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Thoughts on Waiting, Patience, and Slowing Down

If you’re anything like me, it can be hard to wait on the Lord, be patient in the Lord’s timing, and just slow down enough to listen to the Lord in a culture that is consumed with distractions and connectedness.

But the Lord certainly speaks of it often in His Word. The Lord met me in Psalm 37 the other day, with these thoughts.

PSALM 37:3-11

3 Trust in the LORD, and do good;

dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.

  • Dwelling is not a fast pace thing. It Speaks of remaining. 

  • Friendship takes time. Relationship comes from time spent with an individual…So should it be with faithfulness

4  Delight yourself in the LORD,

and he will give you the desires of your heart.

  • We’re reminded to delight in the Lord, because sometimes the things that should stoke our delight, can become mundane duty when we hurry. 

5  Commit your way to the LORD;

trust in him, and he will act.

  • To commit is to make a commitment. To remain dedicated to. 

  • He WILL act (promise) — Trust in Him (challenge)

6 He will bring forth your righteousness as the light,

and your justice as the noonday.

  • Righteousness will come, just as the sun comes up, if we do these things. 

  • Justice will come just as lunchtime comes, if we do these things. 

7  Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;

fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, 

over the man who carries out evil devices!

  • We’re told to be still because everything in our culture tells us to get moving!

  • We turn toward lesser things often (netflix, TV, social media, iPhone, etc.) because we don’t have to wait for these things. But the BEST things come from patient waiting. 

  • And quit worrying about how others are prospering and I’m not. 

8 Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!

Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.

  • Stop worrying about everything. It bottles up and will explode. 

9 For the evildoers shall be cut off,

but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land.

  • Patient waiting will lead to a bountiful harvest. 

10  In just a little while, the wicked will be no more;

though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there.

  • Little while = not yet. keep waiting. keep befriending faithfulness

  • And God is big enough to handle the wicked. Don’t spend meaningless time worrying about them.

11  But the meek shall inherit the land

and delight themselves in abundant peace.

  • These kind of people will find peace…and it will be a lot of it.

Know it.
Preach it to yourself.
Let it inform your heart today.
Follow Jesus. He didn’t get what he wanted when it came to the cross, but he loved feircly and led the way in kindness, compassion, worship, and following God.

He promises peace.
Perhaps you can find that peace in the places you wouldn’t expect it, by waiting on the Lord today.

Take A Step: Gather to Glorify

Listen to my message from Gospel City Church, called “Take A Step: Gather to Glorify.”

This is so much of what I want to say as a Worship Pastor in a local church. I don’t know that I thought I’d get the opportunity to teach this one day, as opposed to doing all I could to model it in worship leading, but I left this past weekend thankful for this great truth that the Lord has been writing on my heart for over 10 years. When I stepped into ministry and had the desire to pursue being a worship pastor, the Lord put a mission on my heart to help the local church produce passionate, contagious worshipers of Jesus. I had to stop and thank the Lord after preaching this message, because it’s only by His grace that I’d ever be able to stand in front of others and help highlight what the Bible says about biblical worship for the glory of God.

Very thankful for many resources and people who have shaped my philosophy of worship over the years…I pray that I’ll continue to grow in understanding, and that my heart will be shaped more and more into the kind of worshiper the Lord seeks.

The Resizing Power of Worshiping Jesus

Worship helps resize me.

Worship helps realign my soul to the God of the universe.

I think it can be easy to forget His faithfulness. To forget his promises.

I forget.

Do you forget?

I thank God that when I forget, He’s persistent in correcting my course. Let’s not forget all that our God has done. Let’s not forget what He promises for those who fix their eyes on Him.

Belief informs our hearts. A Christ informed heart ignites a Christ exalting worship, in any season of life.

Read And Share

One awesome vehicle for invoking a response in worship that we’ve been doing for the last year or so at my church is what we’ve begun to call “Read and Share.” If worship is a response to truth, then the truth of God’s Word should be stirring our hearts all week long and then overflow as we gather together.

So during the service when we’re doing read and share, we invite the congregation to find those verses that they’ve been holding onto that week and give them the opportunity to share them with someone in the room. For sure there are people there who don’t have a verse come to mind, or maybe they had an off week, or maybe they’ve never read their Bible in a personal time! We put verses on the screen and encourage everyone to find a verse and to simply read it to someone else.

I know it’s uncomfortable for some, but I also believe that it calls us to be in God’s Word, reminds us to always have an answer for the hope within us, and it practices the sharing of God’s Word among the body. All wins!

Watch an example of one of the times we’ve recently done it:

5 Ways Worship Leaders Can Prepare Their Heart in the Easter Hustle

My heart was shaped in processing and thinking through these 5 ways for worship leaders to prepare their hearts during Holy Week. 

  1. Prepare your heart away from the planning.
  2. Prepare your heart in the thick of the planning.
  3. Prepare your heart in the darkness of the cross. 
  4. Prepare your heart in the overwhelming joy of the resurrection.
  5. Prepare your heart as you make Holy Week impactful for your family.  

"The Weight Of Glory" by C.S.Lewis

I ran across my notes from when I read "The Weight Of Glory" by C.S.L a couple years ago. I was so blessed reading the quotes that I wrote down. Praying one inspires or challenges you today. 

"The Weight of Glory" - C.S.Lewis; various quotes :

In heaven our God will tell us well done good and faithful servant. He will show his approval, like a Father shows approval to His child...Think about that day, "when our redeemed soul will understand that she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. There will be no room for vanity then. She will be free from the miserable illusion that it is her doing. With no taint of what we should now call self-approval she will most innocently rejoice in the thing that God has made her to be, and in that moment which heals her old inferiority complex forever will also drown her pride deeper than Prospero's book." 

"All our merely natural activities will be accepted, if they are offered to God, even the humblest; and all of them, even the noblest, will be sinful if they are not."

 "The intellectual life is not the only 'way' to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be the appointed road for us...Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered."  (Jesus, is the only way to God the Father. Intellectuals have found this truism in finding that intellectualism, science, etc...is not enough. Faith by grace, and a recognition of sin and need for forgiveness saves. Philosophy that points people to that which philosophy will never provide, REDEMPTION, is vital in the intellectual circles of the world.) 

 "Spiritual things are spiritually discerned,The spiritual man judges all things and is judged of none."

"In the New Testament, the Truth is incarnate...It is not an accidental resemblance that what, from the point of view of being, is stated in the form 'God became Man,' should involve, from the point of view of human knowledge, the statement 'myth became fact.' The essential meaning of all things came down from 'heaven' of myth to the 'earth' of history. In so doing, it partly emptied itself of its glory as Christ emptied Himself of His glory to be man." 

 "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything."

"His presence, the interaction between Him and us, must always, be the overwhelmingly dominant factor in the life we are to lead within the Body, and any conception of Christian fellowship which does not mean primarily fellowship with Him is out of court." 

"The sacrifice of selfish privacy which is daily demanded of us is daily repaid a hundredfold in the true growth of personality which the life of the Body encourages...Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality." 

ON FORGIVENESS:

"The trouble is that what we call 'asking God's forgiveness' very often really consists in asking God to accept our excuses...In this, we shall go away imagining we have repented and been forgiven when all that has really happened is that we have satisfied ourselves with our own excuses...All the real excusing, He will do." 

"Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it. That, and only that is forgiveness, and that we can always have from God if we ask for it." 

"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."