Wait for the Invitation

Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the Lord!

Psalm 27:14 (NKJV)

We ought to wait for the sure and certain invitations in our lives.

There is a place for discipline, mental strength, determined grit, endurance, drive, and competition. But what we need more than any of those is discernment of God’s timing and the patience to wait for His invitation to move.

There was a mother who was gifted as any could be, but she was only able to clean white people’s homes because of lack of opportunity and access. This mother raised a boy who would grow to be six feet nine inches tall—towering physically, but meek in spirit. This young man, John Thompson, was not ashamed or afraid to be patient and humble, and he consistently sat in the lowest seats in life. Among these was the acceptance of a coaching position at Georgetown, an all-white university founded from the money earned by the sale of 272 slaves.

God saw John Thompson sitting there in a lowly position and effectively invited him higher. In that coaching role, John constructed a powerhouse program that graduated men who would have never been afforded the opportunity otherwise.

This was the key to John’s recruiting philosophy: every time he was invited to go watch a basketball player who was generally considered talented and promising, he fixed his eyes instead on a player serving in a lesser role on the team. He built his teams picking those who were in the lower places and inviting them the high and lofty success of Georgetown basketball.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you need to just steward your role from where you are because God already knows your dreams. God already knows what’s on your heart. He knows what you bring to the table of life, and He has high places in store for you. But you’ve got to let Him do the inviting.

That often means waiting longer than you are comfortable with. God doesn’t extend the invitation until His providence has already taken care of the arrangements. You cannot be in a hurry; you must let Him set things in place through His divine synchronicity. If you let God work things together for your good, then by the time He invites you to come up to the higher place, you won’t have to fight, defend, deflect, or struggle against the circumstances around you. You can simply accept His invitation with a heart of gratitude.

Stop chasing, stop striving, stop struggling to make your plans happen outside of God’s timing. Instead, sit back and watch God bring you exactly what He has in store for you.