A form of torture called waiting By John Mark Comer l Relationship Advice l Book Excerpt from Loveology

1942. America is at war in Europe and in the Pacific. Millions of young men are dropping everything to go and fight. My grandfather, Bill Comer, is a senior in high school when he meets a girl named Ruth from the nearby town of Muncie, Indiana. A few months later, right after graduation, he joins the Air Force, but while he’s away at basic training, they start writing letters.

They fall in love.

One

letter

time.

Ten months later she takes the train down to Alabama, where he’s in training, and they get married. Three days later he ships out for Guam. Not exactly an ideal way to start off a marriage. He’s a bomber pilot flying sorties over Japan, and she’s all alone at an Air Force base in the States.

They were nineteen and twenty.

Here’s what was crazy — that was normal! Most of them married right out of high school. But today, most of you will spend a decade between graduation and marriage. My wife, Tammy, and I married young, but that’s so rare now that it’s weird. When I drop Jude off at school, I’m at least a decade younger than all the other parents. The median age for marriage in the United States is 26.5 for women and 28.7 for men. And that’s for those of you who actually get married. For the first time in US history, there are more single people than married people. Fewer and fewer people are getting married at all.

We’ve elongated the time lapse between adolescence and adulthood, and in doing so we’ve made the waiting period longer than ever before. You may think that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but either way, waiting is a part of life. Even if you marry young, like I did, you still end up waiting. There’s always something on the horizon, just out of your reach. Graduation, a job, an experience, a dream you’re working toward — the list is endless.

The trick is to learn how to wait well.

Psalm 37

King David was no stranger to waiting. He spent thirteen years between his anointing as king and his coronation. That’s brutal. When God has put something in you and you know it’s from the Spirit and it’s bursting to get out, but . . . nothing . . . happens. It’s torture.

David spent most of that time on the run as a fugitive from his jealous rival, King Saul. He spent years hiding under rocks in the desert.

Waiting.

Psalm 37 was probably written during that time. At En Gedi or in some alcove tucked into a mountain. It’s a raw, unfiltered poem, one that questions if God’s ever going to come through. And if so, when? How much longer?

The psalm reads . . .

Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong;

for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.

Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this:

He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun.

For thousands of years, people like you and me have found solace in David’s lyrics. Because David’s story is our story. His lament is our lament. We all know what it feels like to be stuck waiting when we feel like we’re ready to move on. When “those who are evil” thrive and flourish and get ahead, and we shrivel up on the inside and fall behind and scrape by.

How is it that people who don’t follow God’s way sometimes do well? Really well. How is it that those of us who do follow God sometimes limp along. How is that fair?

Or put another way, how is it that people who ignore loveology meet somebody, have great sex (whenever they want), get married, and do well? And how is it that thousands of Jesus followers work and fight and pray to do life God’s way, but end up alone?

The truth is that God’s wisdom on love and marriage and sex and romance and the rest works as a general rule — not as a “promise from God” in every scenario, all the time, but as wisdom. As a general

rule, people who follow the way of Jesus thrive, and people who buy into culture’s way don’t. But there are exceptions all over the place. And it’s the exceptions that get under our skin — that make us question why we should go through all this trouble if people who take the easy route sometimes do just fine.

David’s answer is, “Just wait” . . . “Like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.” It’s only a matter of time until the bottom falls out. A relationship that was built on the sand will fall. It might take a year or a decade or longer, but it will fall. Of course, that’s not God’s heart — he’s all about healing and re-creation. The second you turn over your life to God, he’s right there, waiting to reset the foundation in your cracked relationship, because if you don’t get the foundation right, you’re in for disaster.

John Mark Comer is Lead Pastor of Bridgetown; A Jesus Church in Portland, Ore., and author of “Loveology: God. Love. Marriage. Sex. And the Never-Ending Story of Male and Female,” releasing Feb. 4, 2014.