{"id":7456,"date":"2026-06-23T01:48:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T01:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7456"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:31:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:31:15","slug":"the-lord-waits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7456","title":{"rendered":"THE LORD WAITS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Isaiah 30:18 says: &#8220;The Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Who is waiting for whom here? Both God and humans are depicted as &#8220;waiting&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You might be tempted to picture God as sitting on the sidelines waiting for you to finally get your act together.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the sense of the word &#8220;wait&#8221; is closer to longing than merely passing time. (For both God and humans.)<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So it&#8217;s more like &#8220;the Lord longs to be gracious to you&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Think about that.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many people carry around an image of God as distant, indifferent, perpetually disappointed, or barely tolerating them. Some imagine that God is looking for reasons to reject them.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I know that I&#8217;ve been there before.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Isaiah paints an entirely different picture.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">God longs to be gracious.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He desires to show mercy.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He is for us, not against us.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He is not looking for an excuse to abandon His children.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He is looking for an opportunity to restore them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Isaiah 30:18 says: &#8220;The Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.&#8221; Who is waiting for whom here? Both God and humans are depicted as &#8220;waiting&#8221;. You might be tempted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7457,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7456\/revisions\/7457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}