But soon they forgot what he had done and did not wait for his plan to unfold. In the desert they gave in to their craving …
Psalm 106:13-14
A sizeable portion of life in Jesus is spent waiting for “his plan to unfold”. The problem is that we don’t know what the details of that plan are. Some of us are waiting on healing. Others are waiting for freedom from debt. Some are waiting on healed relationships. Others are waiting on a job that doesn’t drain the life out of them. I imagine that all of us are waiting on sanctification in some area of our lives. This kind of waiting is what it means to persevere.
I have come to believe that perseverance is one of the quintessential Christian virtues. Make no mistake about it … persevering, plodding, faithful steps are certainly valid expressions of faith and love for the Lord. When we “wait for Him” by continuing to do what we know He calls us to do while we wait for His plans to unfold (which we often don’t know fully), we are surely telling Him that we love Him and by our choice to “stay right here with Him” we are expressing our faith in His faithfulness.
These two verses in Psalm 106 highlight two forces that conspire to make our waiting and persevering come to an end: our forgetfulness and our sinful desires (our “craving” as it says in the passage).
When we are in dark moments of uncertainty, we must remember that He has been faithful before. He has brought us through the darkness before. He has shown Himself faithful and able to deliver His people for countless generations. Remembering His past faithful deeds and hanging on to that knowledge enables us to wait in the uncertainty of this moment.
Finally, we must war against our own cravings that would lust for a quick, easy resolution to an issue that God may think needs some time to build the necessary character in us. If we listen to our cravings, we may try to escape the uncertainty of a strained relationship through covenant breaking rather than waiting on the Lord. If we listen to our cravings, we may try to escape financial debt through dishonest gain of some kind, or conversely we may try to escape the worry of debt through the mind-numbing experience of buying more and more that we can’t afford. However it may be expressed in our lives as individuals, we must clearly understand and be warned that listening to our fleshly, sinful desires is most definitely a refusal to wait for “His plan to unfold.”
May we all wait for Him faithfully.
– Deryk Pritchard, Preacher
