We Hate to Wait

Shedding Our Harried Self-Love

Steve Shores

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781666734553, 9781666790542
• eBook ISBN: 9781666790559
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

It seems that the only time we're not hurrying is when we're rushing. By the time we heed the calls of smartphones, iPods, iPads, emails, podcasts, downloads, app shopping, YouTubing, web browsing, posting, and responding to posts, we've ridden the amped-up hurry-train so far that we're lost. In fact, the last items in our list ("posting and responding to posts") sound so much like "marrying and giving in marriage" that we might well conclude that we are wedded to whipped-up drivenness. We need a fast from going fast. The gospel of Christ calls us to rest, but learning how takes time. We're invited to ease off the hurry-train and learn the pace of waiting. But waiting for what? To become a bit more like Jesus, who lived at a breathtakingly still point before the one who sent him.

Chapter 1

False Waiting

What do most of us experience when we’re waiting on some vital good that hasn’t arrived? Personally, I get a full message board in my head. The most frequent messages seem to be the following: “This is my lot in life”; “I always get in the slow line”; “If I were more ____ (smart, sophisticated, witty, verbal, on my A game, assertive, competent, popular, acclaimed—on and on it goes), then I wouldn’t have to wait. Life would be at my fingertips. I could say, ‘Jump!’ and life would say, ‘How high?’” I don’t think I’m alone in this. Don’t we all get a flood of indications that we should be immune from waiting? Isn’t road rage often about having to wait on some slower driver who is infringing on our right to get there? Don’t we drive as though we have the right to be unimpeded? Don’t we relate that way all too frequently? Don’t many of the “success” messages beamed our way carry the implied query “Why aren’t you there yet?” Couldn’t we often agree with a friend of mine who exclaimed, “I’m dancing as fast as I can”? Aren’t we regularly made to feel that we’re falling behind on some timetable or other? Or that our children are? Doesn’t waiting on some crucial good with torment in our hearts bring the message that God doesn’t care? Or that we’ve somehow blown it with God? Spurred by these urgencies, we respond in one of two ways: we don’t wait at all, or we engage in some form of false waiting. This chapter will focus on three forms of the latter.

Triumphal Christianity

There is no question that Christianity is wedded to the theme of victory. And the theme of victory leads to that of triumph. So, we read, “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in His triumph in Christ” (2 Cor 2:14). Other translations use the word “victory.” But the English Standard Version is more accurate when it reads, “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession.” This wording conveys what Paul is driving at: in the imperial Roman times in which he lived, he had probably witnessed a Roman triumph—that is, a parade celebrating victory in which imperial arms overcame a foreign enemy. The parade, held in “downtown Rome,” began with the captured enemy leaders and soldiers walking in chains. This sad lot was followed by their impounded weapons, armor, money, and other treasures. Next came Rome’s senators and other officials, followed by the victorious general’s bodyguards, and then the general himself in a four-horse chariot. After him came his victorious army, without weapons, often singing songs of praise to the general.

“God . . . always leads us in His triumphal procession” (2 Cor 2:14 ESV), so where are Christians in the parade? Clearly, believers in Christ parallel the general’s army, following their victorious leader and singing songs to him. The vanquished foes in front are described in Eph 4:8: “When He ascended on high / He led captive a host of captives, / And he gave gifts to men.” Who are these captives? Earlier in Ephesians, we learn of God’s great power:

. . . which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. (Eph 1:20–21)

These rulers and authorities include the demonic powers that have wrecked the world God made and who have now been defeated, reined in, and reigned over. These are the chained powers put nakedly on display in the van of the triumphal parade.

In 2 Cor 2:14, Paul certainly imagines a strong word picture to position Christians in the victory part of the parade, but the context of this imagery widens the scope of what he is saying (as context often does). The verse before this triumphant picture says, “I had no rest for my spirit, not finding Titus my brother” (2 Cor 2:13). So, how does this work? How does the man who’s about to plunk us down in our Savior’s victory parade confess in the same breath that his spirit has no rest? The same apostle who lifts his eyes above the horizon and sees Christ’s victory is also a realist who lives a within-the-horizon life where he tussles with the realities of a fallen world.

What are those realities? Most basically, the sober truth for earth dwellers is that we are far from home. Now, this needs some spelling out. I don’t mean that the created earth is a bad place. In fact, it’s a good place experiencing the same plight in which we languish, which is that the creation is filled with “anxious longing” (just as we are), is “subjected to futility” (just as we are), is under “slavery to corruption” (just as we are), and “groans and suffers” (just as we do). These sober phrasings from Rom 8:19–20 portray a created world that is like an inmate sorrowing in prison, pining for freedom, yearning to be the person he now knows he was created to be. And worse, this inmate is in prison for someone else’s crime (ours). The groans of creation reflect this painful, unfair lockup. “Will there ever be a chance for freedom?” is the heavy groan at the heart of all things. This is the homesickness. This is the thirst that wells up, driving Paul’s “I found no rest for my spirit” (2 Cor 2:13).

So, we live on a good earth that, along with us, is in a dark predicament. It has fallen from what God made it to be and (like us) has no way out. The same is true of the human race: no way out of the badness. This dead end describes the “futility” Paul discerns. Like an alcoholic, we need an intervention from a qualified source, someone who can actually bring about the rescue. Paul’s restless spirit feels forward toward the rescue, which is why he goes right on to say, “Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession” (2 Cor 2:14 ESV). There is the victor, Christ! But what strategy did he use to win the battle? Look at the cross—see the strategy: an ignominious death, a death in which all comparisons to a Roman triumphal parade disappear. This fade to black becomes a screen on which realism finds a home. Through the cross, we can actually see the movie of our lives in all its mixed-bag-ness, in all its blend of joy and sorrow. We need pretend about nothing. We can feel both the pain and the opportunity of adversity owing to the cross of Christ. Like Paul, we experience both sorrow and hope.

Paul’s restless spirit and his vision of triumph suggest that all believers are sifted in the fire of overwhelming loss and disappointment (indeed, this is true of all people, but only believers can respond, at least directly, by turning again—in other words, by what the Bible calls repentance). Every believer goes through Job-like experiences and is called to turn again—i.e., to turn away from the hypnosis of despair and say with Job, “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; / But now my eye sees Thee; / Therefore I retract, / And I repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5–6). In a sense, we must be born again, again. These repeated degrees of discipleship (2 Cor 3:18) constitute the triumphal procession of Christ. When we are refined in the fires of loss and adversity and seek and find Christ in the fiery furnace, we freshly enter his victory.

What I want to say through these meditations on Scripture is that there is a crucial difference between Christ’s triumphal procession and triumphalism. What is the latter? I would describe triumphalism as a collective rah-rah spirit, similar to that of college students who are “true to their school.” Their team is always the winner and is an unquestioned, unquestionable steamroller of strength and a paragon of virtue. Triumphalism, then, is peace that doesn’t surpass “all comprehension” (Phil 4:7), because it is a perfectly understandable peace in that Jesus has (supposedly) healed all fallen-ness for the believer. Yet, the Lord said, “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master” (Matt 10:24). The context of this verse implies tribulation and opposition. Triumphalism thoughtlessly shoves the future into the present, trumpeting the unendingly peachy, God’s-got-this attitude that disconnects from the suffering of others. While there’s no question about what God has “got” (nothing eludes him), Jesus suffered on the cross, and things were none too comfortable for our Lord. His spirit, like Paul’s, could find no rest, and he loudly cried, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matt 27:46, small caps removed). Will Christians escape the sometimes-turbulent, confusing days of the “man of sorrows” (Isa 53:3) in whom they believe? Triumphalism says they will. The story of Christ says otherwise. Believers are, in fact, granted both “the power of His resurrection” and “the fellowship of His sufferings” (Phil 3:10).

The triumphal view that the victories of the new creation can and should be ours now injects a great pressure into life, the pressure to be completely serene, peaceful, and “walking on sunshine.” Or at least to appear to have all serenity and everything tied up in a bow. Either way, whether achieving these things reliably or appearing to do so in public, the pressure is on. In The Pressure’s Off, Larry Crabb has a couple of names for this false view of triumph, calling it “the Old Way” and “the Law of Linearity.” Putting them together, he says, “People who live the Old Way believe in the Law of Linearity, a law that states there is an A that leads to the B you want.” In other words, calculate “what A is, do it, and you’ll have the life you most desire. The pressure’s on.”5 Why is the pressure on? Because trying to manage life (arrange for the outcomes we want by doing A) makes the false assumption that life is manageable in a fallen world, which simply isn’t true. Earlier, I mentioned “the realities of a fallen world,” and unmanageability is one of them.

Someone will say, “But life is manageable, at least most of the time. You plan a meal, for example, or a whole week of meals; you go to the store, get the food, do your cooking, and so on. Seems pretty straightforward.” This is a good counter-thought to have to reckon with, because, to so...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: False Waiting
• Chapter 2: Resources for Waiting
• Chapter 3: Challenged Waiting
• Chapter 4: Fill-ment and Fulfillment
• Conclusion
• Bibliography