What Are We Waiting For?

 ²⁹ Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Acts 4

Seems to me that the church spends lots of time “waiting on the Lord.” What are we waiting for? We are waiting for a healing, improvement in our finances, retirement, blessings. In the early church, the disciples were thrown in jail for speaking the word. They didn’t retreat to the upper room to “wait.” Instead, they prayed for enablement to “speak your word with great boldness.” They had been bold enough to end up in jail, yet they sought more boldness. They couldn’t shut up about their experience with Jesus. 

We complain about the marginalization of Christians, “persecution,” the commercialization of Christmas, the secularizing of society. We are impatient with God for not doing something, when we are failing to do what we were commanded to: speak the word with boldness. The problems we are experiencing in this world are a direct result of our failure to carry out the great commission. As Christians, we are “marginalized” because we fail to speak and act with conviction. We don’t live lives of love, that will make it clear to the world that we are His and that being His is the only thing that is worthwhile. 

Our silence and our impatient waiting arise from our failure to know Him. We don’t speak of what we have seen and heard because what we have seen and heard isn’t enough to compel us to speak. Our personal experience isn’t sufficient motivation. We don’t know HIm or spend the time with Him, to be so influenced that we can’t keep quiet. 

Our lack of experience with Him makes us unsure and timid. We are controlled by thoughts in the back of our minds that maybe our belief is something that isn’t real. What we are “waiting for” isn’t a bigger blessing or a relief from illness or financial struggle or perceived persecution. We are waiting for a life-changing experience with Him. That is there for the taking. What are we waiting for? We are waiting for more of Jesus.