Column: Wait with faith
Kortney Mayne The Bridge
“Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Psalm 27:14
Waiting is not something I consider fun. When I pull up to a drive-thru and see a long line, I don’t usually jump for joy. Sitting in the pickup line to get my child after school isn’t really my idea of a good time. When our internet is slow and we have to wait for our devices to work, I don’t feel grateful to the company for its slow speed.
I’m probably not alone in that sentiment. I’ve never heard anyone say that waiting is their hobby.
Our culture isn’t used to waiting. We live in a fast-paced world. Everything is designed to be faster. A hundred years ago, people raised their food and understood the laws of seed time and harvest. You ate what was in season and then you…waited. Now we can go to the store and get any food any time we want. We don’t even have to wait to cook it. We can nuke it in our microwave in 60 seconds!
When I was a child, if I called a friend and she wasn’t home, I left a message and waited for her to call me back. It could be five minutes or two days. I didn’t always know where she was. Now my children text their friends and expect an immediate answer. They know exactly where their friends are, and they are not used to waiting.
Even our entertainment is faster. Do you remember waiting all week to find out what was happening on your favorite show? And if you missed it, you had to wait until summer and watch the reruns! Now you can stream any show any time and you don’t even have to wait through commercials.
Yes, our world is faster. But just because we have sped up, doesn’t mean that God has.
In fact, he built waiting into the natural rhythms of life. God created seasons and they cannot be rushed. And all throughout his word, he gives us examples of people who…waited.
Look at King David. He was told that he would be a king when he was just a boy. He waited over a decade to see that promise fulfilled. Abraham was told he would become a father but didn’t see that happen for a quarter of a century. Joseph had a dream that he would rule, but his life took a turn for several years before that happened.
Why does God give us so many examples of waiting?
Because sometimes waiting is about the promise, as much as it’s about the growth. We must be ready for the promise, before the promise is ready for us. God used those long years to develop each of those people to be the strong and capable leaders they needed to be. They were learning to rely on him in ways that would only foreshadow the faith they would need later in life. And in the waiting, their faith and understanding of God grew.
We aren’t used to waiting in our lives, so when God asks us to wait, we sometimes think something is wrong. But waiting is a very natural part of our walk with God. If you’re in a season of waiting, you’re in good company. Almost every hero of the faith was asked to wait at some point in his or her life. It’s what you do with the wait that makes the difference.
Don’t give up hope. God has not forgotten you. He may just be working inside of you in a very special way.
In Habakkuk 2:3, God told Habakkuk, “For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it lingers, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.”
I think many of us could learn from what Habakkuk was told. Maybe the answers to your prayers are slower than you wanted. They seem to be lingering. But if God has promised it, wait for it with faith. It will certainly come.
