My dear friends, it is a privilege to be with you in this capacity today. I have so enjoyed discussing today’s topic with you on the discussion board. There’s a wonderful spirit here in the auditorium. Thank you for the reverence you have shown while waiting for Devotional to begin. Waiting is not always easy or fun, and yet it’s an exceptionally common occurrence. For instance, you have just spent the last several minutes waiting for this devotional message to begin. Similarly, I have spent the last several weeks waiting for it to be over.
Other common experiences of waiting include checking out at the grocery store, crossing a busy street, or registering for classes. Or we might be waiting for a text message or a decision to be made. Some things we wait for are of particular significance: an answer to prayer; the arrival of help or relief; or obtaining one of life’s rich blessings, such as going to the temple, getting married, or having children.
Whatever we might be waiting for, waiting can be irritating. We may feel frustrated, even powerless to move things along on our own timetable. I can recall occasions when I’ve felt waiting was an enormous waste of time. This is where delayed or cancelled flights fit in. But the unexpected and the overdue have done more than cause me to adjust my schedule. I have been changed by waiting, as have you.
Sometimes that waiting has not been fruitful. I’ve allowed discouragement to fill my heart with thoughts like: Doesn’t the Lord love me? I’m asking for a righteous desire, so why would He withhold it from me? Am I not good enough? You may know someone whose response to periods of waiting have led to a hardened heart into which seeds of doubt can be planted. If God is really there, why does He allow this to happen? Will He answer my prayer? Does He even hear me? Most of us will personally know the anxiety and uncertainty of waiting for the Lord’s direction or the fulfillment of promised blessings.
Why do we experience these periods of waiting? Ecclesiastes offers important insight in these familiar verses:
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; . . .
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; . . .
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; . . .
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak. [1]
For me, these verses are not just referring to the natural order of things, but also to the Lord’s own timetable. President Dallin H. Oaks has explained:
The Lord has His own timetable. “My words are sure and shall not fail,” the Lord taught the early elders of this dispensation. “But,” He continued, “all things must come to pass in their time.” [2]
The Lord’s timing may be drastically different than our own—or more specifically, different than it seems to be for everyone else. But the Lord knows us best and, moreover, has our very best interests at heart. As Arnold Thiebaud testified in last week’s Devotional, “Our Heavenly Father loves us. He wants us to be happy. He has given us so many ways to feel His love.” [3] Heavenly Father and His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, are working solely to “bring to pass the immortality and eternal life” [4] of each one of us.
Who better to guide your mortal experience than He who revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith:
Ye cannot behold with your natural eyes, for the present time, the design of your God concerning those things which shall come hereafter, and the glory which shall follow after much tribulation. [5]
But the Lord can see it. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell said,
The issue for us is trusting God enough to trust also His timing. If we can truly believe He has our welfare at heart, may we not let His plans unfold as He thinks best? [6]
If we can, then the periods of waiting we experience will not be in vain.
How tempting it is to think of waiting as a necessary evil. But what if waiting with hope and trust in the Lord is a necessary good? Elder Robert D. Hales taught:
The purpose of our life on earth is to grow, develop, and be strengthened through our own experiences. How do we do this? The scriptures give us an answer in one simple phrase: we “wait upon the Lord.” [7]
That is a beautiful phrase—“wait upon the Lord.” It is also a marvelous principle. By waiting upon the Lord, we will “grow, develop, and be strengthened through our own experiences.” [8] Waiting upon the Lord is a necessary part of our mortal existence.
So how is waiting upon the Lord different from biding our time? I like this perspective from an article by Christy Nielson:
The same amount of time will pass whether I am squandering it in anger and impatience or using it to serve the Lord and His children. Choosing to “wait upon the Lord”—or viewed another way, to serve Him—yields far more satisfying results. [9]
Sister Nielson suggests that serving others is superior to merely killing time while we wait for desired blessings. Not only is our time put to good use, but we are enriched by those experiences. Sister Nielson also reports that choosing to serve while waiting upon the Lord, “helps me remember that because Heavenly Father’s greatest desire is to bless His children with what will ultimately help us be happy, He will not only give me what I need, He’ll also give it at the time that is best for me.” [10]
Our ability to wait upon the Lord will be strengthened as we turn our attention to serving the Lord and those within our sphere of influence.
A great example comes from President Gordon B. Hinckley, who wrote about his early discouraging days as a missionary in England. He said:
I was not well when I arrived. Those first few weeks, because of illness and the opposition which we felt, I was discouraged. I wrote a letter home to my good father and said that I felt I was wasting my time and his money. He was my father and my stake president, and he was a wise and inspired man. He wrote a very short letter to me which said, “Dear Gordon, I have your recent letter. I have only one suggestion: forget yourself and go to work.”
President Hinckley continues,
Earlier that morning in our scripture class my companion and I had read these words of the Lord: “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.”
Those words of the Master, followed by my father’s letter with his counsel to forget myself and go to work, went into my very being. With my father’s letter in hand, I went into our bedroom in the house at 15 Wadham Road, where we lived, and got on my knees and made a pledge with the Lord. I covenanted that I would try to forget myself and lose myself in His service. [11]
The Lord has promised “whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” [12] At one time in my life, I took that phrase as being quite literally about life and death. Then as a missionary, I can remember thinking that by setting aside my own plans and serving a mission, I had lost my life in a way and the promise of finding my life meant being granted the righteous desires of my heart after my mission. In my 30s, still single, and aching for my life to mean something beyond myself, I discovered a new way to lose and find my life. It was doing just what President Hinckley learned to do: forget myself and get to work loving and serving others. And oh, what a soul-satisfying purpose was heaped back upon me. I not only found my life but my belonging as well.
Elder Maxwell confirms the importance of using our waiting time wisely:
Even waiting can be used to facilitate our becoming more like Jesus. Therefore, we should be "anxiously engaged," even when it seems to us we are doing no more than waiting. Thus we can be about our Father's business even when it seems for the moment that we are overcome by ordinariness and routine. Our enduring is easier if we see it as a part of God's unfolding. [13]
Now we have seen that waiting upon the Lord is preferable to biding our time. Squaring our shoulders and losing ourselves in the work of the Lord brings more fulfillment and greater experiences than shrugging our shoulders can. Still, waiting upon the Lord is not necessarily easy.
In his wonderful general conference talk on the subject, Elder Hales explains that much is required to wait upon the Lord:
To hope and trust in the Lord requires faith, patience, humility, meekness, long-suffering, keeping the commandments, and enduring to the end. [14]
Does that seem like a long list? Does it feel overwhelming? Don’t despair. Our ability to wait upon the Lord is strengthened over time. As you exercise your faith and trust in the Lord, these Christlike attributes will grow and develop within you. Each occasion we choose to wait upon the Lord will build upon the one before it. As Isaiah taught us, “For precept must be upon precept, . . . line upon line; here a little, and there a little.” [15]
And there’s more reason to hope offered to us by Isaiah. Consider these beautiful verses in chapter 40:
Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.
He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.
Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:
But they that await upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. [16]
The Lord does not get weary. He will give us strength to endure. And that’s a very active enduring, remember. This is not biding our time, shrugging our shoulders, and tapping our fingers. The promise is “they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” Each of us is asked to endure in a very active process of losing our life for the Lord’s sake, believing in His sure promise that we will find it.
I mentioned earlier some of my thoughts on losing and finding my life. My understanding of this promise has expanded with time as I’ve experienced its fulfillment. At first, I had a very literal interpretation concerning life and death. My understanding shifted during my missionary service to a fulfillment of righteous desires for having served the Lord. And later I discovered my sense of purpose and belonging in service to family and others. I assumed that I had at last arrived at the life I was promised. It wasn’t the life I had planned, hoped, or prayed for. But oh, it was good—rich and rewarding. And then. Then the Lord’s timetable revealed a surprise. It was time—the Lord’s time—for the arrival of some long-awaited blessings.
I could not have predicted the wonderful experience of courting and becoming engaged to a good man. I did not anticipate that the blessings of marriage and children would come to me at this time. But they have, and gratefully I find that the Lord has prepared me to be equal to the opportunity and responsibility. All of these years spent waiting—long enough that sometimes I forgot I was waiting! I was just living and doing the best I could. And thanks to our loving Heavenly Father and His Son, that time of waiting was fruitful both in the moment and as a cumulative preparation for my future.
My dear friends, waiting upon the Lord has filled my life with abundance even when I lacked the greatest desires of my heart. I deeply relate to this statement from President Howard W. Hunter:
Doors close regularly in our lives, and some of those closings cause genuine pain and heartache. But I do believe that where one such door closes, another opens (and perhaps more than one), with hope and blessings in other areas of our lives that we might not have discovered otherwise. [17]
We cannot know all that life will bring us, nor can we plan to bring about everything we wish in life. President Oaks noted,
Many important things will occur in our lives that we have not planned, and not all of them will be welcome. Even our most righteous desires may elude us or come in different ways or at different times than we have sought to plan. [18]
But there is tremendous reason to be joyful even as we face uncertainty and learn “line upon line; here a little, and there a little” [19] to wait upon the Lord. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland give us this stirring reassurance:
If we give our heart to God, if we love the Lord Jesus Christ, if we do the best we can to live the gospel, then tomorrow—and every other day—is ultimately going to be magnificent, even if we don’t always recognize it as such. Why? Because our Heavenly Father wants it to be! He wants to bless us. A rewarding, abundant, and eternal life is the very object of His merciful plan for His children! It is a plan predicated on the truth “that all things work together for good to them that love God.” So keep loving. Keep trying. Keep trusting. Keep believing. Keep growing. Heaven is cheering you on today, tomorrow, and forever.
“Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard?” Isaiah cried.
“[God] giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. . . .
“. . . They that wait upon [Him] shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles. . . .
“For . . . the Lord . . . God will hold [their] right hand, saying unto [them], Fear not; I will help thee.” [20]
It is my testimony that God does indeed hold our hand, quiet our fears, and help us through periods of uncertainty, particularly as we learn to have hope and trust in the Lord and His timing. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
[1] Ecclesiastes 3:1–2, 4–5, 7.
[2] Dallin H. Oaks, “Timing,” BYU Devotional, Jan. 29, 2002.
[3] Arnold Thiebaud, “Know, You Are Loved,” BYU-Idaho Devotional, June 11, 2019.
[4] Moses 1:39.
[5] D&C 58:3.
[6] Neal A. Maxwell, Even As I Am, (Deseret Book, 1982), 93.
[7] Robert D. Hales, “Waiting upon the Lord: Thy Will Be Done,” Ensign, Nov. 2011.
[8] Robert D. Hales, “Waiting upon the Lord: Thy Will Be Done,” Ensign, Nov. 2011.
[9] Christy Nielson, “Waiting on the Lord, Renewing Our Strength,” Ensign, Jul. 2012.
[10] Christy Nielson, “Waiting on the Lord, Renewing Our Strength,” Ensign, Jul. 2012.
[11] Gordon B. Hinckley, “First Presidency Message: Taking the Gospel to Britain: A Declaration of Vision, Faith, Courage, and Truth,” Ensign, July 1987.
[12] Matthew 16:25.
[13] Neal A. Maxwell, Not My Will, But Thine, (Deseret Book, Mar. 3, 2008).
[14] Robert D. Hales, “Waiting upon the Lord: Thy Will Be Done,” Ensign, Nov. 2011.
[15] Isaiah 28:10.
[16] Isaiah 40:28-31.
[17] Howard W. Hunter, “The Opening and Closing of Doors,” Ensign, Nov. 1987.
[18] Dallin H. Oaks, “Timing,” BYU Devotional, Jan. 29, 2002.
[19] Isaiah 28:10.
[20] Jeffrey R. Holland, “Tomorrow the Lord Will Do Wonders among You,” Ensign, May 2016.