Ready, Set, Wait.

Waiting.

One of my least favorite activities.

I will much prefer to walk an extra half-mile than have to wait to cross a street.

Or jump in a shorter self checkout line with an overflowing cart and a one-year-old crying for more crackers while I know full well he ate the last one 3 minutes ago, than wait in a longer line with a cashier.

If I’m not moving forward, I’m usually struggling.

But, regardless of my best efforts to avoid it, a large portion of my walk with Christ involves waiting on Him, His way, and His timing.

And I know I can’t be alone in this! So for the next couple of posts, I want to dive into what it looks like to wait well.

The Bible is full of stories of people who’ve failed in waiting on God’s plan. And I’m thankful for it! Because I am constantly in need of these reminders.

One particular story of a man’s life has really impacted the way I respond to God asking me to wait. It’s the story of Saul.

In 1 Samuel, the people of Israel beg to have a king to rule over them to be like the other nations around them. God tells Samuel, who was a prophet and mouthpiece of God at this time, to anoint Saul as king of Israel. So, in chapter 10 he does so, and then he gives Saul instructions on what to do next.

Next post, we’ll look deeper into all that Samuel tells Saul to do. But this week, I’d like to focus on his very last command.

And at the end of his instructions Samuel tells Saul:

“Then go down before me to Gilgal. And behold, I am coming to you to offer burnt offerings and to sacrifice peace offerings. Seven days you shall wait, until I come to you and show you what you shall do.” 1 Samuel 10:8 (ESV)

Samuel’s instructions for Saul to follow were clear. He was to go to Gilgal, and wait seven days until Samuel came to him.

Seems simple enough.

Except a lot can happen in the span of a week.

During this waiting period, Saul and the Israelites found themselves at the brink of an impending battle against the Philistines.

This was a dire situation for the brand new king. There was no avoiding this fight with the Philistines. Just before this, Saul’s son, Jonathan, defeated a group of Philistine troops and it says that now “Israel had become a stench to the Philistines.” (1 Samuel 13:4)

Now the Philistines were looking to get revenge for their loss to the Israelites.

The Israelites were in trouble, and they knew it:

“When the men of Israel saw that they were in trouble (For the people were hard pressed), the people hid themselves in holes and in rocks and in tombs and in cisterns, and some Hebrews crossed the fords of the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. Saul was still at Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling.” 1 Samuel 13:6-7 (ESV)

The situation had become fear-driven chaos.

So, Saul decided to take matters into his own hands.

^“He waited seven days, the time appointed by Samuel. But Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and the people were scattering from him. ⁹ So Saul said, “Bring the burnt offering here to me, and the peace offerings.” And he offered the burnt offering. ¹⁰ As soon as he had finished offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came. And Saul went out to meet him and greet him. ¹¹ Samuel said, “What have you done?” And Saul said, “When I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come within the days appointed, and that the Philistines had mustered at Michmash, ¹² I said, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the favor of the Lord.’ So I forced myself, and offered the burnt offering.” ¹³ And Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the Lord your God, with which he commanded you. For then the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever.” 1 Samuel 13:8-13 (ESV)

Saul thought he knew the steps of what needed to happen before this battle began if he was going to come out successful.

But, in his eagerness to get what he wanted, he lost sight of following God’s direction on how he was supposed to get there.

Samuel told him to wait for him and he’d come. He even told him it would be 7 days. But as soon as 7 days hit and he still saw no sign of Samuel, Saul decided he’d just do it himself.

He disobeyed God’s way.

And then Samuel comes walking onto the scene. Instead of praising him for trying to make it happen himself, Samuel tells Saul, “You have done foolishly.”

Why was what he did so foolish? Because he had asked for help from the Lord?

No.

Because he did not follow what God had told him to do.

When the discomfort of waiting on God’s way to happen fell way to his impatience, Saul didn’t handle his position as king the way God directed him to, and instead forced his own way.

Back in Christmastime, our Christmas tree was filled with ornaments. Some linked with precious memories, some gifted to us from friends or family, and others that have become a tradition to put on our tree since we got married and we no longer remember where it even came from anymore.

Right in the center at 4-year-old’s eye level, there was a small football ornament hanging that Ace loved to look at. Most of our ornaments in his reach this past year were plastic and pretty much disaster-proof, but this one was glass. He just loved it so much I decided to keep it in his sight.

Some days the draw of the shiny football got to Ace and the need to hold it in his own hands was just too irresistible. From time to time, I’d catch him taking the football off the tree.

“Be very careful, Ace.” I’d remind him, “That’s not a ball to play with, it’s an ornament. It will break if you throw it!”

Eventually, we made a rule with him that he could hold the football ornament if he sat on the couch with me or dad there with him to help him handle it the right way.

And he did pretty well following this rule for a time.

Then, one day I was washing some dishes in the kitchen while the boys played in the living room.

And I heard a SMASH.

I instantly had a pretty good idea of what it was.

Sure enough, I walked into the living room to find wide-eyed Ace standing on the couch staring at the football ornament shattered into tiny pieces all over the floor.

I asked Ace what happened and he ran to get his actual football from the other room. (He’s creative about reenacting scenes even if he can’t quite tell us in his own words yet.) He came back and put his fingers on the laces and pretended to throw it, and then threw his hands up in the air as if in total shock that the glass football shattered like it did.

He was sad that the beloved ornament was now broken and gone, but what caught my attention was how shocked he was. To him, this glass football looked like any other football he had held before. So, he handled it like he handles a regular ball meant for throwing.

He knew it was wrong not to wait for me like I had asked him to. But, the fact that this glass one shattered on the floor was shocking to him.

I think we do that a lot when we think we know how to handle a situation even though God has asked us to stop and wait for His way.

The longer we wait without seeing any forward movement, the more we get impatient and convinced that our own way will be sufficient. And sometimes, we see our plans shatter to the floor and realize too late that God was right in asking us to wait for His way.

When God asks us to wait, He not only knows exactly how to handle what we’re walking through. He is also fully aware of how we would handle the situation if we acted in our own way. So, when He tells us to wait instead of moving forward with what we think would work well in the situation, He’s trying to save us from a disaster we would create.

But we need to come to a point where we trust His way over our own ideas.

Sometimes that involves cleaning up shards of glass from the floor as evidence of our impatience and distrust, and reminding us it’s always better to trust His way next time.

Saul did this when he thought the only thing standing in his way of victory was an offering that he could figure out how to do on his own.

But the point wasn’t for him to watch Samuel do a ritual.

God was teaching Saul to wait on Him. Showing him what it looked like to be a king who did things God’s way instead of his own.

If Saul had chosen to endure the discomfort of waiting and obeyed God’s direction, his trust in following God’s way to lead the people of Israel would have been astronomically strengthened after seeing Samuel come through and victory come as he followed God’s direction even while it looked like a chaotic mess.

Eventually, the more we choose to listen to God’s command to wait on His timing, the more we’ll get to see Him come through, and we’ll learn to trust Him enough to simply put the situation in His safe hands and wait for Him to move.

But unfortunately for Saul, He missed out on all of that. Instead, if you read on, God chose to work through someone else to bring the Israelites to victory.

All he did was show his people that he acts out of impulse rather than trusting in God’s commands and following Him.

It’s easy to look at Saul’s weakness and move on. But, how often do we see this kind of action in ourselves? While we’re waiting on God to come through on something we know He promised us. We start to think we know how to handle a situation, like Ace was convinced he knew how to handle a glass football, but all it does is leave our plans in shattered ruins, and we miss out on seeing God move in our lives and deepening our trust in Him.

As I read through this story in Saul’s life, God impressed on my heart that we are all waiting for something. Whatever that something is will look differently between people and change as phases of life come and go with time.

But, we’re constantly waiting on God for something. And we always will be until we’re perfectly with Jesus.

So instead of uncomfortably pushing through all our periods of waiting until they’re over, or continually falling into our own impatience above God’s guidance to wait on Him, let’s take time to learn how to wait on God well and purposefully.

From one of His children to another,

Christi