When my husband and I got married, he had already been working in Europe for six months. Since I did not have a work visa, I was forced to wait in India after applying for one. It was quite the formative experience. I had to apply and collect documents I hadn’t heard of up until then and each process took up an agonising amount of time. How I bewailed the loss of time we could have spent together! The marriage was new and the longing was unbearable.
When my application got rejected the first time, I was inconsolable. I reapplied – that meant reissuing certain documents and an extended waiting period. As you can imagine, giving up did not even cross my mind even though I knew that it would be an arduous process. To make a long story short, I stood up in church a couple of months after that and tearfully testified how God does not allow the waiting periods of our life to go to waste.
I had to remind myself of the lesson learnt many times since then. When the wait is long, and God is seemingly quiet, I tend to raise questions and issue statements that cause more harm than good. Some kinds of waiting are harder than others. Some prayers have an urgency that we demand be answered right away, others are more relaxed and not as urgent. However, I have come to learn that God works best during these periods of waiting that we are quite to write off as fruitless. Andrew Murray said it better – “If any are inclined to despond, because they do not have such patience, let them be of good courage. It is in the course of our feeble and very imperfect waiting that God Himself, by His hidden power, strengthens us and works out in us the patience of the great saints, the patience of Christ Himself.”
All through the Bible we see instances of the people of God waiting. David waited fifteen years to become the king. Moses waited forty years in the desert before He was used by God to lead the Israelites out of captivity. Joseph waited thirteen years before he was promoted to second-in-command in the land. The prophetess Anna waited her whole life before she could see Christ, and the list goes on. All of these people had one thing in common – their waiting time was not wasted. Today we can say that with certainty because we see the full picture of their lives as they have gone ahead of us. However, I am willing to bet that they certainly did not feel the same way as they went through it. Moses, for instance, was made to wait so long in the wilderness that he was a broken man at the end of it. He kept trying to convince God that he was not the right man for the job and kept reminding Him of his shortcomings. Little did he know then that he was right where God wanted him to be. “God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength” (Vance Havner).
God is the divine Timekeeper. He knows how long a seed needs to be buried in the dark before it cracks open and gushes forth new life. His timing is impeccable and never need be doubted. Those who try to rush the things that they believe God has planned for them are in danger of making the right things happen at the wrong time. Psalm 130:5 reads, I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. When the time is right, the Lord will lead you to it and see you through it.
Nevertheless, if you decide to take matters into your own hands without exercising the discipline of patience, things can get get ugly real quick. Take the example of Sarah, for instance. She got so tired of waiting for the promised child that she took matters into her own hands and gave her husband her handmaid Hagar, to give him an heir. We all know how that turned out. We are often impatient in our prayers and keep quoting verses like John 14:13 to God in order to try and force His hand – “And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” While many of us claim it in our daily prayers and have it marked in our Bibles, we seem to overlook the fact that the verse doesn’t say Jesus will do what we ask right now. We don’t know why God’s timing often takes so much longer than what we expect often times. But we would do well to rest in the knowledge that He is faithful.
Another mistake that many of us make is in assuming that waiting implies staying still. While in some cases that might be true, in most cases it is not. As you wait, give God praise for where He has placed you. Instead of murmuring (for which there will always be plenty of opportunities), choose to be grateful.
My dear father reminds me at every opportune moment to “celebrate the life, dear”. It’s the low periods in life that teach us to value to blessing of God and it is the valley that makes the view on top that much more precious. No matter where we find ourselves, we ought to ask God to give us the right attitude. The truth is, we might find ourselves waiting for a long time. The Word of God acknowledges that this is difficult as well – Proverbs 13:12 says hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. The Lord doesn’t expect us to pretend that we are fine and to put on a brave and happy face. He realises the weight of our emotions and understands our longing. However, He allows certain periods of waiting in our lives so that we may exercise patience, develop our faith, and find our joy in him now. “Biblically, waiting is not just something we have to do until we get what we want. Waiting is part of the process of becoming what God wants us to be” – John Ortberg
In addition to that, what we ought to remember is, in the bible, waiting and being patient are never passive but active. There is much that is expected of us while we wait. To wait is to be agonisingly aware, with all your being, of what is happening around you, and although everything is going against what you hoped, it demonstrates an active dependence upon God and is marked by obedience to him. It requires perseverance of the highest order.
If you have been praying for something to happen in your life for so long that you feel like giving up, please don’t lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).
As you wait, immerse yourself in things that will help strengthen your faith and remind yourself of the faithfulness of God. The Bible offers a simple solution to this. God encourages us to stop waiting for things to happen and start waiting upon Him to make things happen. When we wait for Him to act instead of waiting for circumstances to change, we will witness His hand in all of our battles. Hope placed in Christ is never misplaced.
Be careful not to let your waiting periods go to waste. Waiting is an active word, a verb, in the life of a believer. So as you wait, renew your inner man day-after-day by reading the Word. Communicate with God constantly and be honest about how you feel. Surround yourself with believers who will help make your walk with God more fruitful and will guide you through tricky waters. Humbly learn from those who have crossed similar situations before you and draw wisdom from their experience. I cannot stress enough how vital it is to have fellowship with other believers. The life that we have been called to live on this Earth is not one that is easy but blessed are they who have someone to share their burdens with!
Take heart, dear child of God. You are not alone in your waiting. And although waiting is hard, failing to persevere patiently is worse. “The folly of not waiting for God is that we forfeit the blessing of having God work for us. The evil of not waiting on God is that we oppose God’s will to exalt Himself in mercy” (John Piper). Remember, those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint (Isaiah 40:31). Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all (Psalm 34:19).
3 comments
Well said Eva! Thanks for the inspiring write-up ❤.
Wonderfully written by the Grace of God Evangeline, God bless you. The Holy Spirit himself held your hand and helped you to document this! We have to be broken by Jesus himself so that we can be useful for Him to glorify His name and wait on the Lord for His time in our life were the two things which impacted me more from reading this article.
Jesus Christ himself was broken for our sake obediently fulfilling the will of His father and set us a benchmark to follow, I hope in faith and pray that the Lord use us in the same way to Glorify His Name. Amen
Amen!
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