God Is Working While You Are Waiting

During the first few months, my 3-year-old hated school. She waited for the weekends – the holidays. Monday, she would get up and ask when the holidays will come.

We explain to her that she needs to wait for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.. so that her holidays would come. She will say okay and again ask the same question Monday evening. Again the next day morning! This would go on until the holidays actually came.

The problem is it was hard for her to grasp the waiting period because her knowledge of time was very limited.

If 5 days seem so long, imagine if she was asked to wait for a year. That would be her forever.

In many ways, our limited knowledge of God’s timing makes it so difficult for us to wait on God’s promises for our life.

And it seems like forever. No one likes to wait.

Waiting is hard and difficult, many times frustrating and at times can test our faith. It is especially difficult when there is no guarantee that what we are waiting for will come to pass.

Desires we long for, prayers we’ve been praying for or news we are waiting to hear can tempt us to be impatient, to be discouraged, to be anxious or to even wonder if God really cares.

New year – all of us would have received the promise verse.

But do you think, those promises pertain to this 2019.. Not really?

All promises in the Bible are yes and Amen in Christ Jesus. Very true. But they do not work according to your Jan to Dec calendar, but they work according to God’s calendar. And bible says in 2 Peter 3:8 - With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. This makes us impossible to come to any conclusion.

This makes our waiting even harder. -

Adam and Eve.. When was Eve actually tempted to take a bite from the forbidden fruit? She always saw the fruit.. It should always have been desirable to her eyes and always tempting to bit.

But do you know what particularly tempted to eat the fruit? Only when Satan was able to persuade her to believe that God did not have their best interests in mind, Adam and Eve decided to go ahead without God, go their way and bite the fruit.

When God tells us to wait, trust Him. Trust Him completely. Trust that God has your best interest in His mind. Like Adam and Eve, if you do not believe God genuinely cares for you, you will go ahead and find ways to accomplish your desires. And eventually, you will move out of His plan for you. It will not just create a rift in your relationship with God but also brings you into pain and troubles.

3 Things to remember even as you are waiting:

Theme of my message is this: WHILE YOU ARE WAITING, GOD IS WORKING.

Waiting is uncomfortable because waiting period is normally accompanied by God’s silence. But actually, that silence regarding the thing you are waiting for is a powerful tool that God uses for our good.

1. God is working on your character

God is more interested in your character, in your ability to reflect Christ in your daily lives. And he uses these waiting periods to prepare godly character in you.

Interestingly in ladder of faith that Peter writes about in 2 Peter 1:6 - For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.

Godliness follows perseverance. (patience or endurance). Godliness does not follow faith or knowledge but it follows perseverance. When you wait, you develop patience and thereby godliness.

All of us know Moses was the one who delivered the people of Israel from the bondage in Egypt. But tell me when was the vision first implanted in the heart of Moses that God would use him to deliver his people?

Not by the burning bush… Much before that.

Read Acts 7:23-25 -

23 “When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. 24 He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian.25 Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not.

Vs 25 – People did not recognize this vision that God had planted in his heart.

Moses was just 40 years old when this happened. And you know the rest of the story. He had to flee to the desert.