“Waiting on the Lord” is almost considered an extra spiritual gift in Christian circles. Now hear me out, there are times when the Lord calls us to very specific seasons of waiting. I trust that you will know when you are in that, because of wise counsel and being in the Word.
But I believe we “wait on the Lord” in more areas than He wants us to sometimes. It’s becoming our new flippant and overused phrase when we don’t know how to answer someone or are paralyzed from analysis.
Oh, I don’t want to make a decision right now, because I’m waiting on the Lord.
Or
I’m not sure I can help, because I need to hear from the Lord.
What we are really doing is just delaying our obedience, because we start to take the Lord’s graciousness and goodness for granted.
It took a little phrase from a third grade Bible curriculum on the story of Abraham to convict me on the issue.
“Delayed obedience is disobedience.”
Ouch. Even after I said it to my third graders, they had that look on their face like they had just got hit with some truth. They came up with a myriad of examples where they delayed their obedience. After seeing it written on my board for a week or so, nagging me and looming in the distance, I finally realized I think there are some areas we delay our obedience. Or I know I do. And frankly, it’s just disobedience.
Here are a few times when waiting isn’t the spiritual virtue we tout, but is disobedience:
1) When you don’t use your spiritual gifts…
The Lord has placed us all here divinely in 2016. If you are a believer, then you were given spiritual gifts to fulfill the Great Commission at this time. Period. The problem is oftentimes most believers don’t use their gifts. They wait.
We wait for the perfect opportunity to come along and use it, instead wasting divine opportunities along the way. We wait, because we don’t know what our gifts are. We wait, because we think there are enough other people already doing it, and that we’re not needed.
Guess what? There is no perfect opportunity. You have a spiritual gift. We can help you find it. And there are far from enough people jumping in and working for the Lord. There are too few actually.
There are so many things to be done to further the kingdom and spread the Gospel around this earth. Romans 12:6a says, “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let use them…” If you don’t have an urgency to get involved, then start now. There are:
Homeless people to be fed and sheltered.
Sex trafficking victims to be rescued.
Unsaved people groups to be given the Gospel.
Church nursery kids to be held and played with.
Truthful and encouraging blogs to be written.