The Lord is good to those who wait for him,,, to the soul who seeks him. (Lamentations 3: 25 ESV)
Four letter words. When we hear that, our minds naturally go to the words Mama said we should never say. But there are some good four letter words. One word in particular gets my heart pumping…SALE! Anyone else?
God also has a lot of great 4 letter words like love and hope, but there’s one He often uses that many of us dislike – WAIT! We all have seasons in our lives when God asks us to wait. And frequently that season feels like a famine because God is silent. Why does He do that? Why doesn’t He immediately answer our prayers or resolve our problems? To me wait is synonymous with patience. I saw this saying on a little plaque in a gift shop somewhere in my travels: “I tested for patience. I was negative.” Can anyone relate? How do you feel in the waiting time? Impatience? Anger? Annoyance? Well, you’re in good company. Many Biblical figures waited for God to act and change their circumstances. Just to mention a few…
- Moses waited in the wilderness for 40 years before God called him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.
- Joseph was sold into slavery and then falsely accused of sexual assault. He was imprisoned where he languished for more than 2 years before God brought him out to help save the nation of Israel from being wiped out by famine.
- David hid in the mountains for many years from King Saul who wanted to kill him before God finally allowed David to take the throne.
- Sarah waited 90 years for a baby
And you? What are you waiting for? What hard thing have you been asking God to act on?
- finding a job
- figuring out how to pay your bills
- healing from illness or injury for yourself or a loved one
- restoring a broken or strained relationship
- bringing healthy friendships into your life
- finding a spouse
- perhaps like Sarah you’ve been waiting to have a baby
- and a myriad of other possibilities
Are you in a season of famine where you feel like nothing good is growing in your life? As you wait, are you asking some of these questions?
- Where are you, God?
- Why aren’t You moving in my situation?
- Why are You allowing all this angst and pain?
- Do You see me?
- Do You even care?
- Why aren’t You changing my circumstances?
- Are You even listening to my prayers?
Perhaps our feelings are a direct result of how we define WAIT. The Webster dictionary defines wait like this:
- stay where you are or delay action until something else happens
- impatient to do something or for something to happen
- to remain inactive or in a state of repose until something expected happens
Look at those phrases or words that are underlined. What do they all have in common? They’re all very passive. In other words, do we often define waiting as “wasted time”? So is God wasting our time when He asks us to wait? I can unequivocally say, “ABSOLUTELY NOT.” He has a purpose in your wait, and He will never waste your wait!
In order to understand that, maybe it’s time to toss out our worldly definition of “wait” and redefine it according to God’s dictionary. Let’s look at the Biblical definitions of “wait.”
- to be aware through all our senses of what is occurring around us and discerning the right time to do the next thing.
- Hebrew definition: To continue faithfully and diligently to do what God has called you to do today.
- To be in readiness for; anticipating God’s next move
Look at the underlined words in this definition and compare them to the dictionary definition. Do you see the difference? The Godly definition is an ACTIVE wait. God is asking you to be ACTIVE in your wait not passive! So what does that mean? What are we supposed to do while we wait for God to fulfill the promises He’s made?
First, we need to understand that God is also active in our wait. He is hard at work! What is God doing in your season of waiting? He is pruning you or pre – PARING you for your next season. If you are a gardener, you know that if you don’t prune your trees, they can end up with structural defects, and your flowers won’t bloom correctly if you don’t get rid of dead weight and clear away weeds. So if we know what to do in our own gardens to make them beautiful, don’t you think the Lord knows exactly what to do in our gardens to make them spectacular? We can also end up unbalanced and with structural defects if we allow things to hinder our growth, and we won’t bloom correctly if we’re carrying around too much dead weight or if we allow weeds to flourish. So God wants to become our Master Gardener. As He says in John 15, He wants to prune us for the same reasons we prune our own gardens.
First, He wants to remove what is dead, dying, or clean out what is infected. The process is often painful as our Heavenly Father plows up those areas in our lives that need attention. What is the #1 area where infection thrives? OUR MINDS!! That happens in numerous ways:
- Childhood or adult trauma
- bad habits we’ve developed
- faulty thought patterns
- idols we’ve built to take God’s place
God has to clean out our minds by getting rid of our worldly mindset. Where are you getting your advice? Oprah? Dr. Phil? Relationship advice for the Bachelor or Bachelorette? How’s that working for you?The first place we should be going is to the word of God. It helps us align with God’s desire for our lives. It’s our plumbline.
Secondly, God prunes to remove what is hindering our growth and balance—to clear our path and keep us focused and on the right track. What kinds of things hinder our growth and unbalance us?
- Busyness – pursuing everything put in your path instead of seeking God’s direction, If God hasn’t called you to it, don’t do it!
- Good instead of best –even good things can hold us back from God’s best
- People – sometimes God wants to prune people from our lives or at least move them from center stage.
One of my favorite pastors once said that there are two kinds of people in the world – battery chargers and battery drainers. You can only afford to have one battery drainer in your life and that’s called a project.
Then there are baggage dumpers – those who want you to carry their “stuff” so they don’t have to deal with it which results in us baggage handlers carrying around what we shouldn’t. I found that once I stopped schlepping around other people’s burdens, I felt much lighter and more joyful in my own world. I now call myself a recovering baggage handler. God didn’t design us to carry other people’s loads; He is the only one with shoulders broad enough to do that. And just a word of caution: once God has removed someone or something from your life, don’t chase after it! It will only bring disaster.
Now that we understand what God is doing, and why He’s seemingly creating havoc in our lives with His pruning tools, what are we supposed to do in our season of famine or waiting? Before we delve into that, let’s look at what NOT to do by looking at a couple of women from the Bible.
First, there’s Sarah, Abraham’s wife. Here’s the lesson we learn from her: Don’t create a false narrative out of fear and cut corners! Let’s look a little closer at what happened.
In Gen. 15, God’s promises Abraham he will have a son and his descendants will outnumber the stars. But because Sarah is old and doesn’t trust God, she decides she needs to devise her own plan. She tells Abraham to take her maidservant Hagar and have a child with her. However, as soon as Hagar gives birth to Ishmael, Sarah becomes envious and bitter and demands that Abraham send Hagar and her son into the wilderness. Sarah had no idea that her willful disobedience would still have ramifications today. It resulted in the present day conflict in the Middle East between the nation of Israel and Palestine. Isaac is the father of Israel and Ishmael is the father of the Arabs. All because Sarah created a false narrative and cut corners.
Let’s take a look at another woman of the Bible who made some bad decisions:Rebecca. She made compromises and ran ahead of God. While Rebecca was pregnant with Jacob, God tells her that the older – Esau – will serve the younger – Jacob. This was totally contrary to Jewish custom because the oldest always received the father ‘s blessing to lead the family and received a double inheritance. When Issac is really old, Rebecca overhears him telling Esau (who is a hunter) to go out kill an animal and prepare a meal so that Isaac can bless him. Rebecca gets nervous and even though she remembers what God told her, she thinks God needs her help to fulfill His promise. So she formulates her own plan and runs ahead of God. Because Issac is nearly blind, Rebecca tells Jacob she’ll make a meal for Issac and instructs Jacob to put on his brother’s clothes and take the food into Issac. Oh and because Esau is super hairy, she puts some goat skins on Jacob’s arms and hand. This way Issac will be fooled into thinking it’s Esau, and Jacob will get the blessing. Her ruse worked but at a huge cost. It caused irreparable damage to their family and resulted in three tragic outcomes:
1. Easu and Jacob became bitter enemies.
2. Jacob ran away from home so that Esau wouldn’t kill him.
3. Rebecca never again saw Jacob again before she died.
Like Sarah, Rebecca didn’t trust God’s plans so she ran ahead of Him and suffered severe consequences. So what SHOULD you do in your wait? First, believe God has a plan! Jeremiah 29:11 says this: For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope. God is not in the business of ruining your life; He wants to create a great life for you, but you have a responsibility to give Him full access. Let Him have His way. You won’t regret it.
Secondly, believe God’s clock keeps perfect time! He will fulfill His promises in His time – not yours. God asks us to trust His timing, but we think His clock is off. He asks us to walk with Him, but sometimes He walks slowly. Keep in mind this verse from 2 Peter 3: 8 – 9: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise. Remember, too, that God’s will cannot be thwarted. Lamentations 2: 17 says this: The LORD has done what he purposed; he has carried out his word, which he commanded long ago.”
Third, believe in the power of prayer! Use it both as a resource to connect to God so you can hear Him speak and to have conversation with Him. God desires a dialogue not a monologue. He has much to share with you if you will listen closely and read His word. Also, learn to use prayer as a weapon to defeat the enemy who wants nothing more than to destroy you. Finally, remember that God isn’t a magic genie who is there to fulfill all your wishes when you call on Him. He says in Philippians 4:19 that He will supply all your needs, not wants.
“Nothing lies beyond the reach of prayer except those things outside the will of God.”
In summary, here are important points to remember:
1. God plan is always best! He knows the perfect time to implement His plan so trust Him.
2. God doesn’t need our help to fulfill His promises!
3. Deviating from God’s plan brings devastation!
Don’t create a false narrative, cut corners, or run ahead of God because there will always be negative consequences –perhaps for a lifetime! Allow God to be your Master Gardener. He is not some arbitrary or irrational gardener so give Him permission to prune you and make your garden beautiful.
Joyfully,
Joni
