Waiting On God

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. Prov. 13:12

The bible talks about hope that is deferred makes the heart sick and I believe there are many of us Christians who are walking around with sick hearts. `Waiting on God to fulfill His promise to us is a trying in period that can leave our hearts feeling sick. Our hearts are sick because we received a promise from God way back when and we took Him at His Word and were excited and expectant and could not wait for that promise to come pass. It was fresh, it was new, it brought so much encouragement and hope that everyday was exciting because you just knew that at any time things would begin to line up for you and that God would deliver on this promise soon! And then one whole year goes by and you have yet to see the things promised come to fruition, but you believe God and you’re still excited and you know that His timing is of course best. You think to yourself this is a whole new year, God is going to do incredible new things this year and I will see His promise take place this year! Then another year passes, and another, and another.

You have yet to see the promises that God placed on your heart so many years ago. So you begin to wonder and question and doubt if you even heard God’s voice or if you just made it up. You take the matter before God and you don’t really hear much back from Him regarding the situation. In fact, He seems to be very silent on the matter. So what did you do? Did you get upset, angry, bitter, apathetic and then stop praying about the promise? Did you put it on the back burner of your mind and your life as something that may have just been wishful dreaming? You stopped praying over it, you stopped dreaming and it became a taboo topic when you had conversations with God. You’re hurt and you feel disappointed that God would give you a promise and not deliver on it. Yet, you see friends and people who aren’t even really Christ followers getting the desires of their hearts. How fair is that God? You feel like God is holding out on you and that maybe He’s mad at you for something, because He sure seems to be answering everybody else’s prayers!

This situation may be very real for you and maybe you don’t know how to navigate through these feelings and emotions and you’ve been trying to wrap your mind and heart around what God’s truth may be about the situation. The good news is that God is not caught off guard by your feelings or thoughts, and He still loves you like crazy and deeply desires to give you insight and revelation.

I too struggled with all of these thoughts and I have had to wrestle it out with God over the years. When I first really committed my life to Him 10 years ago, I was a mess, despondent, broken and deeply depressed. God picked me up out of my mess and took me through the process of healing; He gave me hope and painted a promising future for my life. I was given purpose and He told me some very specific things that He had for my life and for me to accomplish. He promised me certain things that for me I couldn’t believe He wanted to do for me and with me! I was SO excited that God would pick someone like me who was so undeserving after all the things I had done in my life. But He saved me and picked me! Then after many years of not seeing these specific promises happen, my heart truly became sick and I grew weary and hopeless towards those things. Don’t get me wrong, God had been doing a lot of work in me during that time, there was a lot of growth, healing, learning and maturing but those other things that got me so excited, that made me feel I had purpose, were not happening.

Then one day God opened my eyes to what He was doing during my impatience, doubting and questioning. He told me that He had a plan for me and He hadn’t forgotten about me and that He meant every single thing that He ever told me and not one of His words were ever going to fall to the ground. This is the same message that He has for you as well. He has not forgotten about you and in fact He thinks about you every day and has a plan for you as well.

The truth is that waiting on God is a time of testing. A testing of our faith, perseverance and ambitions.

1. Waiting on God requires faith. Anything worth having in Christ requires faith and God will put our faith to the test! In the bible Abraham was given a promise that He would be a father of many nations, yet in the natural he was already an old man and his wife was well beyond child-bearing years and they were only getting older. They had been married for a long time and up to that point they were not able to conceive. Yet the bible accounts righteousness to Abraham because of his faith that never wavered. He believed that if God gave him the promise then it would for sure come to pass. Many years went by for Abraham before him and Sarah saw the promise. In His time of waiting the bible says that His faith strengthened him. So how do we maintain this faith in our own modern day lives? Well the bible tells us that “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Declare God’s truth out loud on a regular basis! Ex. “God promised that He will give me a husband, and His promises are yea and amen; His word will not come back void; I believe God and I trust in His timing.”  Also, prayer strengthens faith and faith strengthens our prayer life. In order to keep discouragement and disappointment from settling in, you have to keep God’s promises at the forefront of your mind and pray regularly and be persistent. This is what strengthens you and will stir up hope and encouragement! {“Abraham never wavered in believing God’s promise. In fact, his faith grew stronger, and in this he brought glory to God.” Rom. 4:20}
2. The waiting season of our lives will test our perseverance. It asks the questions “are you in this for the long haul?” and “are you willing to press in to God and persevere through the wait?” When we come to Jesus and experience all of His awesomeness, it’s so easy in the beginning when God starts giving us incredible things to look forward to, to say, “I’m always going to serve you Jesus and love you forever!” Then we get tested with several years of waiting, and wrong things start to come out of our mouths and thoughts. Because of our offense (yes many people become offended at God), we begin to get easily distracted by other things of the world and focus our attention on those things which we are able to attain for our own selves, instead of keeping our focus on Him and waiting on Him to do the impossible things in our lives that will actually bring us true fulfillment and purpose. Persevering and pressing through can be one of the hardest and even painful things to do, but there is an earthly and eternal purpose in it. Abraham persevered through and year after years of not seeing the promise he had to press through the pain of the in-between. He had to press through and fight discouragement and doubt and the lies of the enemy that would’ve told him that this was never going to happen and for him to just look at the fact that they were only getting older. It was impossible. But he persevered and BELIEVED God. As you wait, your perseverance is being tested and waiting will expose how “down” for God you truly are. And if your faith has wavered and you’ve found that you haven’t really been pressing in…it’s okay. Simply repent of what was exposed, believe God and pick up your perseverance and faith once again! {“Let perseverance finish its perfect work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:4}
3. Our true ambitions really get exposed during times of waiting. It is during this time that God is working out our selfish motives and ambitions towards His calling on our lives. Even though God gave the idea and promise in the first place, we tend to somehow take what He’s given to us and run far ahead of Him, adding our own wild ideas and plans, thus creating selfish motives and ambitions that God never intended for us to have when He gave us these ideas. And if these are God’s promises then why do we have such a problem waiting for His perfect timing? Why do we get so discouraged and angry when we don’t see them happening yet? Because somewhere deep inside we want to feel significant through our purpose. We have turned from our God-given significance to worldly-seeking significance. Somehow we want the very thing that God has promised us to be what gives us purpose, identity, title, importance, leadership, etc.. and we become anxious for these things. But our purpose, identity and significance can only come from God. We were significant before our purpose, which is why He sent His only Son Jesus to die for you and I over 2000 years ago! He’s who we must always look to for our identity and significance, otherwise we will fall and stumble when we make all the other things about who we are. Who we are is what God says we are in Him and not what we do. This waiting is necessary to prepare and equip us for who and what He’s called us to be and do! {…for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. Phil. 2:13}

My encouragement to you is to remain steadfast in your faith. Remain faithful in prayer which will strengthen your faith, believe God and keep your heart and eyes fixed on Jesus. In His very perfect timing, your desires will be fulfilled and your faith will be ever more increased!