Waiting on God

Do you ever feel like all you do is wait? Life feels that way to me sometimes. Technology has allowed us to become an “instant everything” generation, and yet I wait at doctors’ offices, stop lights, for answers to text messages or phone calls, for clothes to dry, for the coffee to kick in…you name it. We wait a lot.

And if we believe in God, we wait on Him too. That doesn’t seem like we should have to wait on God, does it? Especially when we read verses that talk about “Ask and you shall receive.” I didn’t read a pause in that verse, did you? But I think it’s in there. It’s just invisible.

Why do I say that? Because countless times in Scripture God made a promise to someone but then made them wait. He didn’t act right away. They could not see Him do what He’d just said He would do!

I’ll give you a few examples.

1. He promised Abram a son. Abram waited 25 years to see the son of the promise born to his wife Sarah.
2. He gave Joseph dreams that foretold a future where he would rule over his family. Joseph went from riches to rags to riches again. Twenty-two years after those dreams, his waiting on God resulted in a prominent career and reconciliation with his family. Great ending. Painful waiting.
3. He told David he would be king of Israel when David was about sixteen. David was 30 before the first part of that promise came true and he waited about seven more years to see it all come about.

Then there were the women who waited to bear a child. When I write about the women of Scripture, it gets tough trying to NOT repeat the same barren story over and over again. Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, Elizabeth, Manoah’s wife (Samson’s mother), and more waited to be able to have kids. Of course, all of them had some pretty special, called-by-God kids, but still. In their culture, that waiting would have been excruciating.

Not so much today. But I think today we don’t bother to wait on God as they did back then. We aren’t patient. Of course, neither were the tribes of Israel when they came out of Egypt, but impatience with God just makes us into complainers and that gets us nowhere.

If we really want to walk with God and know His heart and do His will, we are going to have to wait on Him. We are going to be put in places we might not have expected but we can know that we are not there without purpose. God has us where He intends for us to be because He’s working things out for our good. If we love Him.

I know it seems strange to think that God might put the people He loves in difficult circumstances, but it is exactly those circumstances that helps us to grow in our faith in Him. And as we learn to trust Him more, we learn that He’s got this. It’s not going to kill us. The waiting might be long, but it’s temporary. We can do temporary.

Trust is a big deal to God. He wants our trust because He is worthy of it and He is trustworthy. He will not let us down. Oh, we may feel like He has at times. And we may fail and even fall. But He will not leave us—ever. That’s one promise to bank on. Pull out as many withdrawals on that one as you need because He is there.

Even when He feels far away, He isn’t. We are just in a waiting pattern learning to trust. And when we can finally sit back and trust Him as we would a pilot on a plane or a captain of a ship to do what we cannot, we realize we suddenly understand peace. God’s peace is unlike any other. He gives it to those who wholly trust Him.

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