God’s been speaking to me about waiting recently – both waiting on Him and spending time with Him, but also what goes on when we wait. Interestingly, I’m speaking at church tomorrow on Acts 1:15-23, which is about the believers waiting in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit to fall. It’s actually amazing how much waiting there is in the bible when you get down to it!
Being a good evangelical, I came up with with 4 “T”s as to what a period of waiting might be about:
- Telling
Is God trying to tell us something? Perhaps about unconfessed sin or disobedience, or perhaps some other message.
- Timing
God has a plan, and perhaps the time is not yet right?
- Testing
Are we serious about what we’re asking?
- Training
Patience is a gift of the spirit (Gal 5:22) and part of the nature of God (e.e. Psalm 145: “The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love”.
One of the outcomes of A.’s and my personal period of waiting for her recovery is that we now spend 10 or 15 minutes every day just listening to God together – spending time with Him as a couple. I’m ashamed to admit it’s taken over 6 years of marriage to get this point! But there are amazing times – in only a few days of doing it, God has spoken to us, and even when he doesn’t say anything, I feel so much closer to Him and A. as a result. Our vicar was encouraging us to “drink together”, and I think we’re finally starting to do it.
On a different note, I’m very excited because I got the reading list from Trinity College yesterday. Utterly bamboozled by the modules to choose from and books to read, but I’m hugely excited. Hopefully I can borrow most off the library at work, or friends at church, but I’ve already ordered 2 that look like they would be very useful reference book. I guess I’ll need to start a folder to scribble down notes about each one!