Waiting for something you want desperately is rarely easy. We live in a world that often provides instant benefits. We get used to not having to wait; sometimes we are even told that we don’t need to wait for things that the Bible tells us to. Whether it’s things like work, relationships, school, health, etc, or stuff like phones, cars and houses, more and more, we look for a faster way to get it all now.
The Bible has countless stories of men and women of God who had to wait for God’s timing. Plenty of Psalms speak of waiting on the Lord, Habakkuk 2:3 calls us to wait for the vision, Joseph had to wait in prison, Galatians 5:5 says that we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith…. Part of waiting is timing; the Bible says that there is a time for everything. This means we need to tune into His timing to be able to wait at peace for what He wants to give us.
So why wait? Why does God have us wait for things at times? Why must we wait for a (sometimes frustratingly) long time? This is what we want to look into; why wait, and how best to wait upon the Lord.
Abraham’s wait
Sometimes it’s easier to wait when you know someone else going through it. Father Abraham is a man of God who had to wait for what we would consider a long time, even by today’s standards, to have a child. We first learn of Abram at age 75, when God calls him to leave his home. At the same time, we learn that Sarai, his wife, is barren.
As we go through the story, beginning at Genesis 11, we find Abraham learning to follow God’s instructions one at a time, to leave home, to separate from Lot, to believe for his own child, and so on. By Genesis 16 however, Abram, now aged 86, and Sarai are tempted to find their own, faster way, to have God answer their prayer. Needless to say, it doesn’t work out as expected and they find themselves back to waiting for their own child again.
It was only at 99, when things really changed. Abram entered into a covenant with God and became Abraham, the Father of Nations, and Sarai also became Sarah. This covenant was a real breakthrough because the Bible records that at 100, Isaac was finally born to the couple.
We live in an era of now; sometimes, we can ask God for something for the moment. If we don’t get it now, we don’t want it anymore. We may even forget we asked, or we want to ask for something else to be instantly delivered. The God we serve, however, is not the author of confusion (1 Cor 14.33), and He never changes (Mal 3.6/Heb 13.8), nor does His will (Ps 33.11).
Whatever you’re waiting for today, thank God that He knows what you need and delights in giving His children the desires of their heart.
This article originally appeared on our Facebook page as a two-part miniseries on 12-13 October 2021