Wait on the Lord

Scripture:"Wait on the Lord; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord!" - Psalm 27:14

I heard that Oral Roberts once said, "the calling from God is more important then life itself" I must admit, I am awed by this statement, but when you think about it, what God wants for our lives should be more important then anything we might want including life itself. He gave us our lives and if we are believing Christians Paul tells us "we are not our own, we were bought with a price." (1 Corinthians 6:19,20) I know that I truly do want what God wants for me and though I have never been in a place where life itself has been a choice, I do struggle almost everyday asking God what He wants me to do.

Now sometimes this means considering the small things that come into our lives everyday, like deciding to do or not do something because it does or does not glorify God. Other times it is contemplating big things that require much thought and prayer before even doing anything at all. In both cases, and all those in between, we should always consider what God wants for us to do, yet we usually spend a lot of time thinking about what we want to do.

The first commandment says in Exodus 20 "thou shalt have no other gods before me." Now it seems pretty clear, from verse 5 that we should not "bow down" or "serve" other gods like statues or idols, but my question to you is, isn't anything we put before God, or what God wants, an idol or an "other god"? Some would disagree. What about if we don't know what God wants us to do? Can't we do what we want to do then? I am not so convinced. In this example, it would seem that if we are willing to do something that God has not told us what to do and we do it anyways, then we are really saying that since God did not tell us then we are not responsbile for doing something He did not want us to do because He did not tell us not to do it. But at the same time I think we are also saying that since we wanted to do it and God did not tell us either way, and we do it, we are saying that we are willing to risk putting something ahead of what God might want by doing it anyways. This sounds like idolatry to me.

I don't know about you, but I could do with a good dose of patience every now and then. I think that when we want to do something and don't know what God wants, that God intentionally does not answer our prayers as fast as we might want because He wants us to really consider if we are really doing something for Him or if we are wanting to do something that we hope He will what us to do. One rule of thumb that has stayed with me, though I do not always follow it like I should, is "if you don't know, don't do it" and I think this is applicable to doing something that we don't know if it is God's will or not.

So what should be do if we don't know what God wants us to do? "Wait, I say, on the Lord!"

Prayer Request:
That God would give us both patience to wait on Him when we want to know what to do or not do, and wisdom to know what is His will so that we will know what to do or not do.

Prayer:
Dear Lord,
We don't always know what is your will and we are constantly moving forward on things that we should not because we did now wait patiently to find out what your will is. Help us Lord. Give us wisdom to know your will and Patience to wait for it.