The Waiting Room

Aah, the joys of the waiting room!

I'm being sarcastic! We all know how annoying the waiting room can be, especially since we don't know how long we are going to be there. There are always little things around to entertain you, but not for long. There's only so much daytime television you can take, and there's only so many magazines you can read before you're ready to go up to the receptionist and ask, "am I next?"

Take a moment and think of the way waiting rooms are designed. They are not mean't for anything long-term. The assumption is the people waiting there will only be there momentarily. This is why there are only 5 magazines spread across the table, and this is why you have to tolerate watching whatever channel the receptionist turned to that morning. You can't tune in to what you want to watch and you certainly know not to expect cable at these places. Why would they pay for cable when the people waiting will only be there momentarily? Let's just say you're thirsty or hungry. Don't expect for there to be a chef waiting to ask you what you want to eat, and you surely can't expect for there to be a buffet of some kind. All you have is a vending machine with drinks and a vending machine with snacks--yes snacks. Only expect to see potato chips and other foods meant to only fill you up temporarily.

This is all because the assumption is you are not going to be in a waiting room for an extended period of time. You wait for your appointment, meet with that person, receive what was pending, and move on to better things.

You all know I'm going somewhere with this right?

Some of you are in your waiting room. You know God promised to do all these great things for you, but right now it may seem like you are only getting half of what you were promised--if even that much. You know you are supposed to be a millionaire, but right now you are working a minimum wage job. You know that you are going to be a business owner, but now you are working for a boss with a power trip. You know you are supposed to have a career, but you are in the unemployment line. Whatever the case is, you find yourself having to fight off depression. You know you are supposed to be in a better place someday and now you are asking God why aren't you in this place today?

The waiting room has it's purpose, and once you really take a look at God's reasoning, you will have another reason to praise Him!

It's never enough!

When we are in the waiting room spiritually, satan tries to get us to look at what we don't have rather than what we do have. It's the "never enough attack." He wants us to feel like God isn't giving us enough, and that causes us to desire to go elsewhere to make things happen ourselves.

Let's look at the Israelites. Before God delivered them from Egypt, they were slaves. They were abused and seen as the scum of the earth by the Egyptians. They cried out to God for deliverance, and finally God raised up Moses and Aaron to be His vessels to deliver and guide them out of Egypt.

We all know the story. However most movie depictions end after the Egyptians are destroyed in the Red Sea. Those who merely depend of the movie to tell the story rather than the Bible assume that everyone lived happily ever after. But the transition from slavery to the promised land wasn't quite that fluid. God basically brought them from their distress to take them to a transitional place--the waiting room.

God placed many of you in the waiting room after He stepped in and saved you. Some of you don't know you are in the waiting room and for that reason you are expecting more than you have. Satan is trying to convince you to walk out of the waiting room to get things done. But if you were capable of getting things done yourself, you wouldn't have needed God to pull you out of the situation you were in. So keep reading!

The 40 years in the wilderness was the Israelites' time in the waiting room, and it wasn't a pleasant wait! The Israelites whined, complained, and rebelled.

Exodus 16:2-3 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

Two things the Israelites are doing in this statement. Number one they are doubting God's ability. They forgot the miracles God performed in front of their very eyes. Many times we can forget the times God saved us by declaring that our situation is hopeless. The other fatal flaw occurred when the Israelites began to take their situation for granted. They looked to their times of slavery and began to remember it like it never was. It was that urge to get back to something familiar. Have you ever begin to miss an ex, but when you see that person you think, "man what was I thinking?" In times of uncertainty it's not uncommon to want to cling to something just because it's familiar.

This is why I would backslide and turn to hip-hop/R&B music. During trials I wanted to cling onto something familiar, and through listening to it I would think of all of the good times I had when that song came out. I would think of the times my friends and I blasted it in the car, high school memories, you name it. But I never thought of the ways my self-esteem suffered because I aimed to look like the singer performing the song, or the ways I was a slave to lust due to the sexual implications in the music. Both of these demons I suffered with until God delivered me. I rejoiced and praised Him, but as soon as things felt uncertain, I was back to my past--remembering things like it never was.

Why is it that the Israelites can praise God for their deliverance one day and express anger at God for rescuing them another day?

The "never enough" attack creeps in slowly and grows and festers within moments. It starts off with a simple thought, "why can't I be at a certain place in my life?" From there it spirals. How you deal with this is what separates the Joshuas from the rebellious Israelites left behind in the desert.

Patience is a Virtue

Are you going to wait for God or are you going to try to take matters into your own hands? Let's learn from our ancestor's mistakes. When Moses was on the mountain with God, the Israelites began to get impatient. Feeling looked over, they begin to turn to other things for satisfaction. They came to Moses' brother Aaron and said,

Exodus 32:23 “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.”

The hardest part about the waiting room is not knowing. You can be there five minutes or five years. To drive the point even more, satan will try to tempt us during these periods by dangling the familiar things in our faces. Before the Israelites were delivered from Egypt, they worshipped the same gods and often practiced the same rituals as the Egyptians. This is what they were comfortable with. So when faced with the unknown, they went back to their old ways.

Aaron answered them,

Exodus 32:2 “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

They replaced God with the golden calf. This may seem outrageous to some, but it isn't far from what we do today. Think about it, in what ways have we not glorified God? A common example is our careers. The moment you begin to think your job is the reason your bills are paid, the reason there's food on the table every night, you introduced a golden calf into your heart. The Israelites decided to serve a creation rather than the creator. They gave a lifeless object the credit for what God did for them. 

Exodus 32:6 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.

Basically the Israelites created something false in their hearts to replace God and used it as a reason to go back to their old ways. They indulged in revelry, meaning partying. Taking that into a contemporary perspective, this can mean making a boyfriend or girlfriend your focus instead of God. Whenever we place anything in our hearts in place of God, it will lead to sin. This is true if we are talking about your crush to even your volunteer job for the needy. Good intentions mean nothing if God isn't center. Rebellion and idolatry are linked. We must stay in place by keeping God in His rightful place--central in our hearts.

Colossians 3:5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
Beware of what you let in your ear

The waiting room is a very vulnerable time for you spiritually. Sometimes you can feel bipolar in the spirit, because one moment you feel great and the next moment you feel like there's no hope. The key is making sure that your hope is in the right place.

Are you in this for God, or for what God can give you?

The beauty of the waiting room is you have an opportunity to build your love for God on a healthy foundation. As seen in Job 2, out of jealousy satan tried to convince God the only reason why Job stayed true to God was because of the great things He's done.

Job 1:8 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

Job 1:9-11 “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

Satan has told God the same thing about you. God looks at you with nothing but joy and admiration, fueling satan's anger towards you. So satan responds by trying to convince God that we don't love Him for the right reasons. He tries to tell God we only love Him because of the amazing things He does for us.

How many of us are proving satan right by pouting and slipping away from God when things don't move the way we want it to?

We have all been there. Let's be real. I noticed every time I allowed myself to drift away from God through trials, it had something to do with what I let in my spirit. This leads me to the big point of this section.

We must beware of prosperity doctrines. Satan is infiltrating the church with teachings of prosperity and riches. The pastors of these type of churches often preach about God paying your bills, and they want you to associate worship with material blessings. Pastors of these churches end up raising up people who would rather seek God's hand rather than His face. The whole sermon you hear about you getting out of the waiting room, and you are given a "glimpse" of the worldly prizes God has for you. This leaves the congregation gassed up off of material promises and pending worldly blessings, leaving them like a person stealing gold from a sinking ship. The things of this world will perish. If you take at look at the times we are living in this is more evident.

Here's the bigger problem with propority doctrines. You begin to see God as your "yes man," your "genie in a bottle-- But what do you do when those blessings don't come when you would like it to?

Remember the first point. We must keep God in His rightful place in our hearts. In order to do so, we must look at our situation with our spiritual eyes rather than our natural eyes. To our natural eyes our situation may look hopeless. There's no way you can elevated from this. Thoughts like these run through your mind all day. But God is a supernatural God. We must continue to read our bibles everyday to remember the God we serve.

That's just it. Cling to God's word and spend time with God during this wait period in your life. I promise you, God will always give you the patience and the endurance to stay put in the waiting room until it's your time. But if we turn to other things to fill us during this time it will leave us empty and wanting more. Not to mention it will prolong your wait. So we must be careful what we put in our ears.

The Beauty of the Waiting Room

It's hard being in the waiting room because many of us like to have some kind of control over our lives. But in the waiting room, control is impossible. You don't know when it's your turn to move forward. You can't control the things you are given and the environment of the waiting room. You have limited options. This alone drives many of us crazy! But that very fact that drives us up a wall during this time in our lives is also a beautiful thing. In fact it may be where you and God have some of your most intimate moments.

The miracles God did for Israel during their time the wilderness was talked about for many generations, even by Jesus Christ and Apostle Paul. Thanks to God's word we continue to talk about it today and remember the mighty God we serve through these records. As I said earlier the wilderness was Israel's waiting room. When God first rescued them from Egypt, they knew Him for the wonders He performed there, but they didn't know Him for who He is. It was until their time in the waiting  room where God showed them how caring He is and how much He loved them. Although the Israelites walked in deserts for 40 years, the scorpions and snakes of the desert were unable to touch them, enemies were unheard of, and God literally fed them daily by raining food down from Heaven. Even though they were in the driest of climates, God made sure they have water to drink, and even though they had to walk, God made sure their shoes never wore down. He even got up off of His throne and guided them by walking ahead of the pack, protecting and leading through His Holy cloud and His appoint leaders Moses and Aaron. God literally provided EVERYTHING for them.

Take a look at your situation. Yes, you could have a little more money to buy somethings you want, yes dating sounds great right about now, yes you feel like you should be promoted right now and yes you think you should be at a better place right now. But at what you do have! You have a God who loves you so much that He makes sure you have everything you need. You may not have an overflow of possessions in the waiting room, but you have just enough material and an overflow of God's presence. So don't let satan place seeds of discontent and ungratefulness in your hearts. Satan pulled this trick with Eve in the garden of Eden but convincing her that the garden full of fruits God gave her wasn't enough. He told her that the forbidden fruit also had to be hers as well. This led her to sin and caused her to miss out. Satan pulled this same trick with the Israelites by telling them that their waiting room of peace was worse than the hell they suffered in during that torment in Egypt. So many went back and many perished.

Stay right where you are. The waiting room is a time of peace and a time of healing. It's the chance for God to get you where He needs you so He can pour into you and prepare you for the new chapters ahead. Don't let satan cause you to reject your rescuer and run back to the enslaver. A waiting room is temporary, no matter how long it may seem, and it's a time when God's ear is the closest to you. So talk to Him as Moses did on the mountain. Ask Him to show Himself to you as Moses did. There's nothing God will hold back is you come to Him wanting to get to know Him. Many Israelites let the devil convince them that waiting for God isn't worth it. Satan knows God will never give up on us so instead he tries to make us give up on God. Many of the Israelites did give up on God and for that reason many of them didn't make it. But the few who seen it through reached new heights in their relationship with God as well as their status in the world. They never had to look back. Think about it. Can you really remember many experiences you've had in the waiting rooms at the doctors office, dmv, etc.? The wait seems like forever then, but now it is a faint memory. Don't let what will be a faint memory someday ruin what God wants for you future days. Stay in place and stay near to Him.

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