Waiting on God – it will change your life!

BY DERMOT COTTULI

I was 2 years into pastoring Grace when I had a conversation with the Holy Spirit that changed my life in ways I wasn’t expecting. I was lying on our bed at home listening to Debra recount her experience at a recent conference that she’d attended and how the Holy Spirit had spoken to her, when I thought if I wanted to grow our church I really should ask the Holy Spirit how to do it. Which I then proceeded to do.

This is what the Holy Spirit said to me. It changed my life forever.

“Wait on your gift and always tell the truth.”

Neither of the things He said seemed to fit into the common wisdom taught about church growth that I’d imbibed whilst at Bible College.

Not knowing what it meant to wait on my gift I figured that as the Holy Spirit was THE gift from God I should probably spend concentrated time with Him. To that end I set an alarm on my phone to go off each Monday morning at 10am with the instruction to go to the Botanical gardens in our city and wait on God.

That was my intention, however reality was far different. Monday morning would roll around and at 10am my alarm would sound and I’d turn it off and ignore it as I always had way too much on and felt I couldn’t get away from the office to spend the hour I’d allocated. This went on for nearly a year. Every Monday morning my alarm would sound and I’d turn it off and keep doing whatever work I was focused on at the time. However like a grain of sand in a too tight shoe it gradually became more and more aggravating until finally one Monday I hopped in my car and headed off to the gardens for what would become, my weekly routine for the next 6 years.

I found a garden seat off the beaten track and each Monday morning at 10am I’d make my way there and then spend time learning what it meant to wait on God. I figured if I was waiting on God then it wasn’t an opportunity to tell him about my previous or upcoming week but rather a time to sit silently with Him focusing my attention on Him. To do that I would picture myself holding my heart silently in His presence. When I started I’d manage about 10 seconds before my mind would wander but over time holding myself still in His presence became easier. It also became something that I’d do at other times during my day all throughout the week. Whenever I had a moment of quiet I found I could bring myself into His presence and sit with Him.

A few things that I noticed.

Firstly, yes our church did grow, even though there wasn’t a direct correlation between my waiting on God and the things we did strategically during that time. The only thing that could have been remotely along those lines was that I felt a strong leading of the Holy Spirit to employ Gus as my executive pastor. His friendship and unwavering support over the years has been a key factor in everything I’ve done as the senior pastor of Grace.

Secondly it changed everything for me both personally and ministry wise, which in the scheme of things was far more important than my initial goal of church growth. My relationship with God became so much deeper and I learned that whenever I couldn’t see a way forward, if I simply held the situation before God, He would always make a way. So often in ministry you don’t know how to pray as you can’t see everything clearly, but He can. Rather than telling God what I thought He should do I found it far wiser to simply hold that person or situation before Him and show through my active waiting on Him that I trusted Him to lead me forward. It lowered the emotional heat of whatever situation it was that I was facing and opened a door for God to move.

I found it easier to hear God’s voice and I felt far more secure when trusting Him to come through when faced with difficult situations. And slowly, oh so slowly as I spent more and more time with Him, week after week, month after month, year after year, my experience of life and pastoral practice became more and more aligned with His heart. That for me has been one of the most precious outcomes of waiting on Him.

And finally, this one was interesting. In the Tabernacle when the fire on the altar burned there was always a residue left behind that needed to be dealt with by the Levites. In ministry there is always a residue of pain, disappointment and your own human weakness that can build up in your life over time that needs to be taken care of lest it gets in the way of the work you’re involved in. I found that waiting on God helped to keep my soul clean and stopped the residue of life’s disappointments building up over time and causing issues.

Having grown up in an era where it was taught that praying for at least an hour a day was the benchmark for true spirituality I was shocked at the difference that only a few short minutes waiting on God could have on my inner world and ministry. In our pressurised lives prayer is often more like a lobbing of requests over a wall than a true meeting of hearts.

Brushing up against the divine and holding our hearts there in quietness and trust can’t help but have a profound impact on our lives.

He is waiting to be wanted . . .