Our family has had a really good summer so far. The biggest thing at the Zim house recently, surprisingly, has been baseball.
Here on the Eastside at age 12 you age out of "recreational baseball". There aren't many opportunities to play baseball until you get to high school, unless…you make a club team. Making a club team means you play year-round. As a parent it means you pay a bunch of money and give up a bunch of weekends, and then sit in the rain watching a sport meant for sunshine so that a grumpy adult can tell your kid why everything you've ever taught them about the sport is wrong.
It's a dream, really.
My son has participated in several tryouts the past few weeks. It's been brutal. From the extreme heat (major heat wave here in the PNW, rare triple digit temps), the coaches, and the sheer group size of 70, 80 boys all vying for 2 or 3 spots on a team.
After all the tryouts were done, my son only had one offer. One is better than none, right? But here was the problem: the team that gave him an offer, was a concerning tryout. The coaches were talking down to the players, the players were talking back to the coaches. They weren't organized, they weren't sure even who was going to coach the team.
It felt like a big decision for our family. Is this the end of the road? Or do we say yes to this team with toxic culture that would be shaping him and taking our money?
We start hearing from other parents. Who made a team, who didn't, which teams are filling up...the entire next year was being decided. And we all sensed God was saying:
"WAIT."
Its been my experience that the three most common answers I get from the Lord when I ask him about something I'm desiring, are "yes", "no" and "wait".
Call it what you want. God's "not yet". A holy delay. Of the responses God can give, most of us don't like that last option because it lacks the concrete clarity of the first two. If we're honest, we generally avoid waiting at all costs.
I don't know what situation you're facing right now. Maybe he's answering your prayers with a resounding "YES". Maybe he's saying "NO" to something you long for.
But I'd bet some of you reading this are in limbo. You're in this middle ground of "not yet".
Maybe you're asking him or you've been asking him for something for a long time. And the light hasn't turned green yet. The psalm we're going to walk through in this blog series is going to be a help to you.
Because praise and trust turn waiting into worship.