Talking rooms....

Does that make you feel welcome?

Have you noticed that some rooms have such an atmosphere that they almost talk? Walk into a family room with a nice warm fire or gas heater on a cold night, and what does the room say? Stay awhile and enjoy the warmth… 

What about a room that is decorated for some festive occasion, even if the room is empty, it still speaks of the delight that’s ahead. Have you entered a room just after a heated argument? It’s possible to “pick-up” the vibes or feelings in the atmosphere and that can be an unpleasant, unsettling experience,especially if those who have argued are your friends.  

A baby’s nursery that’s been newly decorated even smells of the freshness of new life. A more welcoming room would be difficult to find… Have you ever been in a mortuary or the viewing room of a funeral directors place of business… no amount of decorating can perk up the somber atmosphere of such places of death. 

Have you sat with a loved family member in a hospital ward, waiting for them to die? It may well be a beautiful and sunny day outside,  just beyond the window, but I doubt if a more cheerless place exists.

What about the waiting room of a dentist’s office? If there are others waiting ahead of you, the nervous tension is palatable. Lawyers offices, doctors surgeries, they all have a recognizable atmosphere.

Have you ever been in God’s “waiting room”…. You know, that place between being “called” into something, and the period of time (often lengthy) before being “commissioned” for the new role. 

God’s waiting room has a distinctive atmosphere!

For Job, it was an ash heap, where trial upon trial was visited upon one of the most righteous of men that has ever lived.

For Joseph that room was a cell in an Egyptian prison… for David, king in waiting, it was cave, which at least had a name!  

And David left there and escaped to the cave Adullam. And his brothers and all his father's house heard, and went down to him there. 1 Samuel 22:1

For Moses, it was some nameless desert, tending someone else's flocks.

For Jesus, it was 30 or so years, working in a manual job, in an obscure village, but knowing all-the-while that He was called to greatness beyond our wildest imaginations. Likely knowing that He came from unimaginable glory, likely knowing that He was going to die an unspeakable death.

For the husband of a pastor that I once had the honor of spending time with, God’s waiting room was three years in a series of inhuman prisons in a country where Christians are persecuted beyond anything most of us can comprehend, or would be able to endure. But now that their time in the waiting room is over, they are seeing God move in their country in ways that are reminiscent of the Book of Acts.   

Perhaps you are in God’s waiting room right now. Maybe you’ve been there several years, alternating between patient endurance and petulant frustration! If you are anything like me, you’ve kicked at the restraints and tried to cajole God into opening the door to let you of His waiting room…. Without success!  

Patient endurance is not something that most of us modern Christians are very good at… yet it’s a prerequisite to beginning to see God move in our lives. Often our cry is “God, give me patience, and give it to me now”!   

God’s way of dealing with our impatience is simply to get us to wait, and learn of Him in the waiting time. That has been His way in the ages past, and it will remain so in the ages yet to be. It is patience that shapes who we are, what we will become.

Moreover [let us also be full of joy now!] let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance. Romans 5:3