait, the Lord began speaking to me about waiting upon him."Have you ever wondered why the most supernatural miracles in people's lives seem to happen in the very last tragic seconds?" God asked. "It is in these moments they have decided to release all of their own efforts and surrender to me. It is only then that I can do a work in them. Have you observed in the past when you were so worried about different matters, and doing everything you could think of but nothing which would help, that handing it over to me was the only answer? It was the only answer from the beginning as well as the end."The the Lord spoke something to me I found rather profound. "If we don't wait, God will." If we refuse to hear his voice when God says to wait and pray and trust in him, if we try to take on the world and battle sin on our own or try to accomplish anything without the Lord, God will wait until we have exhausted every effort and have come to the realization that we can do nothing unless the Lord is the one doing it. Rejoice. He's alive.

RON FARROW

Cape Girardeau