My experience of God is that He doesn’t follow a 3 step plan, or a 10 step plan in which you are seeing him move at each junction. Often, the closer you get to a looming deadline, the deadness of silence is disorienting. A flood of panic rushes over you, intent to drown you.
I don’t have a solution for this place other than to continue to trust; to read key scriptures that fight fear, that reinforce that God is faithful and trustworthy. Listen to worship music and cocoon yourself in His peace.
We love to say that God is never late. But according to human time, when that deadline comes and goes and he still hasn’t shown up, you may find yourself wondering if “times and seasons are in his hands, then why didn’t he show up at this time.” He is a God who makes things possible but why hasn’t made this or that possible. But He reminded me of something recently. He lives in eternity, where all things are possible. And because His Kingdom has come, he brings what is in eternity here on earth. So, what you are praying for, asking for, believing for already exists. As for the time? Everything on earth has its time and season. There’s a season where one expects fruit on a tree, and a season where that same fruit doesn’t flourish. And I think the same can be said of our lives.
I also think that when God has a specific time that he has primed to accomplish his will, it may feel as though you’re a tree that doesn’t produce fruit. But there’s a specific fruit that you are to produce in the season that God has ordained. By human standard it is out of season or overdue, but to God, it requires that specific time. It cannot be any earlier, or any later.
To be clear, waiting isn’t glamourous. But in waiting, you have to learn to renew your strength, to encourage yourself in Him, to trust Him, to overcome the expectations of your heart and of everyone around you. You must despise the discomfort of silence for the glory that is ahead. You have to overcome the doubts entering your mind.
I remember waiting on God for something that He promised. I don’t know how many times I told God it was ok if he couldn’t do it. I went from floating on a cloud, believing it, to watching weeks become months, become years. But when he finally did it the excruciating feelings were foreign; I forgot my anguish; my doubts; my tears; my sadness; my frustrations. I forgot all of that.
I reminded myself of that recently, how in my zeal I said I would never doubt him again. (LOL). But looking back at that time, one lesson that I took from it is that, when you receive what God promised, it’s incomparable to anything else. It’s inexplicable. God’s faithfulness becomes too overwhelming to comprehend. You want to run from and run to Him; you realize that you do not deserve his love because of your own faithlessness; but you want to embrace him the more because of his mercy and his lovingkindness.
There’s a stark difference between God-things, and good things. We’ve become accustomed to ascribing good things with God, but not every good thing is the best of God. There’s an inexplicable joy, an almost ascension to heaven itself, of how something that is from him tastes.
In order to have his best, we must recognize His voice. His word says, “my sheep know my voice….and they follow me.” In waiting you’ll often hear the voice of fear coming from all sorts of places. You’ll hear it in yourself. You’ll hear it in your loved ones disguised as well-intentioned advice. You’ll feel its effects. You’ll experience its friends –doubt, depression, unbelief—force their way into your mind. You’ll feel the weight of being in a desert with no sight of water, or shelter, or protection. His voice, His word, must anchor you more than the emotions battling you.
And I think it’s in this waiting that you have to learn to discern his voice. You have to discern him in his word, and most importantly in the people who are there to encourage you. Discern between human wisdom and advice, and wisdom from God. In order to fulfil what He himself has put in you, he requires you to hear him, trust him, and stand by him, regardless of how long, how hard, how tough, how lonely the path is. And if you don’t learn to stand when those you love misunderstand you, betray you, push you away, hate you, despise you, are disappointed in you, you won’t always get God’s best. Faith is active. It has to get to a place of strength that it can reach for what God has provided.
I always think about Jesus enduring the cross. Abandoned by people who claimed to love him. Mocked by them. Dismissed. Disappointed. Betrayed. Jesus could have given up, but the permissive will of God was not going to save humanity. The throne could not be earned by playing things safe, and pandering to his family, or his disciples, or their weaknesses. And I think there are things that we want to achieve that will separate us from our loved ones, from their will and desire for us, to chart a course that is unfamiliar. It’s not by playing things safe or making “safe” decisions that will manifest the power of God we need in our lives, jobs, families.
Trust God alone. Don’t drown in the waters of human opinion and expectations in whatever area he has called you out in. Seek him, hear his voice, and stand in that.
He is faithful and able. He is gracious. Persevere through your emotions. Don’t yield to their inability to endure discomfort, always needing to be succoured. We must push to become like Abraham, who, despite a hopeless situation, against hope believed in hope. Believed that God was able. And because He is able, it doesn’t matter how long, how late it looks, and how far it seems.
