Waiting on the Lord

Eze 22:14: “Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the
days that I shall deal with thee? I the LORD have spoken it, and will do it.”

Intestinal fortitude is defined as ‘courage plus endurance.’ The phrase is also a literary euphemism for ‘guts’. Whenever a fish or animal is caught in the wild, the first thing usually done is to cut it open, de-gutting the animal by taking out its internal organs. For that reason, someone who has no guts is like captured prey that has quite literally lost their guts - while someone with ‘intestinal fortitude’ has the spirit, the courage - and the ‘guts’ - to live their life fully, even though they may be pursued by various difficulties.

People with courage still have problems, but having courage helps them to overcome their problems. They have the resources to act and live their lives fully, in spite of their problems and fears. Courage doesn’t necessarily make our fears go away - it enables us to overcome them.

Along with the courage to face our problem squarely, the other aspect of intestinal fortitude is endurance, or the ability to out-last a problem that can by its very nature be relentless. It’s a matter of having the courage to face and accept our problems, but also to be able to do this over time, even when we don’t feel like it. It’s having the resiliency and determination to pick ourselves up again and keep living our life in spite of how we may feel at the moment. Endurance is necessarily a skill, and one that must be learned over time.

The scriptures indicate that intestinal fortitude isn’t something we are born with, like blue eyes or brown hair. Having courage is ultimately a decision, and endurance is something we must learn over time. Intestinal fortitude – which is also known as having character - is something we either value and develop or we don’t. It’s something we either choose to have, or choose not to have.

The scriptures tell us that God is commanding all of us to, “be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid.” (De 31:6) God wants people to have character, and also to show us how to develop it. Just as fear and a faintness of heart are the consequences of ignoring God’s will and commandments, when we follow God’s command to be brave and constant, we are developing character.

If we’ve somehow gotten out of sync with God’s will, and we are feeling afraid, the best way to get back into sync is simply by being brave and deciding to trust God. Having courage is the sign that we are trusting, whereas fear and faintheartedness come naturally when we no longer trust. The more we can trust when we don’t see the way through, the more courage we’ll have to take chances, and to live our life more fully. That’s why both the righteousness of God and the courage it takes to live fully, come by way of trusting God. It’s our faith that gives us courage, and without faith, we have none.

The scriptures also say we should, “Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD” (Psa 27:14) The scriptures say that having courage is basically a matter of developing a quiet and determined attitude of always waiting on the Lord. This in turn is what strengthens our heart. Exercising our faith in this way is the heart’s calisthenics. The more we decide to exercise our faith by waiting on the Lord - when the alternative is giving into fear - the stronger our heart becomes, and the more faith we’ll have to exercise. This is how God strengthens our faith over time, and gives our life character.

Whenever we are confronted by major difficulties in life, with problems that make us afraid, and whenever we feel like running away, we can always do one of three things:

#1 We can give into fear and let all our problems and fears dictate how we will live our lives - in which case we’ll spend our life always running away from them. By giving into our fears we are eventually ruled by them. or

#2. We can try to solve certain problems that are really too much for us on our own. This is the other extreme. When we follow this route, we’ll eventually end up in the same place as #1 – discouraged, beaten down, and overcome by our problems and fears in one way or another. Because there will always be problems in life that are simply too much for us to handle on our own. What’s more, they were meant to be, because that’s how God keeps us humble, and reminds us that we are only human. By making ourselves and our ego the god of our life – and by dealing with life’s challenges by trying to control everyone and everything - we will always end up failing, and eventually get bogged down in addictive and dysfunctional behaviors. Thinking that we can solve every problem on our own means that we’re setting ourselves up for failure in one way or another. We’ll eventually become addicted, discouraged or faint-hearted, often doubting our ability to handle even the smallest of problems.

God isn’t asking us to solve all our problems on our own, or to be able to overcome all our fears and anxieties without any help. Some problems are too overwhealming to handle on our own. Being spiritual and becoming a Christian isn’t about being completely self-reliant; it’s about learning how to rely more completely upon God. It’s about developing an attitude and way of living that invites the presence of God into our life more and more.

Dr. Charles Stanley (who I disagree with about most things) once said: “Self-reliance is considered a personal strength and an admirable quality by most of society, but it is poison to the soul that would depend on God. The soul that is self-reliant is neither led by God, nor truly submitted to God. The one who trusts in self certainly does not want to die to self! He will not allow God to do this necessary sanctifying work within him. Thus, for the self-reliant, there is no rest. (Heb. 3:16-4:11).

Which brings us finally to the third option, and the kind of courage that God is asking from us. It’s the sort of courage that is always waiting and trusting in the Lord’s help. God defines courage as hoping and trusting in Him, and that’s really what He’s commanding us to do. Not that we should consider ourselves self-sufficient, and able to tackle any problem on our own, without any help from Him – that isn’t courage, that’s plain arrogance, and very delusional at that. Because however strong and resilient people think they are, there will always be problems that will prove stronger than they are. God isn’t asking us to handle every problem on our own – He’s only asking us to trust Him, to have courage, to always hope, to wait for Him, and to basically work as a team.

Very often, people who outwardly seem the strongest or most successful are often running away the fastest from what they fear the most – from issues like poverty, loss, insecurity, shyness, or low self-esteem. They haven’t really overcome the most critical issues in their life – they haven’t yet faced them squarely. Instead, our entire life can become our way of running away from our fears. Why? Because we started out trusting in our self-sufficiency, rather than trusting and waiting on God for the answers. Worldly success is very often the end product of a desperate fear of failure and what other people think, and an unnatural fear of acknowledging our limitations and weaknesses as human beings. Wealth and success can seem like the proof of our omnipotence - until we get sick and discover we can’t take them with us. Until we learn how to face our fears with God, they will always come back to haunt us in one way or another.

Waiting on God is knowing that He will find a way to help us through the present difficulty, however long it takes. We don’t need to run away from our problems, and we don’t need to struggle on our own. We can give the burden over to God, and learn how to catch our breath. Waiting on God is a way of renewing our strength in the face of great difficulties. It doesn't mean running away from our problems, and it doesn’t mean tackling problems that are too big to handle alone. It means knowing that God can help us overcome what we could never do alone.