Once you see how important the theme of waiting is in the Bible, you’ll have new motivation to exercise this neglected area of the Christian life. Here are five passages on waiting:

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him. (Ps. 37:7)

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope. (Ps. 130:5-6)

They who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength. (Is. 40:31)

You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven. (1 Thes. 1:9-10)

Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (Heb. 9:28)

Waiting seems to be a complete waste of time, so we often look for something to do while we’re waiting. That’s why there are magazines in the doctor’s waiting room. We try to fill up the time with something useful.

We think of waiting as something to endure in order to get what we want. But God speaks about waiting as the way we grow when we don’t have what we want. Waiting is not wasted time.

Waiting can be the greatest growth opportunity of your life.

What are you waiting for right now? Do you see this waiting as the greatest growth opportunity of your life, a waste of time, or something else?

In one of the books by American author, Garrison Keillor, about Lake Wobegon, he describes a rather awkward teenager growing up in a small town. The lad gives a speech at his high school graduation, and afterwards somebody comes up to him and says, “Nice speech!” But he can’t receive a compliment.

“Oh no,” he says, “I was just rambling. I didn’t know what I was talking about. I was just glad when it was all over.” He couldn’t receive a compliment because inside he was a monster starving for a compliment. He didn’t want somebody to say, “Nice speech.” What he really wanted was for someone to fall at his feet in worship.

That’s the problem with some of us. We are so consumed—either with our own pain or with our own perfectionism—that we’re unable to hear the Word of God. So, when God tells us that He loves us, we just brush it off.

When the apostle Paul prays for young believers, do you know what he asks God for? He asks that God would give them the power to grasp the “breadth and length and height and depth” of the love of Christ (Eph. 3:18). That is a great way to pray. Ask God to give you the capacity to contain a greater sense of His love for you.

“We are so consumed—either with our own pain or with our own perfectionism—that we’re unable to hear the Word of God.” To what degree is this true of you?

Some time ago, a pastor from England went to India to deliver a series of evangelistic messages. When he arrived, there were posters hanging all over town advertising the evening meetings at which he would be speaking.

The posters were supposed to read: “The visiting pastor from England will bring the evening messages.” But instead, there was a typo, and the posters actually said: “The visiting pastor from England will bring the evening massages.”

The work of the preacher is to massage the Word of God into the soul until it changes what you think and feel. But some of us who have experienced very little love earlier on in life, or who are perfectionists by nature, tend to have great difficulty in feeling that we are truly loved by God.

If this is true of you, then you need this workout: Start to memorise and personalise Bible passages that speak directly of the love of God. Massage them into your mind until they begin to loosen up your heart: “God shows his love for me in that while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me” (Rom. 5:8, author’s paraphrase).

Allow God to tell you that He loves you. This is the Word of God. This is what God is saying to you. Learn to listen to what He says.

Identify a Bible passage or two about God’s love that you’d like to personalise and memorise.

One way to work God’s love into your mind is through the Lord’s Supper. At the very centre of Christian worship, God has given us this exercise to keep us in spiritual shape.

We come to a table where we receive bread and wine. They direct our attention to the cross, where Christ’s body was broken, and His blood was shed for you.

God uses the supper to tell us that He loves us. Here is an old hymn that used to be sung at the Lord’s Table: “Give me a sight, O Saviour, of your wondrous love to me. The love that brought you down to earth to die at Calvary. O make me understand it, help me to take it in. What it meant to you, the Holy One, to bear away my sin.”

Come to the table with open eyes, open ears, and a believing heart. The body of Jesus was broken for you. The blood of Jesus was shed for you. Christ invites all His people to take the bread and eat it, to take the cup and drink it. This love that was poured out touches you.

You may go through days when you find it difficult to feel the love of God. Go back to the cross, and say with Paul, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32).

How might you approach the Lord’s Supper differently in the future?

The Bible talks about the love of God in a number of ways:

1. Providential love is God’s kindness to His enemies as well as His friends. God’s enemies will come under His judgement, but right now they receive good gifts from His hand. Why do good things happen to bad people? Answer: God’s providential love.

2. Saving love is God reaching out to us: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Whoever believes is no longer God’s enemy, but His friend. That’s God’s saving love.

3. Covenant love is God’s unshakeable commitment to His own people. God bound Himself to Israel: “I will be your God, and you shall be my people” (Jer. 7:23). Then His people broke that covenant. But God will never let go of His own people. That’s God’s covenant love.

4. Disciplining love is how God forms the likeness of Christ in His children: “The Lord disciplines the one he loves” (Heb. 12:6). The wicked do not experience this love. God allows them to go their own way, but He intervenes with loving discipline when His children go astray.

5. Affirming love is the joyful affirmation the children of God experience when they’re walking with Him. There was no discipline in the garden, Adam and Eve simply enjoyed life under the smile of God. But when they sinned, they found themselves outside of God’s affirming love.

The love of God is free, unchangeable, unconditional, unmerited, and unearned. At the same time, Christ calls us to remain in His love, and we do that as we walk in obedience to Him.

What do you know about the love of God?

Another way to pray in the Spirit is by using the Lord’s Prayer (Mat. 6:9-13). Martin Luther structured his entire prayer life around the Lord’s Prayer:

1. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. (6:9)
Luther prayed that God would be honoured in his own life, and in the church, and in the nation where he lived.

2. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. (6:10)
He prayed for the advancement of God’s kingdom, and he prayed for what is true, just, and right.

3. Give us this day our daily bread. (6:11)
He prayed about his own daily needs, and for the needs of others that he was aware of—money, energy, peace, direction, patience, and guidance.

4. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. (6:12)
He prayed about his own sins, and he asked for God’s help in forgiving the wounds that were inflicted on him by others.

5. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. (6:13)
He asked God to help him identify the activity of Satan, and then he called on God against all of it that he was able to see.

That covers the whole of life. You could pray these five headings every day for the next year, and you would always find something fresh, and you would be praying in the Spirit because you’re praying in line with Jesus Christ.

Take a few moments and try praying through the Lord’s Prayer yourself. Compare this with your normal routine for prayer.

The Bible contains some marvellous prayers that were breathed out by the Spirit of God. You will find many of them in the book of Psalms.

The whole Bible was written as men were carried along by the Holy Spirit, and as you fill your mind with God’s Word, you will begin to think God’s thoughts after Him.

If you learn to form your prayers from the Bible, you will be praying in a way that reflects the heart and mind of God. You might like to begin with the Psalms:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked…
Help me to recognise advice that is dishonouring to You today and not to follow it.

…nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. (Psa. 1:1)
Lord, keep me from cynicism today. Keep me from looking at any wrong path.

His delight is in the law of the LORD. (Psa. 1:2)
Lord, help me to love You and to love Your law. Help me to see the blessing of walking in Your way, and to have new joy in doing that.

Turning the Scriptures into prayers will help you keep your prayers fresh. Every day you will see something new. More than that, your mind will be guided into the thoughts of God.

This is the difference between eastern mysticism and Christian prayer. Mysticism says, “Empty your mind so you can pray.” God says, “Fill your mind so you can pray.”

Let an open Bible guide your praying, and you’ll find that you begin to think God’s thoughts after Him as you pray in the Spirit.

Does your prayer life tend more toward eastern mysticism or Christian prayer?

Imagine a teenage computer geek writing software in his basement: “How can I get this in the hands of the people at Microsoft?” He doesn’t know anyone there, and he has no idea how to introduce his ideas to them. Who knows how many requests they receive in a day.

One day there’s a knock at the door, and a man in his late sixties, with grey hair and glasses is standing there. “Hi, I’m Bill Gates…” The next thing this teenager knows, he’s sitting at his laptop with Bill Gates at his elbow.

“Let me tell you,” says Bill, “where Microsoft is headed. Move your work in that direction, and maybe we can be partners.”

When this young man eventually sends his proposal to Microsoft, he sends it with great confidence, because he knows that what Bill Gates has prompted, Bill Gates will receive.

God comes to every believer and teaches us what to pray. When that happens, we can pray with confidence, because what the Spirit has prompted, the Father will receive:

This is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. (1 John 5:14)

Sometimes we’re like the geek working in the basement. But true prayer involves the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and you. There’s a profound sense in which you never pray alone.

Think about the geek’s confidence before and after he talked to Bill Gates. Does your confidence in prayer typically look more like one or the other?