Waiting Room

You parents –
if your children ask for a loaf of bread,
do you give them a stone instead?
Matthew 9:9 NLT
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I don’t know what YOU do when the “answer” isn’t clear. I panic and try to research the options to death. But the really tricky questions don’t always have a “right” and a “wrong” answer. Sometimes it’s a right, right, or right. Sometimes we are blessed with too many great options!

I was just talking to someone today about one of those “right” vs. “right” choices they’ve been offered. I asked him how it’s going – has he reached a decision yet. And his answer was much deeper than the setting and speed of the conversation prepared me for. He said:

“No, no decision yet. I’m just waiting until the answer becomes clear.“

Maybe the average person wouldn’t have been blown away by that answer, but I was. How simple is that?! It’s the level of simple that a pregnancy test is: are we pregnant or not? You don’t go running around stressing out about the answer, trying to guess if you are or not. You pee on a stick and wait three minutes for a plus or minus sign to appear. Why aren’t we that reliant on God with our decisions? Why is it so challenging to leave it in God’s hands? If we ask him to make the God-honoring answer clear to us, won’t he? Jesus said in the Matthew:

⁹“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹¹If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9-11 NLT)

So, what decisions are weighing on you today? What is making you scurry, stress and sweat? Say it out loud. If God hasn’t made the answer clear to you today, then today is not the day to choose. The author of Psalm 27:14 said it best:

“Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord.”
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Dear Lord, I don’t know what it is about a decision that makes faith fly out the window. Maybe it’s my lack of faith – maybe I’m afraid that I won’t hear your answer correctly or I won’t have the courage to do what you want me to. Whatever it is, I want to wait on you instead. Help my fears to be calmed and my heart to rest, confident that you will give me the answers in your time. Amen.