God’s Promises | Patiently Waiting on God

Downshifting

I just recently bought a hybrid bicycle, and am in love with this new-found sport. The speed (I am a total adrenaline junkie), the freedom, the quiet…..all so exhilarating.

But it’s funny how you think you are in shape until you try a different sport. And then all of a sudden, after one big hill, your lungs are on fire, your legs are burning, and your heart is about to burst out of your chest. (I will reserve my conversation about the whole topic of spandex for another post!)

So what have I learned? I have to downshift. My bike has different gears, and when I am full of energy and feeling great, I can push hard on my higher gears. But when I am working to get up a hill, and my body is drained of energy, it is time to downshift until I regain my energy and momentum.

I have found the same to be true in waiting. There are some days I am rolling along in my “higher gears”…..a picture of waiting well….a stalwart of patience….a testimony to God’s love and grace and strength. But then I hit a hill, and it’s a big one, and my energy starts to slip away. It may be that the constant praying for a loved one to finally surrender to the Lord has just drained me. (The Lord said these were intense battles!) It may be a couple of untimely comments from people who don’t know what I am battling every day or the trials that I have faced that have tested my soul and my very faith.

Just like cycling, when I hit these hills in my personal life, it is time for me to downshift. It is time to find those things which energize my soul. It is time to find a respite from the hill until I regain my energy to hit my higher gears again.

And that will come, and I will be flying like the wind again before I know it. And so will you. But we have to give ourselves the grace to rest and downshift.

God’s Appointed Time

God has an appointed time for everything in our lives. Everything. Every situation, every promise, everything….has a God appointed time. Yes, this also includes the end of our waiting. In fact, Habakkuk 2:3 tells us, “For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.”[i]

As we wait for God’s appointed time of our promised revelation, there is a myth that we need to strike from our hearts, and some points of fact that we need to ponder. So let’s dive right into the myth. I believe that there is a key myth that Satan bombards us with during our time of waiting – That God has forgotten about us. I can just hear Satan whispering in my ear, “God has sadly forgotten about you. I mean, look at the time that has elapsed between when He gave you the promise and the godly desires began to well up in your heart, to today. It’s been a long time. I mean a really, really long time, and He has so many incredibly important things going on that He just forgot your little issue.”

These are nothing but lies. Our God who loves us enough to know the very number of hairs on our heads, and who catches each and every tear drop that falls from our eyes, has not forgotten about us. Deuteronomy 31:6 reminds us of this when it says, “Be strong and courageous…for the Lord your God goes with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you.”[ii] Although Satan would love us to believe differently, our God will never leave us, never forsake us, and never forget about us. He simply can’t. He loves us too much. We are imprinted into the very palms of His hands.

[i] NIV Habakkuk 2:3

[ii] NIV Deuteronomy 31:6

Beauty for Ashes

Isaiah 61:3 tells us that the Lord will give us “beauty for ashes.” NKJV

What a beautiful picture.

And my waiting has taught me that our precious Heavenly Father can bring beauty from so many different types of ashes.

He can bring Beauty…….from the ashes I have caused in my life through my own personal mistakes and bad decisions.

He can bring Beauty…….from the ashes where people purposefully tried to hurt me and left scars behind on my heart.

He can bring Beauty…….from the ashes in your life that you have kept secret between you and the Lord, because they are simply too painful to reveal.

He can bring Beauty…….from the ashes in your loved one’s lives, as you watch them head down destructive paths or as they are finally emerging from those destructive paths.

God can bring Beauty out of every single situation that we have caused ourselves or that we have been unfairly dealt.

He created life as we know it from nothingness. What makes us think He can’t bring amazing beauty out of a few ashes?

Cycle of Desires: Waiting – Part 3 of 5

Waiting

God’s Promises are a signed, sealed guarantee, but often so is the waiting that accompanies them. Like we see with Abraham, sometimes God gives us promises far in advance of their fulfillment to give us hope for our future and stability during our present pain. But He still makes us wait and wait and wait for them – to the point we honestly believe our hearts will explode with anxiety or pain. See, it’s in our hearts where our deepest desires reside and therefore it is the most vulnerable of places for us.

But because those desires are in the most vulnerable of places and are often the most important to us, they are also of utmost importance to God. And He is never inactive in our waiting time, even when He calls us to be still. In fact, He absolutely loves to work for those who will wait for Him.

Although He may not explain all of His purposes to us as He has us in this season of waiting, there is always a reason. I am sure that Abraham would have gladly relived each and every day of waiting, knowing the joy that his son Isaac brought him for the rest of his days. Even though the waiting felt like an eternity, Isaac was worth waiting for.

God has something worth us waiting for too. I was driving to a function the other day, and praying while I drove. Much of my time spent driving involves me praying that I don’t get a ticket, but on this particular trip I was bearing my soul to the Lord in terms of my desires and longing for a family. And that’s when the Lord laid it on my heart, “I am making you wait because there is something worth waiting for.” There is something worth waiting for. It’s kind of hard to argue with that, and so I have no choice but to wait.

There are days I feel much like I am sure Sarai felt….a bit past my prime in terms of the timeline of my hopes and dreams…a bit on the wrong side of where I would like to be. But that’s when God does something to remind me of the promises He has given me. That’s when He reminds me that my waiting will produce a joy that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

Encouraging Quotes on Waiting

Biblically, waiting is not just something we have to do until we get what we want. Waiting is part of the process of becoming what God wants us to be. – John Ortberg

To wait on God means to pause and soberly consider our own inadequacy and the Lord’s all-sufficiency, and to seek counsel and help from the Lord, and to hope in Him (Psalm 33:20-22; Isa. 8:17)… The folly of not waiting for God is that we forfeit the blessing of having God work for us. The evil of not waiting on God is that we oppose God’s will to exalt Himself in mercy.- John Piper

Teach us, O Lord, the disciplines of patience, for to wait is often harder than to work. – Peter Marshall

What then are we to do about our problems? We must learn to live with them until such time as God delivers us from them…we must pray for grace to endure them without murmuring. Problems patiently endured will work for our spiritual perfecting. They harm us only when we resist them or endure them unwillingly.- A.W. Tozer

Do you have any you could share that have been an encouragement to you?

The God of Time

The reality of waiting is that it puts us face to face with the difference between our will, particularly around our own timeline, and God’s will. As a reader recently pointed out (thank you so much Jon!), even Jesus wrestled with that same difficulty as He faced down the cross. His will was different from that of His Father. Jesus knew the pain and agony that was coming, and it was terrifying. But God knew there was only way to save all of mankind….a sacrifice….that of His Only Son. Their wills were moving in opposite directions, but Jesus put His will on the altar of sacrifice before His Father who He knew He could trust.

Our waiting is often far less dramatic than facing down crucifixion, but the idea is the same in that waiting is our yielding to God’s clock and timeline. Easy? No. Painful? Absolutely. Time feels like our enemy as it slowly ticks by, seemingly mocking us. But God is God over everything….and that includes time. He made time standstill for Abraham and Sarah as He gave them a child when natural laws made it truly impossible. He made time the instrument of maturity as He prepped Joseph to become second in command over the land of Egypt. He used time to make a man after His own heart from a lowly shepherd boy named David. He is the GOD OF TIME.

And we too can trust the God of Time to use time, not to hurt us, but to bless us in ways that we could never have dreamed or imagined. We just have to lay our will down and trust that He wants only the very best for us. And sometimes that takes a great deal of time.