It’s easy to get tired of waiting for something that you feel that God has promised you. Whether it is a promise to all Christians or to you specifically, it doesn’t seem to matter. Waiting is hard. Sometimes it seems as if our waiting is in vain and the time we have spent waiting is wasted.
We are an impatient people. We want what we want right now. We seem to have lost the ability to slow down and watch for God to move. We want to help him along.
We aren’t really all that different from those in the past. If you think about Abraham and Sarah, you will see what I mean.
God, himself, had promised Abraham that he, Abraham, would have a child by his wife Sarah. It seemed laughable to both of them because they were very old.
So, Sarah grew tired of waiting and feeling like God needed a little assistance, she gave her maid Hagar to Abraham so that Hagar would become pregnant and Sarah would adopt the child as her own.
Abraham didn’t object, so he must have been tired of waiting as well. Hagar did become pregnant and gave birth to a son, Ishmael.
Those actions created dissension between Sarah and Hagar and, later, to the descendants of both of these women.
You see, even though Abraham and Sarah had taken matters into their own hands and ignored God’s promise, God did not forget his promise.
When God makes a promise, it is forever. He will not change his mind on a whim. The child of promise was given to Sarah when she had her son Issac. He was the child that God had promised whose descendant would someday be a blessing to the entire world. That promise was fulfilled when Jesus was born, lived, died and rose again.
There are other examples of times, in the Bible, when people of God did not follow what God asked them to do. So we aren’t unique in how we are. It feels like it sometimes, though. It is the way of man. We always make ourselves the center of the universe and don’t bother to look at others. We don’t see that they are feeling exactly the same way we do.
I’ve had problems with waiting. Not only with God but with whatever I want to get done. Rather than wait and have others help me, I tend to try to do the work all on my own.
While it may get the job done, there are problems that arise. Not only do I work myself too hard but the other people who might have learned in the process are denied the chance because I wasn’t willing to wait on their learning curve. If I were their teacher, I would wait but if not, I grew impatient very quickly.
That can end up with lots of problems down the line. Not on the scale of what is going on between the descendants of Issac and Ishmael but problems none the same.
Learning to wait on God takes patience. God has a plan and a timeline and it is up to him when events will unfold. He didn’t even tell his son, Jesus, when the church would be gathered to heaven. Jesus, though, has been waiting patiently on God to let his plan come to completion.
I am trying to learn from this example. I may never have the patience of Jesus but I can do better than I have in the past. I just have to remind myself that God is there and he is watching over me. He will deliver his promises at exactly the right time.
Lamentations 3:24-26
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I have hope in Him.”
The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
To the person who seeks Him.
It is good that he waits silently
For the salvation of the Lord.