On Waiting Well - Bradley Baurain

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Check out the faith and family mortgage team at unitedfaithmortgage.com. In our fast paced society, we will do just about anything to avoid waiting. But what happens to you spiritually when you are forced to wait on God? I'm sure there are listeners who have had God saying no to their earnest prayers. Not every story has a happy ending.

And yet God is the same and he weeps with you and he rejoices with you. That's waiting on the Lord. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . Today, author and professor Dr. Brad Beren shows us how waiting can transform your life and your faith. Don't miss the encouragement straight ahead. Our featured resource at fivelovelanguages.com is Dr. Beren's book, On Waiting Well, Moving From Endurance to Enjoyment When You're Waiting on God.

Again, find it at fivelovelanguages.com. Gary, you have had some experience with the topic of waiting, I'm assuming. What comes to your mind when I say that word? Ever have a tough waiting experience? I'm waiting right now, Chris. Waiting to get back on the road and see people face to face.

As you know, all of my live events, basically from the middle of March, end of 2020, were all canceled. And so yeah, it's in fact, I'm thinking I'm gonna learn some things today about waiting. I'm trying to make the most of it.

You know, I'm zooming and I'm writing books and I'm doing counseling. So trying to make the most of this time. But yeah, it is the time of waiting. I think probably a lot of our listeners can identify with that. They're probably waiting also.

Yes, and a lot of different levels of that. And I was telling you, Gary, before we went on here, this is one of the best books I read in 2020, On Waiting Well. And I'm so excited to have you talk with Dr. Bradley Beren, who's with us today. He's taught for more than 25 years in the U.S. and Canada, China and Vietnam. He currently leads the TESOL, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages programs at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. He writes devotional studies for Today in the Word, if you get that devotional. And he's the author again of our featured resource, On Waiting Well.

You can find it at FiveLoveLanguages.com. Well, Dr. Beren, welcome to Building Relationships. Thank you for having me. Well, I have read some of your material in Today in the Word because I do get that, Chris. You mentioned it and I do get it. I do read it.

So thanks for what you've done in that venue. When did this topic of waiting come on your radar? I would say it first came on my radar in a serious way in 2016, not through a dramatic personal experience, but simply through my own personal Bible study. I started noticing the word wait coming up a lot and I really tried to skip over it and resist it because I don't like that word. But God kept bringing my attention back to it and I started noticing that it was a real verb and a really important one. And so I wrote about it for Today in the Word and there's a devotional issue from 2017 that got me started. And I felt like that was the tip of the iceberg and there was more there that God wanted to teach me first and then it turned into a book.

Yeah. Well, what caused you to think that there's more to waiting than most people typically think? Well, the Bible talks about waiting in the same way you did. We're waiting for God to rescue us. We're waiting for something to be over. We're waiting for the wandering in the wilderness to be finished with. But when you see the word waiting, there's a larger meaning as well or a different meaning. There's waiting for, and that's kind of the sense we all think of, right?

We're waiting for this season of the pandemic to be over so that you can go on the road and see people again. But we're also, at the very same time, waiting on the Lord, simply being in His presence, moving closer to Him, drawing nearer to Him. And that's something that's always true in the Christian life and it's much more deep and satisfying and a whole lot less annoying than the other waiting experience. Yeah. Well, you talk about the difference between waiting with a small w and waiting with a capital W. Is that what you mean by what you've just said or is there more to it than that?

That's part of what I mean, but yes, there is more to it. The small w waiting is what we think of, right? Waiting in line at the grocery store, waiting for some inconvenient thing to be over. Maybe something even more painful like waiting for a medical test to come back or waiting for God to meet a need like maybe we need a job.

But those things come and go. Small w waiting. But big w waiting, it's always there.

Waiting on the Lord, being in His presence, delighting to be worshipping Him at all times and all circumstances. And that second big w waiting is just so much larger. It's like, picture a piece of paper and there's one tiny dot on the piece of paper. And that tiny dot is small w waiting, the ins and outs of our everyday experience. And that the big piece of paper, that's waiting on the Lord. And human beings, being the way we are, we tend to focus on the dot and let it get under our skin and annoy us. But if we could see the big picture, if we could experience that larger sheet of paper, we realize how insignificant the seasons of small w waiting are compared to the absolute privilege and pleasure of the big w waiting on the Lord. So I hear you saying that waiting on the Lord is choosing to spend time consciously in His presence, both worshipping Him, conversing with Him, sharing your heart with Him. Am I getting the picture? Yes, it's a habit of mind, a habit of soul.

It can be done anywhere, anytime. I'm not sure that it always has to be conscious. Our attention is called to many things in the course of a day. But just that sense that no matter where I am, no matter what I'm doing, I haven't moved from His presence.

He is with me always. What's the relationship between faith and waiting? Yeah, faith is absolutely the key to waiting. We know this from biblical narrative. I think of all the characters in Scripture who waited. Abraham was given the promise of a son and he had to wait 25 years, I believe it was, before that promise was fulfilled.

David had to wait 15 years from the time he was anointed as king till the time he became king. And you can find stories like this throughout Scripture. They trusted, though, that God would keep His promises.

They were all in. They risked everything they, you know, their whole life, everything they did, everything they were, their families on God's faithfulness. It's the certainty of what you do not see. It's looking forward to something as if it had already happened. That's biblical waiting. That's the foundation for biblical waiting, anyway. And I think that even those people that you just mentioned, there were times when they got concerned with the dot, with the small w. You know, they didn't do all this perfectly. And I wonder, in our own culture, in our own society, with social media and the internet and the instantaneous communication that we have, what does that do to this thing inside of us, this inability to wait, do you think?

That's a really good question. I think it might tend to co-opt our inner lives. I mean, we all do self-talk. We all have inner lives. We need time for reflection. We need a space in which God can speak to us. And if we're never open in that way and we're constantly looking for stimulation on the screen or communicating with someone out there, then where is that space to just be with God, to reflect on what he's been doing in my life, to listen for his voice? I do think the sheer volume of what's available out there does tend to co-opt or short-circuit our inner life in that sense. Gary, as I listen to Dr. Barain talk here today, there's something that comes up in my head and running around my heart, and that is how many times when we give the phone number and people call in and ask you a question, it'll be from either a husband whose wife has left him or a wife whose husband has left, and they are waiting for them to come back.

And the desire is a good thing. I want our marriage to heal and to have this move forward. But the focus is on that healing, that moment when we get reconciled and you have said over and over and over again, don't waste this moment right now withdrawing closer to God and allow him to do inside of you in the middle of the waiting. Let him do that work.

I see this at work even in the conversation today, don't you? Yeah, I think so, Chris. If we are going through an experience like that, we tend to be praying, oh God, work in their hearts, do something for them and turn them around. And that's fine. I'm not opposed to that. But I'm just saying, let's start where the Bible starts. And that's, God, what do you want to be teaching me through this? Because if you can grow as a person while you're waiting for the possibility, for example, of reconciliation, which you just described, then whenever their heart turns and God works in their heart, you are a much different person than you were when this whole thing started.

Because you've matured, because you spent this time asking God to teach you and help you learn what you can learn and examining your own heart through the experience. So, yeah, I think so. It's trying to make the most of that time between what you want to happen and then actually seeing it happen. Because at its very bedrock level, Dr. Barain, what we're talking about waiting is a relational thing. It's an exercise we do, right?

Absolutely. I think in those tough times, such as the one you described, one of the things that God's always trying to teach us is how to talk to him. I don't want to give the impression that I'm recommending spiritual denial, right? I'm not saying suppress the pain or the negative emotions. I'm saying express those properly to God.

And we have incredible examples of that in the Psalms. Maybe during that season of pain or season of waiting, God wants you to learn how to lament, how to be honest with him. He doesn't need you dressed up, you know. He'll take you as you are. He knows you better than you know yourself. And he's big enough for all your questions. And if you cry out to him and say, Where are you?

I need your help. It feels like you're not here. That kind of lament made in faith is perfectly valid. We see it throughout the Psalms. And I think sometimes we're afraid to be that honest with God. And God would really like us to learn otherwise. Yeah, I think that's a powerful point because, as you said, he already knows what you're thinking and feeling.

So just verbalize it. Now, in the book on waiting well, you talk about three myths and three truths about waiting. What are those myths and how are they dispelled by the truths?

Sure. Well, the three myths turn out to be all beginning with the letter P. I didn't exactly plan it that way. It was like a three-point Baptist sermon I grew up with. But they are the things we tend to think waiting is. And we tend to think waiting is passive, that it's just us sitting on our butts, you know, like we're in the doctor's waiting room, nothing to do.

And that's not really quite true. Waiting is a fairly active verb in the Scripture. And then we also think waiting is purposeless.

There's no point to it. We're just waiting for it to be over. You know, it's sort of like the Israelites just wandering around the wilderness waiting for that generation to die. But even that is a misreading of Scripture, and it's certainly not what waiting is. We just talked about the purpose God might have in waiting. And then the third P is painful, and we do need to be honest about that, right?

It may just be a dot on a page, but it's a painful dot on a page if our spouse has left us, or there's a medical issue, or we've experienced a loss of some other kind. Yeah. Now, how does the truth, three truths that might parallel that, how does that dispel those three myths?

Sure. The three truths are really, I don't know if they're parallel or not, but what they do is they flesh out the idea of biblical waiting in terms that we can understand. And so, you know, in my study, when I'm looking at biblical waiting, and when the psalmist or someone else is saying, I'm waiting on the Lord, and I look at the larger context, these three truths that are associated with it are hope, joy, and love. And maybe hope is the most powerful one.

I mean, they're all powerful, right? If faith is the foundation, then hope, joy, and love are the essence, the substance of waiting. They're what waiting feels like, because it's not just an abstract theological truth.

It is supposed to affect our emotional and feeling life as Christians. So hope, you know, we are looking forward to something. Something hasn't happened yet that we really want to happen. But at the same time as we're waiting for God to do something, His person is present with us, and instead of shrinking away from Him during the time of waiting, we need to draw closer to Him. That's the only source of hope, the only source of joy, the only way that we'll continue to love. I was absolutely astounded in my study to find such powerful Christian verbs associated with a verb I hated and didn't want to think about.

Yeah. And love, how does love fit into that? Well, that's the essence of our relationship with God.

If we're drawing near to Him, worshipping Him, trusting Him absolutely despite the pain, that is beyond any resources I have. It's the greatest commandment, right? Love God, love your neighbor.

Well, to do that properly, I can't do it. So God drives me to a realization that the love He commands is not a love I'm capable of without Him. To even love Him, I need His help. Certainly to love my neighbor, I need His help. And to love my enemies, I cast myself upon His mercy for that one. What is it, Romans 5? The love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

Yeah, we don't have it on our own for sure. You know, people talk about unanswered prayer, and I know that most of us have experienced that along the way. We just feel like, you know, well, I prayed and I prayed and I prayed and God's not answering. How do you look at that in relation to this concept of waiting?

Yeah, I would tend to look at the idea of unanswered prayer in relation to the concept of waiting by saying that the closer we draw to God, the more of His perspective we'll have on those unanswered prayers. He may choose to show us that what we were praying for was not in His will. He may choose to show us that He has a better way. He also may choose just to show us that He's sovereign, and, you know, we may not be capable of understanding at this time. But the point is to get out of ourselves. We draw near to God, we worship, we praise His goodness and greatness, and we're going to see the specific things in our life, whether that be a decision or a loss or an unanswered prayer, things that are positive and negative, we're going to see all those things vary differently from His perspective in His presence.

Yeah. You know, that takes me back to an experience in my life many, many, many years ago when I had just finished my PhD and I was eager to go to the mission field. I was going to teach in a seminary in Nigeria and prayed to God about that for a long time and then applied to the mission board and got turned down. God did not answer my prayer, you know. And I have to be honest, I didn't understand it at the time. It was a tough, tough, tough time for me. Now, looking back on it from this juncture in my life, I get it, you know.

My books are all over the world. Amen. So, I think sometimes when we feel like God's not answering, it's the latter thing that you said. We don't get the answer at the time as to why God is waiting. But later on, we will see it, you know, and the fact that He didn't answer the prayer that I had along those lines. So, well, why does God allow waiting times to come? Some may think, well, this is unkind, you know, you're following God, you want to do God's will, and yet, you know, here you are waiting. What's God doing?

Well, for me to speak on behalf of God is not a wise thing. But I would guess that He does this because sometimes there is no other way to teach us what He wants us to know, and particularly to teach us about Himself. You know, we have the privilege of some very difficult things, the privilege of sharing in Christ's sufferings. You know, Paul said he had the privilege of sometimes having plenty and sometimes being in want. He had the privilege of being persecuted.

Well, it doesn't feel like a privilege when we're in the middle of it. But through those experiences, Paul learned more about Christ and the gospel than he could have learned in any other way. And I suspect that the same is true for us. I think of a verse that's very familiar to our listeners, I'm sure.

Isaiah 40, 31. Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. They will run and not grow weary.

They will walk and not grow faint. And I can't help but look at that. And, you know, that's not the verse I would have written if it was up to me. I would say, those who wait on the Lord will grit their teeth and get through this thing. Because persevering, I understand. I can grit my teeth and get through things. But God wants me to learn more than that.

He wants that hope, that joy, that love. You know, I look at Isaiah 40, 31 and I think, how is that even possible? In the middle of waiting to soar on wings like eagles, to suddenly have inexhaustible energy.

And the answer is simple. It's God's strength, not mine. And without that period of waiting, I would never have learned to do that. And although I'm speaking in the first person, I have to be honest, I am still very much learning to do that.

You know, for every day that I soar, you know, there's another ten days when I'm sitting on the ground. Absolutely. You know, I guess Paul is a good example of that, isn't it? I mean, he's in prison, you know, for a long time, on a couple of occasions at least. And while he's there, he's writing all these wonderful letters to Christians in other cities.

If he had been on the road, he wouldn't have had time to do that, I'm assuming. But he seems to have learned how to wait on the Lord and make the most of where he was. Is that your perspective of him?

Yeah, absolutely. I was reading recently and I'm very inspired by Acts chapter 16. So he, you know, he had received a call from the man from Macedonia, in a vision, and he crossed over to Europe and the first city he was in was Philippi. And he met Lydia and she became the first European Christian. And things seemed to be going really well. God was really blessing, a church was getting started.

And then all of a sudden, they cast a demon out of a fortune-telling girl and they aroused the hostility of some people who made money from that. And he finds himself in prison. And he could be like, hey, let's rally the troops. Everybody pray that I get out of prison soon. Instead, he and Silas sat there singing hymns.

And I'm thinking, you know, I could possibly not complain if I really tried. But sitting there singing hymns? And then God miraculously freed him with an earthquake. And he wasn't in a big hurry to leave. You know, the jailer was held responsible. But Paul called out to him, no, don't hurt yourself. We're still here. And so if it was me, I might have run away and said, thank you, Lord, for rescuing me from prison.

But he went over to the jailer's house and led the jailer and his entire family to the Lord. That is some productive waiting. Yeah, absolutely. Let me ask a three-word question before we take a break here. You ready for this, Gary?

I'm ready. This is going to be profound. Does God wait? Oh, the answer is yes, he does, biblically. And that encourages me that, I mean, he doesn't have to wait.

He's God. But he chooses to wait. And the number one thing in Scripture it says that he's waiting for is for the full number of believers to come in. His kindness leads us to repentance. And he could just bring history to an end right now. Part of me would love to see Christ return right in the middle of our program. But the reason God doesn't do that on my timetable is because he's waiting, too.

That's a good point. Well, and you think about, you know, I think of the silence, the intertestamental period between Old Testament and New Testament, and then the fullness of time. And it took everybody by surprise.

The incarnation took people by surprise. But it was this waiting for just the right moment in God's providential plan. And we don't have that same mind, Brad. Our minds are not like his, right? Amen to that. I mean, when the Word says things like, well, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day, I'm like, yeah, maybe for him, not for me or for humanity. Yeah, yeah. Dr. Bahrain, you write that biblical waiting should be engaged and courageous. What does that look like in everyday life?

Really good question. For me, at this point, I would say it looks like David. You know, I already mentioned that he was, when he was anointed king, it was actually 15 years until he was king over all Israel. And at that point, that amounted to half his life. He became king over all Israel at age 30. He was probably anointed at about age 15.

I mean, imagine having spent half your life waiting. And he had enough trust in God, an absolute trust in God, to get through that time. I mean, we know that he had chances to cut that short. I think of the time when he was hiding in the back of the cave. And, you know, the Bible is very earthy and wonderful about this, right? King Saul came in to relieve himself. And, you know, David's men said, hey, this is from the Lord. This is how God is going to keep his promise. He has delivered Saul into our hands. And David said, no, he is still the Lord's anointed. This is not the Lord's timing. Even though this man wants to kill me and is currently chasing me down with his elite military forces, I am not going to take advantage of this situation, not out of love for Saul, obviously, but out of love for the Lord and trusting in the Lord.

He absolutely trusted and trusted enough to pass up apparent human opportunities in order to wait on God's perfect timing. That's engaged. That's courageous. Courageous. Yeah. Because we tend to take things in our own hands, don't we?

Absolutely. We see, oh, that's an idea. I'll try that, you know. And then we're good at making up stories for God. Oh, well, God gave me that opportunity. This is the open door that God wants me to go through.

And maybe not. Well, you know, many Christians, most Christians, I think, have the basic concept that God is in the process of making us more and more like Christ. You know, we're to be his representatives and he's building that into us. How does waiting fit into that process? If we're going to become more like Christ and we're going to imitate Christ, absolutely that's got to involve waiting because you look through his earthly life and it seems to be mostly waiting. He's constantly telling his disciples, no, not yet.

The time is not yet. I'm waiting on the Father's timing. You know, whether to claim that he's the Messiah or whether it's time to tell them about his death and resurrection.

He even forbids some of the demons that he casts out to go around spreading the word. It's not yet the Father's timing. His entire redemptive mission almost came down to a matter of just simply doing the right thing at the right time and waiting on the Father's plan. He came to die and he knew that from the beginning that he was going to die on the cross as a redemptive sacrifice for sin.

I would imagine that the temptation would be to rush forward and let's get to this defining moment and do it and have it over with. And get to the resurrection and the good stuff. But he waited for at least the three years of public ministry and his entire life before that. That's always amazed me that, you know, he waited 30 years before his public ministry. And we don't know a lot about those years.

The Scriptures are kind of silent on that. But, you know, in our culture, if you're 23, it's time to do something. Jesus waited until he was 30.

Of course, I guess in today's culture maybe that is being pushed up and people are waiting longer to do something. But that's always fascinated me that he waited, you know, those first 30 years before he had a public ministry. And he didn't wait in frustration. He didn't wait, you know, drumming his fingers on the table saying, oh, I can't wait until this is over and I can get going on my public ministry. Even though we don't know what he was doing, I think it's pretty safe to assume that he was in communion with his father the entire time and that his waiting took place in a posture of faith and obedience with an attitude of faith and obedience. That is what we are aspiring to, that when we are being made like him, that is what we are being made like, to do everything in a posture of faith and obedience, whether it takes one day or a thousand years, because they are the same to God.

Yeah. You say that when we encounter difficult times, which we've already admitted we all do from time to time, and these are times of waiting through difficult situations, you indicate, and you mentioned this a bit earlier, that it's good to lament. Describe what you mean by lamenting. Lamenting can go in a few different directions. One thing that the biblical writers lament over is their own sin, and I think we really could do more lamenting over our own sin, quite honestly.

We don't want to wait. We want to rush on to the part where we're forgiven, because we know we're forgiven, and that's an incredible feeling. But to truly understand sin as God does, and to see it from his perspective, which is part of the goal of waiting, we do need to lament over our own sin and how vile it is in God's sight and how incredible Christ's sacrifice was that paid the price for it. That's one kind of lament. And the main other kind of lament is when we lament over circumstances, right, things that are happening in our lives.

We're unemployed and we need a job. Somebody in our loved one has cancer, and we're praying for healing. Our relationship is broken, and we're praying for reconciliation. And once again, we have that urge to rush forward to the happy end to the story, to the part where God answers our prayer the way we wish, or he explains to us the answer that we did receive. But that sorrow, that anger that we're very naturally feeling, God wants to hear that. He wants us to feel those feelings and see those emotions from his perspective, because he too is sad about sin and the effects of sin in the world, and he too is angry about injustice. And our little emotions and our little bits of lament need to find their home in God's presence.

And we don't have to be afraid. We can be as honest with him as we like. Sometimes the Psalms shock me. I'm like, oh, you can say that? You can pray like that? You can say that? You know what? God is big enough for all that stuff.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I think that what you're describing is what most of our listeners have experienced somewhere along the line in their lives. And there's those times when you don't understand, things are out of your control, and you mentioned some of those situations. And when we're there, if we can have this sense that it's okay to share your questions and your thoughts and your emotions with God, because it's a relationship, and he expects us to be open and honest with him, right? Right. So the other thing you talk about, or one of the things you talk about, is that there is power and beauty in waiting. How can we begin to embrace that idea in our lives? I think I might be best able to answer this question by telling a story.

A story that's not actually in the book, so think of this as a bonus example. All right. When I first got married, I was teaching in Vietnam with a Christian organization. And so my wife and I returned, she had also been doing that. So we returned to the country of Vietnam as newlyweds. And one month after we returned there, I got the news that my mom had cancer. And of course, the first impulse is, let's go back to the States, let's be by her hospital bed, let's be part of her support and encouragement network. And we prayed about that, and God was not answering, yes, it's okay to go home now. And in fact, my own mother said, don't you dare come home. She said, God has called you to be where you are.

Don't you worry, your prayers will be just as effective from over there. Now, that was hard. It was hard to wait for the news.

In fact, I'll skip ahead to the end. She's a cancer survivor, she's still going strong, sharing the good news every chance she gets. But at that time, I didn't know what would happen. I thought, God may take her.

I may have already seen her for the last time. And so we waited for those doctors' updates and we waited for the news and what was going on with chemotherapy and so on. And those were very, very long months and even years of waiting. But the beauty that I saw in that waiting and eventually came to experience started with my mom and her attitude towards waiting. Her attitude wasn't, oh no, this is a disaster.

Everyone, please come to support me. She wanted us to pray and support, but she wanted us to get on with what God had called us to do. And I found her attitude and orientation powerful and beautiful. And ultimately, that's why I dedicated the book to her.

Yeah, wow, that's a powerful story. I remember that you just brought to my mind the memory when my wife had cancer. And when we first found out, I said, okay, honey, I'm going to cancel all my appointments, everything for the next year and I'm going to be with you. And she said, you're not going to cancel anything. She said, God called you to do that and God knew this was going to happen. You're going to go do what's on your calendar for God and you'll be here when I need you.

And if you're not here, I'm going to have friends here in five minutes. And she was right about that. I watched her walk through that year of chemo, you know, losing hair and weight and a whole bit. And, man, I mean, that was, in my mind, that was one of the high moments for her to see the way she handled that, you know, as you say, with power and beauty, the beauty of Christ.

Man, identify with what you're saying. Brad, I said at the beginning of the program, this is one of the best books I've read in the last year on waiting well. And part of that is because, you know, you talk about this from a biblical standpoint, you talk about it, it's almost a philosophical view of waiting, but there is a very practical and a very human aspect to it, too, because you tell the real deep struggle that you and your family have gone through. And I wonder if you could take us into that story now. Sure. I'll do my best.

You might hear a catch in my voice as I go along. The story has to do with the birth of my fourth daughter. Well, actually, fourth child, third daughter, Anna.

She was born in 2012. And we thought that we knew how to do this, right? Fourth time, pop the baby out, let's get her back to home, let's get through the days of sleeplessness and get her incorporated into the family and move on with our lives. We were not in a waiting mood.

The nine months of waiting during pregnancy had been certainly long enough for my wife. So we went to the hospital, she was born, we took her home, we thought everything was on track. And then we noticed she was not doing well. She was getting dehydrated, she was spitting up, apparently not able to eat anything. So she was born on a Monday, we took her home Tuesday, had her back to the hospital on a Thursday, and she was having life-saving surgery by Friday.

And we were totally taken by surprise. It turns out that she had been diagnosed with something called a malrotated intestine. And just think of her intestines being like a tangled up garden hose, and they couldn't fix it without major surgery. And although we had an excellent doctor and the surgery had a high success rate, of course there was the chance she could die. And so we put out the word on social media.

Social media is good for something after all. And literally we had people praying around the world, friends from Asia, friends all across North America. And Julie and I waited all those hours in the hospital waiting room, probably one of the most intense together times of our marriage, because we didn't know when the doctor came out, what was he going to say. Because they didn't know how bad it was, they tried to take pictures inside of Anna and they failed. So they were going to go in and just deal with whatever they found. And so we saw the doctor and out he comes and he had good news for us that the tangling hadn't been too bad, that the surgery had gone very well. But she did spend three more weeks in the NICU.

They were weighing every bit of food that went in and waste that went out to see if those intestines were working or not. And it was a time of waiting like no other. It was such a pure and simple time. There was nothing else that I could do. The doctor had done all he could do.

The healing was now simply in the hand of the Lord. And all I could do was sit in a NICU and hold her and feed her and pray for her, all in God's presence. And she made it obviously. She's a gregarious eight-year-old right now. And on her stomach she still has a scar. She got the surgery when she was young enough that she'll always have that scar. And so we told her. We've told her the story and that that scar is a scar of grace. The name Anna means favor or grace, which we didn't know when we... I mean, we didn't know she was going to have the surgery and have a scar when we named her that.

We have taught her that that scar is when God rescued her and saved her life and that she has a responsibility to bear witness, to share her testimony with anybody who will listen. But that was a very painful and beautiful... I did a lot of lamenting, but it was a time when both Julie and I felt very close to the Lord.

Yeah, yeah. It's a powerful story. And I think anyone who's gone through difficulty with a child can identify with what you're saying.

I do want to say one more thing about that. The reason that it was powerful and beautiful was God. Even if he had chosen to say no, that he wanted to take my daughter to be with him, we would still praise him for who he is. And that's not an easy thing to say. But I'm saying it because I'm sure there are listeners who have lost loved ones, who have had God say no to their earnest prayers. Not every story has a happy ending, and yet God is the same, and he weeps with you, and he rejoices with you. That's waiting on the Lord.

Amen. You talk about faith, and some people tend to have faith in faith. They just say, you know, you believe it and it'll happen.

You believe it and it'll happen. But faith is, you talk about faith being the object of our faith, is the important thing. The faith, is it directed toward the living God who has the power and the wisdom and the knowledge to do what is right and best. Talk about that whole thing of perhaps misplaced faith.

Sure. Misplaced faith is, well, we need to be brutally honest with ourselves. Your faith is misplaced if it's in anything other than God. And faith is only as good as its object, right? I mean, those people you were quoting about having strong faith or having faith in faith, that's sort of a power of positive thinking approach that, honestly, I don't see in Scripture. As Christians, we have more than the happy face emoji available to us.

We have the full range of emotions, and God himself expresses those emotions in Scripture. But yeah, if the faith is not in the Lord, it's been misplaced, and I really think we have to be brutally honest because we'll give lip service to that. We'll say we have faith in the Lord. But what we're really trusting in is our education or our job or our talents or our abilities or our church or our pastor. All these are good things and God's gifts, but they are not God himself. And it's very difficult to make sure we're closer to the giver than to the gifts. And the closer we can draw to him, that's faith. And the gifts are secondary, as valuable as they are, and we need to be good stewards of them and use them for his glory, absolutely.

But Satan is constantly tempting us to put something good in the place of best, and there's only one best, and that's God. Well, as we come to the end of our program today, let me ask you one other question. How should we properly pray when we are waiting? That's a really good question. Let me first mention that we're never not waiting.

And it's not just an abstraction either. All of us, for our entire lives, every Christian, all over the world, we're all waiting for something really important, and that's the second coming of Christ. And so one of our prayers should always be, Maranatha, come Lord Jesus. But that's big W awaiting. That prayer should always be on our hearts.

Maybe what you're also asking about is small w awaiting, those seasons that we go through that thankfully aren't our time limited. And the way that we should pray in those cases is with utter honesty. God knows what you're thinking anyway. You might as well tell him. Tell him in faith. It's a lack of faith to draw back from God and try to hide your feelings from him. It's an act of faith to step forward and say, God knows what I'm thinking anyway. He knows best in this situation.

I'm going to tell him what I'm thinking, and then I'm going to listen for his answer, as it were. I mean, this is the only way to pray continuously, you know, as Paul urges and exhorts in 1 Thessalonians. So when we're praying, yes, have that constant dialogue with God. Say anything you like in faith, but don't withdraw, draw near. And then always pray in that double context.

There's the small w stuff that's on your temporary list, and there's the big w stuff. You always want to come closer to God. You always want to know more about him. You want to know him better. That's the relational aspect of it.

He's not a vending machine. He's a person, capital P. And the Psalms provide an excellent model. It's possible that someone would be too overwhelmed. I've been too overwhelmed to pray spontaneously on my own.

Well, there's two things then. One is I can use Scripture. I can pray Psalms like Psalm 130. I wait on the Lord. My whole being waits for the Lord. And then we have Paul's promise from Romans 8 that, you know, when the Spirit will help us pray with groans too deep for words, and that deep fellowship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is part of prayer, and it's part of waiting, and it's the goal of waiting.

Well, this has been a challenging discussion. And as Chris said, this book is going to help, I think, a lot of people. So thank you for taking the time to dig into the Scriptures on this whole topic of waiting and share with us on the program as well as in the book. May God continue to give you wisdom in what He has for you in the future. And may God use this book in a powerful way to help those who are waiting, which is all of us. Thank you, Dr. Chapman. I do pray for the same. Dr. Brad Verein has been with us today. You can find out more about the book on Waiting Well, Moving From Endurance to Enjoyment When You're Waiting on God at FiveLoveLanguages.com.

Again, go to FiveLoveLanguages.com. And next week, can a marriage survive infidelity? How do you rebuild trust? We'll talk about that in one week with Mark and Jill Savage. Before we go, let me thank our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Todd. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.