Waiting Room of Prayer

Photo Courtesy of KarlGatland

The waiting room. Probably the last place any person wants to find themselves. It is an intriguing mixture of hope and despair depending on your current disposition. For the patient, there is hope that a doctor is waiting to cure them, heal their ailments or prescribe some sense of relief from the constant aches and pains. On the other end, if you are the friend or relative, you are waiting, pacing the floor to hear an answer...anything that assures you that your loved one is alright. If you are a child, it is a scary place as you watch the clock tick-toc by counting down to those dreadful needles. It all depends on where you are at.

I find that our prayer lives often reflect the same:

1. For some of us, prayer is a time of hope, patiently waiting for God to heal us of both physical and spiritual ailments. We know whatever answer the physician gives, it is the best possible answer and solution.
2. For others, prayer is frustratingly unfamiliar...almost like it is a waste of our time. We become numb, banging our heads against the wall until we realize that we are the only ones with a head ache. Our prayers stop at the ceiling (or so it seems) and we grow impatient waiting for the physician's answer.
3. There are those of us who take trepidatious steps across the threshold of God's throne because we wallow in the shameful ebb of our own sins, waiting to hear some awful made up news like "god doesn't want you". So far down the rabbit hole that we talk ourselves out of the waiting room altogether, willing to suffer with a lifelong disease than have the surgery to go through with it. 
4. Still some think the trip is too expensive. We falsely believe that we have to fix our own ailments for God to accept us, writing our own insurance policy before we approach him.

Truthfully reader, I have found myself in all these places. Deep within my soul though, I long for the first scenario, waiting in patience and trusting completely what He has to say. Isaiah understood this when he wrote:

but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (40:31 ESV)

Where do you find yourself?