Words, Watching and Waiting

The waiting theme continues. This week, God reminded me that He’d spoken to me earlier in the year through Micah chapter 7 verse 7, which says, “And so I will watch for the Lord; I will wait confidently for the God of my salvation.”

Last week, I was having lunch with an old friend who had been a student on one of our YWAM training courses in Paisley, and she asked me, “Have you ever done a word study on the word wait?” A “word study” is a skill that we sometimes teach the students in our child and youth ministry schools, and in the pre-school teachers’ training course. Our goal is to help students build their ministry with young people firmly upon the Word of God, and so we teach them several different ways of studying the Bible for themselves. A word study, or topical study, involves finding out the original Greek or Hebrew meanings of words that are used in the Bible text.

Well, I hadn’t in fact done a word study on waiting, and so I decided to follow her suggestion and begin that Bible study this week. The two words used here in Micah 7:7 (watching and waiting) are the Hebrew verbs tsâphâh and yâchal. Both of them express the idea of trusting God completely and waiting patiently and expectantly for Him to speak or act. But it was interesting to note that the Hebrew dictionary also defined tsâphâh as, to lean forward, to peer into the distance, to look up or to keep watch.

These twin ideas of looking up and also peering into the distance suggested to me that really trusting God sometimes also includes waiting for things that can’t yet be seen - and keeping on looking up to the Lord during that waiting time. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to wait for a train or bus, or perhaps for a person who was coming to pick you up at the airport. I guess it’s a lot easier to wait for that bus or person if you can already see them coming a little further up the road. The waiting is more open ended if you have to “peer into the distance” and can’t yet see them coming. It probably requires more trust, as you need to believe, for example, that the person has remembered to come and pick you up as they promised they would.

For some reason, it made me also think about growing tomatoes in my garden in Cape Town – a process that would usually begin around this time of year. Waiting for the fruit to be ready is a lot easier when you can actually see the tomatoes getting a little bit bigger and a little bit riper every day. The waiting’s a bit more uncertain when you can’t yet see any blossoms or any sign of the fruit that will come. Sometimes one or more of the plants would just wither away and never come to anything at all. It struck me that waiting confidently for God, or for God’s timing, involves believing that He will be true to His word; that He will not be like a person who forgets to pick you up, or like a tomato plant that fails to bear fruit. Because we know the unfailing character of God – that He is totally faithful in every situation and circumstance - we can wait with confidence, knowing that He is already “on His way” with the things that we can’t yet see.

I have been astounded to see how much favour there is and how many doors God seems to be opening for me here in Scotland at the moment. When He spoke to me earlier this year through a verse that said, “Look to the rock from which you were hewn and the quarry from which you were cut,” I knew that He was speaking about my returning to some sort of ministry roots and origins… and that this would also include being back in my home country of Scotland for a season. But somehow I never expected that He would be giving me quite so many ministry opportunities during my time here. I’ve had the privilege in recent weeks of speaking at a number of church services and ladies’ meetings, as well as linking in with some youth ministry initiatives that I was involved with in the past, before moving to South Africa.

And so there’s been a real sense of fulfilment during these weeks: a sense that “waiting” is not about hanging around doing nothing, but is about being faithful and obedient to God in every season and situation - whether that place He’s put you in is your permanent home or a place that you’ll be in for only a few weeks, months or years. Thanks for praying with me as I continue “waiting” and enjoying the things that God has for me during this time. I pray that you’ll also know clearly which doors He’s opening for you in this season of your life.