Worship in the waiting

I know I have not written for a while.  A lot has been going on and I have not felt able to write on here until I knew for certain what God wanted me to do. As things become clearer I will begin to map my journey.

In the mean time my gorgeous husband has written this blog post....  Worship in the waiting :)  Hope you enjoy it.


Recently I've been struck by the story of the golden calf.  You know the one.  God sends Moses to lead His people out of Egypt.  God sends ten plagues until Pharaoh let's them go and the Egyptians give them gold items to take with them.  Then they get delivered across the red sea.  And fed manna in the desert and water from the rock.  They then come to Mount Sinai where Moses heads up to commune with God whilst

'When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, "Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him."' (Ex 32:1 NIV)

Now I confess when I read this story I tend to think "How daft can they be?  After all God has done for them - how could they do such a stupid thing?".  So when I read it I quietly distance myself (like the Pharisee from the tax collector) and say I would never do such a thing.  And I don't think I'm the only one...

Why then is it natural for us to think this?  Well we know what's happening.  We can see the full picture (and hindsight is a wonderful thing) - we know Moses is alive and well and chatting with God and that God will keep all the promises He made to them.

The question is: if we didn't know this, would our reaction change?

Let's look closer at the story then.  What caused them to do this?  Notice what happened in Ex 32:1.  Things were taking longer than expected and so they turned to worship something else.

Does that happen in our lives?  Does God give us some great plans, we set off on them and feel such an exhilaration as we embark on the journey, we are going for God, our prayer life is exploding, we're on a high...but then things start to take longer than expected and after a while we start to lose heart.  After not too much longer we start filling our time with something other than God - after all, He's not delivered on His promises (at least in the time frame we had in mind) so maybe He's a bit busy or we're not important to Him, or we misheard or maybe....He can't be trusted.

So what do we do?  If God can't be trusted then where do we go to get our comfort?  And in a short while we are turning to something else to satisfy us and have started worshipping something other than God in the waiting...

Sound familiar?  It is for me.

One of the best verses quoted out of context has to be:

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jer 29:11 NIV)

When did He say this? Well the people of Judah had just been exiled to Babylon and there were prophets saying that they would soon be restored back to their land.  But God puts them right and says don't listen to them - you will be here for 70 years first - so get used to it - build houses and settle down. This verse is calling us to trust God when He has ordained an extended period of waiting for He is faithful.

I think this song from Aaron Keyes captures the heart of this.


As he says about his album:

"In our stillness, He will be exalted. In our worship, He wars. In our waiting, He works"

God is at work in the waiting, He hasn't changed His mind (Num 23:19).  There is purpose in the waiting (and much has to do with our character development which is why it's always longer than we expect).  Can we remain faithful and seek comfort in Him and trust Him for the timing of His promises?