St. Peter's Church and World Outreach Center

In today’s fast paced society, filled with all sorts of technological toys, we’ve lost track of the valuable art of waiting.  Why have a one on one, telephone conversation – and dare I say a sit down, face to face conversation – when you can send a text? Why wait on the “snail mail” when you can send an email?  Rather than sitting down at a restaurant, we order “to go” from that same restaurant.  Rather than waiting for love to develop through courtship, we want to pick out “the one” and “believe God” to have them immediately fall in love with us and then drag them over the altar.  Who wants to wait for anything or anyone?  Is not everything available through the drive through or in a microwave minute? Well, there’s one thing that our technological toys and fast-paced life cannot and will not change, and that’s learning to wait on the Spirit of God to move in our lives.

The obsession we have with our toys and our microwave mentality has distracted us from seeking a true relationship with the living God.  However, no matter how anxious we are or how impatient and obnoxious we behave, He still requires us to wait for His presence before He shows Himself to us.  Two songs and a lukewarm prayer will not force Him to move any more than merely haphazardly “reciting” words from a page of what we call confessions.  It takes us sincerely going back to Him as our first love while patiently, obediently, and reverently waiting on Him on His terms, not our own.

In the Old Testament, they had to wait on the promise of the Holy Spirit.  But today, we have the manifestation of the promise and we often take it for granted.  Although He dwells within us through the “new birth”, we have to be filled with Him; renewed and refreshed, with an ever increasing flow and working of Him each and every day.  Like the early believers were told to “wait until they were endued and empowered by the Spirit of the Father and the Son” (Luke 24:49), we too must wait for the same empowerment.  Develop a lifestyle of true worship, prayer and living in His presence in order to draw out an anointing that will create a desire in others to want the same. We have to uncover the things that prevent us from pursuing a deep and intimate relationship with Him.  What are the little foxes – the little lies, attitudes and selfish, self-serving acts that hinder us from seeing God’s glory?

Are we truly being led by God – mastered, influenced and controlled by His Spirit; or are we simply trying to lead Him in the way we want to go?  Is our worship a true and sincere effort to lead us into the “secret place” where we wait on His presence so that we may know Him and make Him known to others; or is it a form of worship that is simply used for show?  Do we truly love and trust Him enough to wait on Him; or do we really think that we can handle it all on our own without Him?  You decide.