Pathways Press.com

Written by Mark Vroegop, a contemporary pastor and author. This is adapted from his book “Waiting Isn’t a Waste: The Surprising Comfort of Trusting God in the Uncertainties of Life.”

Every Christian is waiting. Most of us consider this reality from a personal vantage point. We individualize it. Perhaps there’s something in your life that you desire, but it’s been delayed. Or maybe there are painful circumstances that you long to see resolved, but you’re living in tension. Gaining personal perspective by embracing a different attitude about waiting is a good starting point. It’s where my journey began. I sensed a deep longing to grow in my understanding of waiting on God. …  waiting on God is essential for my spiritual growth.  Eventually, I realized that I wasn’t thinking broadly enough: Christians wait on God together. There’s something collective about waiting. Whether we realize it or not, we’re all waiting on God…While there may be different circumstances, intensities, or challenges, every Christian is presently living in some “gap land.” Waiting on God is the biblical and transformative baseline for the entire church. As a result, there’s an opportunity to help each other as we wait. Andrew Murray stokes the fire of this vision when he writes: “Oh! what will not the Church be able to do when her individual members learn to live their lives waiting on God, and when together, with all of self and the world sacrificed in the fire of love, they unite in waiting with one accord for the promise of the Father, once so gloriously fulfilled, but still unexhausted.^” One way we waste our waiting is by not realizing that God invites us to pursue it with other people, to integrate waiting into the normal life of the body of Christ. We need to wait on God together.

So Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. [Hebrews 9:28]