I recently gave a talk to the girls from my pastorate on our weekend away.  This is it:

‘Be still before the presence of the Lord and wait patiently for him to act.’ Psalm 37:7 (NLT)

We live in a society that considers waiting to be a bad thing.  We have fast food, credit cards that let you ‘buy now and pay later’ and diets that promise instant results.  Our society says that having things instantly is our right.

Yet the Bible suggests a different way – one that says not only should we expect to wait sometimes, but that the period of waiting can be incredibly enriching and beneficial.


So why does God make us wait?

I think there are 2 main reasons:

1.      God knows what he’s doing and can see the bigger picture. 

‘“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my way,” declares the LORD…’ Isaiah 55:8

As humans we have a limited perspective.  We see things temporally, but God takes an eternal view.

I think this is brilliantly illustrated in the death and resurrection of Lazarus (John 11).  One day Jesus was sent a message that his close friend Lazarus was sick.  From a human perspective it would have been the obvious thing for Jesus (who had recently healed a blind man, c.f. John 9) to hurry and heal his friend.

Yet Jesus ‘…stayed where he was two more days’ (v.6).  He waited.  His reason?  He saw the bigger picture – that God would be glorified through the sickness (v.4). 

Only when Lazarus died did Jesus go to Bethany.  For Martha, the sister of Lazarus, Jesus’ actions are incomprehensible – and she wastes no time in saying so, ‘Lord… if you had been here, my brother would not have died’ (v.21).  Subtext: “what were you thinking?!  You heal complete strangers, yet when one of your closest friends is dying, you wait?” 

Sometimes God’s actions puzzle and frustrate us.  And sometimes we may need to express our frustration to God.  When Martha pours out her heart to Jesus he doesn’t rebuke her lack of faith or dismiss her feelings.  He lets her say what she needs to say.

He then does something above and beyond what Mary and Martha could have ever imagined possible – he brings back their brother from the dead.  And because of this ‘many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary… put their faith in him’ (v.45).  Jesus saw the bigger picture.  He knew exactly what he was doing when he waited.  God got the glory, Lazarus got new life, and Martha?  Well she got her brother back, but she also got her faith vindicated.

God makes us wait because he knows what he’s doing and can see the bigger picture.


2. God makes us wait because through waiting we are changed
    The Christian life is never intended to be static – just look at the analogies used to describe it.  It is likened to a race (Hebrews 12:1), a battle (1 Timothy 6:12) and a plant which grows strong roots (Colossians 2:7) and produces abundant fruit (John 15:16).  As Christians our aim is to be ‘transformed into his likeness…’ (2 Corinthians 3:18). 
One result of our character transformation is that we manifest the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-3) – which includes patience.  We often think as patience as simply the ability to wait.  But I think it is more than that – it is how we act while we wait; i.e. the ability to wait well.  I read once that patience ‘is accepting a difficult situation without giving God a deadline for removing it’. 
And patience is not the only fruit that a period of waiting can bring about.  Many of the great Bible characters went through a season of waiting in their lives and developed skills essential to their calling. 
Abraham was promised that he would be made into a great nation when he was 75 years old.  However he had to wait 25 years before the promise became a reality with the birth of his son Isaac.  Yet through those 25 years I think Abraham leant trust – so that when God asked him to sacrifice his son, he trusted and obeyed.
When Moses was a young man he had a passion for his oppressed people (so much so that he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew).  Yet God took him into the desert and made him wait 40 years before he sent him back to rescue them.  Moses spent those 40 years being a shepherd – and I think God taught him about leadership through that experience.

Joseph was 17 when God gave him two dreams about becoming a leader – yet by running and bragging about this to his brothers, he showed he needed to learn humility before God could use him.  So God sent him to Egypt where he spent 2 years waiting in a prison before being promoted to Prime Minister of Egypt.
David was anointed king when he was still a teenager, yet he didn’t become king until he was 30.  During this period of waiting David went through some incredibly tough times - yet he learnt how to praise through the experience.  If God hadn’t made him wait I wonder how many Psalms would have remained unwritten.
Someone once said, ‘With God, waiting time is never wasted time’.  God sees the bigger picture, and, as John Ortberg wrote, he is far more interested in our character than our comfort.
Joyce Meyer has written a book entitled Enjoying where you are on the way to where you are going.  The basic premise of the book is that we often think we can only be happy when we get the thing we are waiting for.  So we say, “I’ll be happy when I get a promotion”, or “Everything will be so much better when I get married”, or “If only I loose weight – then I’ll be content”.
Yet Paul writes, ‘Be joyful always…’ (1 Thessalonians 5:16), and again, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always…’ (Philippians 4:11).  Often when we are waiting the last thing we want to do is rejoice – for me, grumpiness is the preferred emotion.  When I am waiting I don’t feel happy.  However joy is not the same as happiness.  It is not a feeling but a state of mind.  That is why, even when we are waiting and fed up, we can still choose to rejoice. 
In 2 Corinthians 11:25 Paul lists some of the experiences he had been through since becoming a Christian.  These include:
·        Receiving 39 lashes 5 times.
·        Being beaten with rods 3 times
·        Once being stoned (so badly that his accusers thought him dead)
·        And, if those weren’t bad enough, he was shipwrecked 3 times
From a human perspective Paul had very little to be happy about.  In fact, I think he would have been totally justified in having a small grumble (“Lord being shipwrecked once was unfortunate; twice was annoying, but three times?!  Come on, I’m working for you here!”).  However, Paul learnt the secret of ‘being content whatever the circumstances’ (Philippians 4:11).  He learnt to rejoice.

So, how can we rejoice and wait well?

1.      Look back
‘I will remember the things you have done… I will think about each one of your mighty deeds…’ (Psalm 77:11-2).
When we are waiting it is so easy to think that God has forgotten about us.  One way to combat this attitude is to remember what he has done in the past. 

Moses understood the importance of looking back.  Before his death he commanded the Israelites to ‘Remember the days of old…’ (Deuteronomy 32:7).  Having travelled around the desert with them, Moses knew how easily they forgot God’s past actions.  It was only a few weeks after their miraculous rescue from Egypt that the people began to grumble (c.f. Exodus 17:3).  Their main complaint was that they were thirsty and they couldn’t see how God could provide – they forgot that God had previously provided water for them (Exodus 15:22+) as well as daily food, heat at night, cloud cover, protection from their enemies and a way through the middle of the Red Sea.
A few years ago I was really struck by Jeremiah 31:21, ‘Set up road signs; put up guide posts.  Take note of the highway, the road that you take.’  I started to keep a spiritual journal and it has been useful in reminding me of God’s past faithfulness.  Recently I have been struggling with waiting and came across this quote which I had written down last year,
            ‘In the desert all we have to cling to is the promise, ‘God has not forgotten you.  You have not been abandoned.  He leads his children in round about ways.  He is not in a hurry.’’

We need to look back.

2.      Look up
‘Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus…’ (Hebrews 12:2). 
Often when we are waiting for something we find our perspective is very limited to the here and now, and it becomes easy to feel that life will never change – that we will be stuck in this situation for ever.  To quote Paul, we often trade ‘the truth about God for a lie’ (Romans 1:25).  We forget that God is in control. 
We need to continually refocus our gaze.  Rather than looking at our situation, we need to look at our God.  I once read, ‘The closer you get to God, the smaller everything else appears’.  We gain perspective when we focus on him.
One way to look up is to learn more about the character of God and his promises to us.  Verses such as ‘The Lord will fulfil his purpose for me…’ (Psalm 138:8) and ‘All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful…’ (Psalm 25:10) remind me that God loves me and has a purpose in making me wait.
I love The Message paraphrase of Matthew 6:26, ‘”Don’t worry,” he gently teases, “You’re worth quite a few sparrows.”’ We need to look up and remember that God is in control.

3.      Look forward

‘Forgetting what is behind and striving towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal…’ (Philippians 3:13)
Often when we are waiting we become so fixated on what we are waiting for that we forget the bigger picture: that we were made for God’s glory and called for his purposes (Isaiah 43:7).
Ultimately our true fulfilment comes from God, ‘It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for’ (Ephesians 1:11 MSG).

Waiting is a season and we can either choose to endure it or embrace it.  Someone once said to me, ‘The mountain tops are amazing – but all the growth happens in the valleys.’  Spiritual mountain tops are amazing.  We have a clear view – we can see where we’re going and why we’re here.  Yet it’s when we are back in the valleys – the day by day walking and waiting – that our faith is proved.

‘Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.’ Psalm 27:14