Psalm 130:5-6 NLT
'I am counting on the Lord; yes, I am counting on him. I have put my hope in his word. I long for the Lord more than sentries long for the dawn, yes, more than sentries long for the dawn.'
Waiting demands trust. It is easy to place my hope in God’s word. It is clear and expresses God’s commitment to me and the basis upon which that commitment is built. Intellectually I get it. Trust, however, is more than a mental exercise. It demands that I withstand the assault of my fears and disappointments by clinging to the hope God’s promise offers me.
If you are restless and impatient, as I have been for many years, then the waiting appears impossible to endure. Trust evaporates and is easily replaced by complaint and blame. On more occasions than I like to admit, my faith has shrivelled under the pressure of life’s realities. Courage has left me, to be replaced by panic. This in turn has given rise to anger with God.
God confirms that waiting will always have its due reward. Like night must give way to the dawn, so God’s promise will prevail. Do I have the capacity to endure the night? In my imagination this is easy. In practice, it demands far more of me than I understood when I chose to follow Jesus.
Many people I know have either lost their first love for God, or completely reconstructed the nature of their faith to accommodate their disappointment born of frustration. God invites me to return again and again to that first love. Unlike me, God refuses to reject trust in me. I am the one who struggles to recover my trust in God. I am the one who must learn to wait through the long nights of bleak reality in the hope that God’s promise will prove true.
QUESTION: To what extent do you count on God? Not as some intellectual exercise, but in the gutsy reality of life experience?
PRAYER: May I keep trusting even in the hour just before dawn when night seems its darkest and most scary. Cover me with your eternal wings. I put my hope in your promise never to forsake me.

Released on 3 Apr 2020