Waiting:  Impatience and Doubt

Turn you to the strong hold, ye prisoners of hope: even to day do I declare [that] I will render double unto thee...Zech. 9:12

I often feel, as I do today, that I am locked in a prison, and that without hope.  There are many factors in my present life that form the walls and bars of that prison cell, which I inhabit.  To describe them specifically is not necessary here, as it is sufficient to just make mention of them.  I have waited so long, and endured so much from the enemies of my life, and am so weary, and even yet intimidated by their threats.  However, just moments ago I read a portion of the diary of a young missionary, who some years ago expressed similar doubts about the particular mission on which he had been sent by the Lord.  He was facing great discouragement at the writing of those words, and yet, very shortly thereafter, a fellow missionary asked this man to join him and a group of others to launch out on a particular venture.  This venture was an effort to contact a very savage group of people in the jungles of that region and present the word of the Gospel to them.  Although this young man was on the verge of quitting the mission work which he had been called to do in that area, he accepted the challenge by his fellow missionary. Shortly after he accepted the invitation to join these other men, they were all killed after making this initial contact with these primitive people.  The story goes on, in that the wife of one of these men later took her little daughter into the forest to find these savages and, having located them, lived amongst them for a period of time, eventually bringing at least some of them to salvation, and all of them to a peaceful, civilized way of life. 

Upon reading entry in this man’s diary in a book I am reading, tears came to my eyes.  They were tears of brokenness and of repentance toward God, who always proves Himself faithful in the plans He has for each of His children, including me.  These five slain men seemed, and actually were models of courage and love in the expenditure of their lives for the sake of those unbelieving inhabitants of a South American jungle.  Although they had at least one weapon with them during their encounter, they decided it best for them to be killed, rather than the natives, because they, themselves were ready for heaven, and the natives not.  And yet, for their valor for Christ, they were human, just as I am, and subject to like passions as I.  What an encouragement to me to read about this brother’s struggle of faith, and the soon triumph of it shortly thereafter his writing about it! 

Is there a release from this bondage to the drudgery of God’s will for my present life?  Will answers come to my prayers for deliverance from my current circumstances?  I am told that the delays to a man’s prayers are merely indicative of the fact that time is not yet ready for the full answers to them.  The pain and strain of waiting is, in God’s economy what makes me qualified to possess these answers.  Jesus faced the darkness of God’s silence, and soon came into the wonderful light of His approval and acceptance through the resurrection.  Likewise,  must every disciple die the death to self in order to experience a similar resurrection, both in this life, as well as in the next.  O, how misrepresented the Christian life is by many in the contemporary American churches!  I am so glad that He is with me and that there truly is a reward for my faith and obedience to Him.  May I somehow be an example of this to all with whom I have contact!  Amen

I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.  Ps. 40:1