Waiting on God

I'm going to take a week or two break from posting new content due to the busyness of the end of the summer, and if I was Donald Miller I would just have my dog take over for a couple weeks, but since I don't have a dog, I came up with a different plan. With hopefully about the same frequency as before, I will be posting blogs that I wrote 2-3 years ago on a different website. They obviously come from a different season of life for me but will hopefully be life-giving nonetheless. Please forgive the formatting errors and enjoy. -CK

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Last time I briefly discussed how life is like a giant hill that requires us to slow down and take things a little bit at a time as opposed to making one giant leap.

And consequently…how many of us are like an eight year-old girl riding a bike.

I have no brilliant metaphor this time (or maybe you thought it was terrible, I guess you're relieved then) but instead will take a look in the Bible at what it means to wait on the Lord's timing.

First, let me just say that though the word "wait" seems very passive and lazy, let me suggest that waiting actually requires a very active faith that is in no way passive or lazy. I don't know about you, but I would much rather be DOING something in an effort to reach a certain goal as opposed to waiting.

I feel like I have more control that way…which is probably why God makes us wait so much.

But God wastes no time in the Bible showing us what it means to faithfully and obediently wait. Genesis 2:2 says, "By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done."

As a college student I know that it sounds like a crazy idea to think that I could take one day each week and not do any schoolwork, and I'm sure being a man or woman with a career would be no different. But the Sabbath was meant to be more than just one of the Ten Commandments…

What God is trying to tell us is this:"The Earth doesn't stop revolving when you cease to work! I did create the Universe in six days, so if that's enough to earn your trust, I'm pretty sure things will be okay if you take a day off and be still before Me."

God shows the Israelites what it means to rely on Him instead of taking matters into their own hands during the exile from Egypt: "The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still." (Exodus 14:14)…how cool is that!

While there's no getting around the fact that waiting for something and trusting God for something can be one of the hardest things we have to do, it can also be one of the most rewarding. God IS sovereign, and choosing to wait on Him just gives Him another chance to prove His love and faithfulness to us.

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." (Proverbs 13:12)

I want to briefly (hopefully) go through two examples in the Old Testament of what it means to actively wait on the Lord's timing and to faithfully persevere even when things don't look like they're going to turn out right.

Anyone that's ever been in a long-distance relationship or waited for a long time before a certain relationship finally came to fruition should appreciate this first example. From perhaps one of my favorite sections of Scripture is the story of Jacob and Rachel in Genesis 29.

Earlier in the chapter Jacob meets Rachel as she's tending to her father's sheep and probably decides right then and there to marry her. As the story goes on, he agrees with Rachel's father Laban to work for him for SEVEN YEARS in exchange for his daughter.

Seven years…

"But they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her."

(Aww…you won't even find a line from a romantic comedy that good!)

As if that wasn't long enough, the deceptive Jacob gets a taste of his own medicine and when the seven years of labor is up, Laban tricks him into sleeping with Rachel's older sister Leah.

So Jacob agrees to work for Laban forseven more yearsin order to have Rachel!

7 + 7 =14 Years!!!

During a time when most women got married by the time they were 15 or 16, this is remarkable! Think about it…Jacob could not only have found another woman after he realized that this would take so long, but by the time his 14 years of labor had passed, he could have picked from a whole new generation of women!

God loved to bless Jacob and Jacob loved to be blessed, but this time it took a little longer.

But he perseveres and waits on God's timing because he loves her. Actively and faithfully waiting.

The second example is also from Genesis as we talk about Abraham and God's promise to him to be fruitful and multiply.

In chapter 15, while Abraham is still childless, God makes a covenant with him that one of his own sons will become his heir and that his offspring will be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

What's more, God TELLS HIM IN ADVANCE that his "descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated FOUR HUNDRED YEARS" before reaching the Promised Land.

Abraham has no children for his wife is barren, he's increasing in age, and God tells him that even if a miracle happens and he is able to produce offspring, his descendants will be enslaved for 400 years!…yet he believes and trusts Him.

It isn't until six chapters later and Abraham is 100 years old that his wife Sarah finally conceives their first child, Isaac.

What was Abraham thinking as he waited 100 years for even the possibility that God's promise to him would be carried out!? "What was I thinking!?…leaving behind everything that I once knew and for WHAT!? My wife is barren and I am old…how am I EVER going to conceive a child!? I thought that was YOU God!?…Your entire promise to me HINGES on me having a child!"

But Abraham waited and the rest is history. Actively and faithfully waiting.

You get the point. We could go through the story in Genesis of Joseph's dreams and imprisonment, we could talk about Paul's patience in affliction as he sat in jail, we could talk about Isaac and Rebekah also having to wait to conceive a child of their own…but you get the point.

But perhaps God's ultimate story of waiting on His timing was written a couple thousand years later…

Men and women left everything behind to follow Him.

His followers faced rejection and went two-by-two throughout the country to tell people about Him.

He proclaimed that He was the One they had been expecting.

He proclaimed that He alone was the way to eternal life.

…and then He died.

For THREE WHOLE DAYS, His disciples probably thought that everything that they had devoted the past few years of their lives to and everything that they had believed in and hoped in had quickly been destroyed in an instant.

…but three days later He is raised from the dead.

Those same disciples would go on to give their lives for the sake of the Gospel and do immeasurably more for the Kingdom of God than they probably could have ever imagined in their wildest dreams.

Three days earlier they thought that they had been defeated…but they just had to wait.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that entangles, andlet us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let usfix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men,so thatyou will not grow weary and lose heart." (Hebrews 12:1-3)