Prayers For The Wait
Join us every day this week for a new prayer that will encourage us all through the wait.
Day 1 - Monday July 13th : An Invitation to Praise
Before the wait teaches us anything else, it asks one thing of us first: worship. Not worship because the circumstance has resolved. Not worship because the need has been met or the dream has finally taken shape. Worship simply because He is still God, and we are still His.
There's a difference between the urgency of a need and the longing of a dream, and both belong in this prayer today. A need presses. It has a deadline your heart can feel even when your mind can't name it. A dream lingers differently, though. It doesn't press so much as it aches, quietly, in the background of ordinary days. Habakkuk held both. He stood at his watchpost with real trouble pressing in around him, and still he waited on a vision he couldn't yet see fulfilled. He didn't wait passively. He waited postured, watching, listening, ready to worship before the answer came.
That's the invitation today. Not to pray your way out of the waiting, but to praise your way into the right posture within it.
The Prayer
Lord, You see what's urgent in me right now, the need I bring to You with both hands open. You see what's longing in me too, the dream I've carried so long it's grown quiet, tucked into the corners of my hope. I bring You both today.I don't want to wait with my arms crossed. I want to wait like Habakkuk, at my post, watching for You, worshiping You before I see the answer. Not because the ache isn't real. It is. But because You are more real, and more faithful, than the waiting feels.
Whatever this circumstance is, however long it lingers, let it not linger longer than my worship. Let my heart bow first. Let my hands open before they clench. Let my "yes" to You come before my answer comes.
The vision is for an appointed time. It hastens to its end. It will not lie. So today, I choose to wait for it, postured, watching, worshiping.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Scripture
- But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint — Isaiah 40:31
- Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! —Psalm 24:14