Write About Now

Recently my dad wrote a great editorial on waiting which included research from a Wall Street Journal article about employees forced to wait on the actions or decisions of a boss. The situation negatively affected office morale, and the article discusses “workers who accomplished little or quit altogether because of waits they were forced to endure by slow-to-respond higher-ups.”

The article goes on to say the people often quit too soon, and dad makes the connection to our spiritual life. In contrast to the experience of these dispirited workers, he writes, waiting on God is different because the Bible connects it with hope.

That’s true, but when it comes to certain prayers I’m more like the frustrated employees. I’ve prayed for several things—God honoring, kingdom-building things—for years. That’s a short time compared to the petitions of many, but it’s long enough to prompt a reassessment. Perhaps my Boss has decided and acted on these prayers—and the answer is no. If so, there’s little reason to stubbornly persist with them.

Even if He hasn’t yet acted, it seems long-term unanswered prayer can actually be harmful. Proverbs 13 tells us “hope deferred makes the heart sick.” If years of praying are met only with years of deferment, is continuing to hope really the wisest course? At what point does hope become a liability?

For me, right now. I used to pray with the “name it and claim it” mentality, and assumed that sincere prayers for good things would eventually be answered. Waiting “in expectation,” as David writes in Psalm 5, meant biding my time until God saw it my way and gave me the job, insight, or relationship I wanted.

Problem is, the answers I’ve specified may or may not be on God’s agenda. It’s one thing to wait for the best—it’s quite another to assume I know what that is.

Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I’ve prayed the same prayers for ten years and nothing’s changed—except me. So I’m taking that as the answer, retiring those prayers, and replacing them with requests for the patience and grace to accept any outcome. Those character qualities may not be what I originally wanted, but they’re worth waiting for.