Painful, Hopeful Waiting

Lamentations 3:28-30

Jeremiah has shown us that waiting on the Lord is a good thing, but he also is well aware of the painfulness of waiting on Him. In the next few verses, Jeremiah tells us what we ought to do while we are waiting. He knew better then likely any of us how difficult and how painful waiting on God can be, yet he experienced the hope of waiting on Him and shares that hope too.

I think it is important to remind you here that this is God telling Jeremiah what to write. We see in 2 Timothy 3:16 that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God”. This means that though Jeremiah is physically writing down the words in Lamentations 3, it is God who is moving in him and inspiring him to write the words he does. When I say, then, that Jeremiah is sharing this call to wait and this hope he has found in waiting, this is what God wants us to know. Jeremiah had these experiences; therefore, Jeremiah could write these things with sensitivity towards the difficulty of waiting and with joy in the hope he experienced supernaturally, but it is God who ultimately decided what he wrote and how he wrote it.

Think about that, because it truly is a beautiful thought! God is sensitive to the fact that waiting is difficult for us. He knows we  need to be encouraged and know that there is hope even in the darkest places. He loves us so much that He decided to have one of His children write about it so that we could experience this hope today!

Let us move on now to Lamentations 3:28-30 where Jeremiah discusses the difficulties and pain of waiting. We see in verse twenty-eight that it is God who is in control here. It is not the devil who has decided to make Jeremiah wait, but wholly God. Knowing that is important, because in knowing that we are aware that He has a reason for us to sit and wait. God is not being held back by the devil, He is not unable to get to us and help us out, He is choosing to make us wait. The devil needs to ask God’s permission, not the other way around (Job 1:6-12, 2:1-6). I will discuss this more in a future article.

This can also make things a little more difficult though, because we don’t understand why He is making us wait. Jeremiah understood that too (as does God), and that is why he writes that it is good for us to wait on Him (verse 26), and he tells us to keep silent (verse 28). This does not mean we cannot talk to God and ask Him why, it means we should not question Him. We should not demand He give us what we want. We should not try and force our way out of this waiting period. We should sit and wait obediently, knowing He has a reason and a purpose for making us wait.

In verse twenty-nine Jeremiah says we should put our mouth in the dust. That is, we ought to bow down in total submission to His will. We should surrender our will and our circumstances to God. This bowing down before Him in total surrender is an act that shows complete trust. We should trust Him, because there is hope. Perhaps we don’t feel that hope while we are waiting, but by trusting Him with full submission we are putting our hope in Him.

Reading verse 30 we see that Jeremiah does not sugarcoat what we may have to go through while we are waiting on Him. We may have to deal with physical or emotional abuse. He did, and it is what he talked about in verses 1-20, and what we focused on in the first two articles of this series, so I won’t spend too much time here. Jeremiah was obedient to God, and for that obedience he was physically attacked and reproached. He continued to wait on God, though, and He eventually found that hope, the hope he is now sharing with everyone who reads Lamentations 3.

Waiting can be painful, and it is an experience nobody looks forward to. But if God has chosen to make you wait, He has you there for a reason. He does not do anything without a purpose (which we shall see in the next article). Our role is not easy, but it is simple. We must wait silently, submissively, and obediently as we trust and hope in Him. He will make it worth it!

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