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The Quotes page emerged several years ago from repeated requests to JDM for Junior's original quips, sayings, analects, brief commentary, even hilarious one-liners, to be compiled into a book or webpage. It is often commented how these concise remarks replay in the mind for years to come, giving simple humor or piercing perspective or new growth. All content here and sitewide is the intellectual and copyright property of JDM. All rights reserved.

Waiting on the Lord

(Part 1 of 2)

Why do we spend so much of our spiritual journey waiting on the Lord? Waiting on Him is one of the most uncomfortable, awkward, and sometimes flat-out heartbreaking, experiences in the born-again life. And yet, if you walk with God long enough, you will eventually find yourself in Heaven's waiting room. And if you walk with Him a little bit longer, you will find yourself in even more waiting rooms. Why? The explanation for our waiting is also an exhortation in our waiting--why we wait and how we wait. Let's simplify it down to the six most important.

Waiting rearranges what we value most. If we are honest, we enter difficult waiting seasons with some emotional hangups. Some "issues". Some weird habits. Some childish attitudes and behaviors. We want certain things more than we want the best things. God is a terrible father if He leaves us like this.
We need waiting periods, with God and with ourselves, to simply grow up. To go from boys, emotionally and mentally, to men of maturity, fortitude, and stoicism. To go from girls, emotionally and mentally, to women of maturity, wisdom, and balance. This can only happen if our gut-level values are forced to change and rearrange. Waiting, especially waiting in pain, has unspeakable power to make us prioritize the best things. Peripheral, less important wants find their rightful place in the margin as God's highest priorities slide to the center. Read Daniel 11:33-35.

Waiting proves faith through earnest seeking. The only way to charm God and invoke His intervention is through faith expressed in earnest seeking. Hebrews 11:6 says (NIV), And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. The Old Testament equivalent of Hebrews 11:6 is 2Chronicles 16:9 (NKJV): For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him...
In both of these scriptures hurt and lack are never considered or even mentioned, only faith worked upward through an earnest and loyal seeking of God. In practical terms, this means the basic spiritual habits with increased urgency and zeal: going deeper and wider in prayer, fasting, singing to Him, going deeper and wider in the Scriptures.
When God sees this faith via earnest seeking in our waiting, meaningful things start to happen. He speaks. He acts. We grow and change at the gut level, down in our psychological foundations. Help or relief appears, often from unusual sources. New wisdom and spiritual intelligence dawn on us. A strange peace blankets our fear and anxiety. And in some mysterious, paradoxical way, the set time for our reward is hastened.

Waiting breaks our power and will. God's Word has some intriguing things to say on how He uses waiting times to break our power and will.
Deuteronomy 32:36 says (ESV), For the LORD will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone...
Daniel 12:7 says (NIV), ...I heard him swear by him who lives forever, saying, "It will be for a time, times and half a time. When the power of the holy people has been finally broken, all these things will be completed."
You will never hear these scriptures taught in seeker-sensitive catastrophe churches, and even some extreme word of faith churches. However, the truth is, if we are living in our own power we are not living in God's. If we are making decisions by our own will we are not making them by God's. God will have no competitors to His power and will, especially not from His own ekklesia. So what does He do? He incarcerates and freezes us in times of waiting until our self-power and self-will have been finally broken. Only then is our vessel empty enough to be filled to overflowing with His power and will.
Paul describes this very mechanism in 2Corinthians 4:7-11 (NKJV): But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed--always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
The mechanism Paul is describing is identical to the verses in Deuteronomy and Daniel: waiting breaks our power and will and brings them to an end. It smashes the earthen vessel to prove that it is an earthen vessel, that the display of power may be of God and not of us.

Part 2 coming.

8/20/25

Scriptures

Those who are wise will instruct many, though for a time they will fall by the sword or be burned or captured or plundered. When they fall, they will receive a little help, and many who are not sincere will join them. Some of the wise will stumble, so that they may be refined, purified and made spotless until the time of the end, for it will still come at the appointed time.

Daniel 11:33-35 (NIV)

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Hebrews 11:6 (NIV)

For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him...

2Chronicles 16:9 (NKJV)

For the LORD will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone...

Deuteronomy 32:36 (ESV)

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed--always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

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