Praying comes last after we Seek God and Praise God. Praying comes as a result of seeking God by His Word, and Praising God for who He is and what He has done. We come to God through words after we have already heard His Word and praised Him despite our circumstances. Our seeking is often primed because of difficult waiting, our praise is often primed by encountering and remembering the character and work of God, and our prayer is primed by trusting in the promises of God. We can run to God in prayer, thank Him and ask him to help us during this time of waiting.

We have all had moments in our lives that we spent waiting. Even as a young child, I remember waiting for my birthday, waiting for a holiday, waiting to get my diving license, waiting to get married. In a home blessed with four children 12 and under we hear daily excited voices in our house giggling “Is it my birthday yet? I can’t wait!” As we grow up, those waiting times look different. They become less of an excitement about what will happen next and more of a fear. What college will accept me? Will I get this job? Will I ever fit in? Is this the person I’m supposed to marry? What if I can’t find a spouse? What if we can’t have kids? What will happen when my parents die? How will I pay the bills? Will I ever be able to own a house? Will I ever reconcile with so and so? These questions all require waiting for undetermined amounts of time. While a birthday or holiday celebration has a countdown to look forward to in the midst of the waiting, many period’s of waiting have no such definitive “end date” on the horizon.
These waiting times seem to become more frequent with age. I have recently found myself thinking about all the times I have waited in my short life. Yes, short life as I am only in my 30s, and I know I have a lot more waiting ahead of me. Waiting is an immense time of trial, whether waiting for something exciting or something that could be sad.  Waiting on a diagnosis, waiting to hear if your child is healthy, waiting to find out if you need to move for a job, waiting to hear from the doctor, waiting and waiting. Waiting in itself can be a hardship, not to mention what the results of that waiting might be. Some things suggested to do while waiting are to keep busy, and not think about the topic. Some find that distraction through watching a show, talking to a friend, or reading a book can ease the suffering of the wait. None of these things are bad but as Christians, we should approach waiting differently than the world. Distraction is not our only weapon, nor is suffering in the midst of waiting for something beyond God’s use for growing or blessing us.  Throughout scripture we find people waiting, and we are told to be still and wait patiently for the Lord.
Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices! Psalm 37:7
How Should Christians Approach Waiting?
Psalm 37:7, tells us we are to wait patiently for the Lord. We see this theme of waiting patiently for the Lord continually repeated throughout scripture (Psalm 39:7, Psalm 40:1, Isaiah 8:17). But as we all know, or maybe just me, waiting patiently is not easy. As a mom to young kids, we have created a few different songs to help teach our children how to wait. Even with songs and dances to pass the time, waiting for something and waiting patiently for something is even harder. The songs help the kids a ton, as do other fun countdowns, but what about when we don’t know when the end is? What can we do to help us patiently for God? There are three things we can do during the waiting period, we can Seek, Praise, and Pray. 
Seek
During a time of waiting, we should be seeking God. One of the best ways to seek God is to run to His Word. The Bible is God’s word that He gave to us.
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These Gilded Age Christians would challenge us to examine the roots of our dearly held individualism critically. Rogers and Ely stressed a fraternity and equality based in their Christian anthropology — an understanding of humanity’s deep solidarity as divine image bearers. Given how many Christians around the world routinely vote for various social democratic parties, the politics of American evangelicals may be rooted today more in their Americanness than in their theology.

The rehabilitation of socialism’s reputation among Millennials and Gen Z has grabbed the attention of political analysts in recent years: “Socialism as Popular as Capitalism Among Young Adults in U.S.” (Gallup). “Majority of Gen Z Americans Hold Negative Views of Capitalism” (Newsweek). “Young Americans Increasingly Prefer Socialism” (Heritage). It’s surprising. Wasn’t the long debate between free markets and socialism resolved in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall? Wasn’t Karl Marx relegated once and for all to history’s dustbin?
What does this mean for American Christians? Few religious traditions have been as wedded to capitalist principles as American Protestants in the twentieth century. Evangelical thought and practice often mirror free enterprise’s elevation of the self-reliant individual and its fear of intrusive government. Just mentioning socialism or social justice leads to heated debates and threatens to split churches along generational lines.
There was a time when conversations about socialism weren’t as controversial among orthodox Christians. Before American Protestantism was polarized into liberal and conservative, there was a period of ferment during the Gilded Age (1865–1900) when economic, social, and political positions hadn’t yet hardened. Inspired by an earlier, mid-century English movement of Anglican clerics, and by recent labor unrest, a small circle of American Protestants began to explore the affinity between Christian and socialist ideas.
The energetic Episcopal priest, W. D. P. Bliss organized the short-lived Society of Christian Socialists in 1889, and some American Protestants even spoke at gatherings where speakers argued fervently for building a cooperative commonwealth on biblical principles. These Christians’ case for an egalitarian communitarianism invoked Moses and Jesus, rather than Karl Marx, and their arguments are worth revisiting. Indeed, their arguments anticipated C.S. Lewis’s overlooked observation in Mere Christianity (1952) that the New Testament’s social ideal looked “very socialistic.”
In a day when there’s a socialist revival among young people, understanding the perspectives of these Christian socialists from history is more than an antiquarian curiosity.
Edward H. Rogers
One Christian socialist addressed the ecumenical Evangelical Alliance at its Washington, D.C. meeting in 1887. Edward H. Rogers was a Methodist layman, shipyard worker, and Boston labor organizer. He’d led efforts to organize the Christian Labor Union that met in Boston’s famous Park Street Church.
As Rogers stepped to the podium for a session titled “Relation of the Church to the Capital and Labor Question,” he began not with tales of oppression or economic commentary but with a message about Christology from John 1. Most Protestants focused on Christ as a personal Savior and emphasized his identity as Prophet, Priest, and King, but John stressed that “all things were made by him” (John 1:3). Rogers emphasized that as the incarnate agent of Creation, Jesus is “the Master Workman of the laboring classes.” He also pointed out how the Gospels disparaged workers being reduced to “hirelings,” dependent wage earners with little personal investment in their work.
Having laid this theological foundation for Christian socialism, Rogers turned to analyze the current economic crisis and its social costs. Subsistence wages paid to industrial workers confirmed for Rogers the error of treating human labor as an abstract commodity. Wage competition led employers to not adjust wages for marital status or number of dependents. The result was the “break down of the family.” The new social sciences helped Rogers see these broader consequences of worsening inequality, and he believed that they appeared, in fact, to “confirm the doctrine of the Bible.”
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Written by Curtis C. Thomas |
Sunday, August 20, 2023
Our attitudes (or perspectives) are very important ingredients in our Christian walk. They not only affect our own outlook but also those of our families, our co-workers, our friends and neighbors, our fellow church members and the lost whom we hope to evangelize. If our outlook is pessimistic or dismal, people simply do not want to be around us, much less listen to us. If we exhibit a genuine optimism and a joyful spirit, people will be attracted to our testimony.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them (Acts 16:25).

It has been said that the way a person looks at a rose bush determines whether he is an optimist or a pessimist. A pessimist is sad that rose bushes have thorns. An optimist is delighted that thorn bushes have roses. Our attitudes, or perspectives, are extremely important and often will determine how effectively we can witness.
The context surrounding the verse quoted above from Acts 16 contains Paul’s and Silas’ witness in Philippi. After Paul and Silas had cast out an evil spirit from a slave girl, the owners of the girl dragged Paul and Silas before the authorities with trumped-up charges. The crowds joined in the attack against these two godly men, after which the authorities had them stripped, beaten and severely flogged. Then, without any medical attention to their severe wounds, and though they were Roman citizens, they were thrown into the jail where they were placed in the inner cell. Their feet were placed in the stocks—a device that caused severe pain.
Even though they were publicly humiliated and were in intense pain, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns. The other prisoners were listening. No doubt they were wide-eyed as Paul and Silas, rather than complaining and threatening to retaliate against their accusers or the authorities, were praising God through their prayers and hymn-singing. Suddenly, God miraculously delivered them by an earthquake. In the process the jailer, his family and possibly even some of the fellow prisoners were saved through the gospel testimony of Paul and Silas.
Paul’s and Silas’ attitudes (or perspectives) were an important ingredient in their testimony. Had they been grumbling, complaining, even cursing their situation, nobody would have listened to them. But instead, they were doing what Peter urged his readers to do when he wrote: “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have suffered grief in all kinds of trials” (1 Peter 1:6). Peter’s readers had been dispersed because of persecution and had lost all things—their homes, their jobs, their worldly possessions and, in many cases, their families. Like them, we are also called to rejoice even when we are suffering.
Our attitudes (or perspectives) are very important ingredients in our Christian walk. They not only affect our own outlook but also those of our families, our co-workers, our friends and neighbors, our fellow church members and the lost whom we hope to evangelize. If our outlook is pessimistic or dismal, people simply do not want to be around us, much less listen to us. If we exhibit a genuine optimism and a joyful spirit, people will be attracted to our testimony.
A number of years ago I learned a phrase from a young man who was an energetic witness of the gospel.
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