Worth the Wait

God made a covenant promise with Abraham, that He would bless him and make him the father of many nations. When Abraham and Sarah did not see this promise being fulfilled according to their perceived timeline, or fathom how God could possibly make this happen given their circumstances, they grew weary of waiting, and decided to act. 

“Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said to Abram, "Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her." And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. - Genesis 16:1-2

(Full story: Genesis 15-17, 21)

This passage reminds me that when humans try to take a good thing into their own hands and do it their way instead of God’s way, we taint it and foul it up. We want it now; we want it our way. Our limited mind cannot comprehend how to get it any other way, so we twist and pervert and try to take it by force. When we don’t wait for His provision, or His timing, or trust that His plan is perfect and will bring the best possible blessing, we take the precious, pellucid diamond of God’s promises in our sin-tainted hands and muddy it. 

This is because of our corrupt nature (Rom. 3:10-12); we take good things and mess them up, even in our best intentions. That’s why Isaiah says that all of our righteous deeds are like filthy rags. (Isa. 64:6)

But the good news is that God can still bring a blessing out of the things that we muddle up. God’s purposes are good and never fail, and all that He wills He brings about (Ps. 33:4, 11; 115:3). 

When things don’t seem to go as fast as we want them to or in the direction that we think God’s plan may be taking us, we need to check our desires to see if they line up with His will. More often than not, we will find that our desires are not the same as His because we are not delighting ourselves in Him, but rather looking for satisfaction in other things (Ps. 37:4). 

We must remember that God never promises to give us our sinful desires. If the thing we are waiting on goes against God’s clear commands in Scripture, then we can be assured that God never intends for us to have it. Quite the opposite, He desires to rip it away from us in order to make us holy because He loves us. “ When you discipline a man with rebukes for sin, you consume like a moth what is dear to him;” (Psalm 39:11), and “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives."  (Hebrews 12:6).

God ways are not our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts (Isa. 55:9).  So when to our eyes, things don’t appear to be panning out for good, the righteous will live by faith (Hab. 2:4); faith in His Word and in His character. God promises it will be worth the wait.