Psalm 40:1

"I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry."

As I begin a series of posts on Psalm 40, what a wonderful revelation right off the bat: The waiting is normal! Nothing has gone wrong!

EXPECT DELAYS, says the road sign. Why? Because the Lord is inept? Because He is remote, and I should convert to Deism? No, because He respects His own creation and is interested in me as a person. God wants to teach me faith, not zap me with it. So there must be careful training rather than a lobotomy under anesthesia. I like the way L.B. Cowman puts it in Streams in the Desert:

". . . God is ever seeking to teach us the way of faith, and in our training in the faith life, there must be room for the trial of faith, the discipline of faith, the patience of faith, the courage of faith, and often many stages are passed before we really realize what is the end of faith, namely, the victory of faith."

This "roominess" is the waiting.

There is waiting because God's wants relationship with you, not a "one-nighter." Paul Miller writes in A Praying Life:

"People often talk about prayer as it is disconnected from what God is doing in their lives. But we are actors in his drama, listening for our lines, quieting our hearts so we can hear the voice of the Playwright. You can't have a good story without tension and conflict, without things going wrong. Unanswered prayers create some of the tensions in the story God is weaving in our lives. When we realize this, we want to know what God is doing. What pattern is God weaving?"

Waiting times are also times of self-discovery. And what dreadful things I have discovered about myself. When I did not receive answers immediately, I turned on God faster than a frog snaps up a dragonfly. I said, "There, you see! Prayer doesn't work!" Or if I was feeling more pious, I simply confessed my discouragement and let it go at that. Neither of these is the waiting God requires or blesses. They are both from the chair of "un-faith," as Francis Schaeffer puts it. To know this about myself is useful information. If I have heart disease I want to know it. Then I can deal with it.

The "waiting" God blesses is a waiting that is full of positive thoughts toward Him. It is not a doubtful waiting; it is not even a neutral waiting. It strains to see the potential in every new development. The blacker a situation appears, the more this kind of waiting expects that God is up to something big. "I believe that I shall see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living" (Psalm 27:13). Say that out loud to yourself at least once a day.

Godly waiting also says so to other people. It doesn't whine (even pious whining) to our neighbor over coffee, but it declares publicly "I'm waiting for God. I know He'll show up."

What tales of dying to self lie behind the simple word "patiently"? Patience is very busy because it keeps refuting the devil's interpretation of the lag time. It keeps "casting down [his] arguments," and "bringing every thought into captivity" (2 Corinthians 10:5). It takes no prisoners. It coddles no treason.

I don't know why it is God's way to let the widow keep banging on the judge's door day after day till he answers. I don't know why our repetitions are important to Him. Maybe they are important for what they do in us, more than what they do for Him. Waiting changes us as we keep at it. We may have begun praying with casualness. As time goes on and urgency increases in our hearts, our praying becomes more fervent and we grow in the Spirit fruit of patience.

When well-meaning people tell us that perhaps the Lord doesn't answer certain kinds of prayers anymore, we must stand firm and put the word of God above the word of men. God's Word says: "Nothing is impossible with God" (Luke 1:37). I would rather let God close a door on me than some man.

To read Andrée Seu's series on Psalm 40, click here.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.