Right At The Door

(From Bitter to Better While We Wait)

There’s a tiny spacecraft drifting through darkness right now. You can’t see it with your eyes. No telescope can frame it. Pioneer 10 left Earth when gasoline was 36 cents a gallon, and bell-bottoms were still a thing. It flew past Jupiter, past Pluto, out where sunlight fades into imagination. The cold is brutal. The silence is punishing.

Yet somehow, across those billions of miles, a faint whisper still reaches Earth. A tiny signal pushes through the void saying, “I’m still here.”

If human beings can design a message that keeps traveling through the stars long after the sender has grown old… imagine how unwavering the promises of God are.

Jesus is coming.

That’s never been in doubt.

The real tension lives in this question:

Why does He wait?

Peter answers with a line that feels like it was written for us this week:

“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise… but is longsuffering… not willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9).

Delay isn’t disinterest.

Delay is compassion with a pulse.

Delay is mercy on a countdown.

God’s waiting is proof that grace is still moving.

Israel knew this story too

Their Red Sea moment should have anchored everything. Walls of water. Dry ground. Freedom behind them, promise ahead of them. They believed nothing could shake that victory.

Except three days later… at Marah… the water was bitter. And so were they.

Their fear screamed louder than their faith.

God pointed to a tree. Moses threw it into the water. Sweetness replaced bitterness.

Grace always seems to come to us in the shape of wood.

The Cross heals what fear sours.

Israel moved on to Sinai where God spoke identity into existence:

“You are Mine… I carry you… I covenant with you.”

But then at Kadesh Barnea, the moment of trust arrived. Twelve spies returned. Ten saw giants. Two saw God. The majority report:

“We can’t.”

Caleb’s report:

“God can.”

The giants weren’t the problem. The unbelief was.

A whole generation wandered with truth in their heads… but distrust in their hearts.

That’s a terrifying religion: • We know God

• We know doctrine

• We know mission

But we believe we must save ourselves

Our story has echoes

Our pioneers believed Jesus was coming soon. They weren’t wrong about His heart… just early on His timing. The disappointment hurt. But the delay shaped a movement.

We discovered: • Jesus intercedes for us

• Scripture opens from sanctuary to salvation

• Health reform was grace for the body

• Education was grace for the mind

• Mission was grace for the world

Light kept growing.

Love kept calling.

Grace kept waiting.

Yet the most dangerous drift is not into error… but into cold correctness.

We can rehearse truth while resisting trust. We can guard beliefs while losing the Beloved.

If we win arguments but lose adoration, we have settled for wandering with full notebooks.

What if God is waiting for His people?

Peter says the waiting has everything to do with repentance. That’s not the world’s repentance. That’s not Hollywood’s repentance. That’s not Washington’s repentance.

That’s our repentance.

Joel 2 helps us picture it: • Gather the people

• Fast and pray

• Make things right with one another

• Seek the Spirit together

• Let the priests weep between porch and altar

The latter rain won’t fall on solo saints. It falls on a unified church.

The end-time dividing line isn’t liberal vs. conservative.

It’s self-dependent vs. Jesus-dependent.

The Spirit always fills the surrendered first.

When God seems slow

You’ve waited before. I don’t need to know your whole story to know that waiting is a language every human speaks.

Waiting rooms.

Phone calls that don’t come.

Doors that won’t open.

Prayers that echo in silence.

Maybe you prayed for healing… and the doctor said, “Not yet.”

Maybe you begged God to restore your family… and silence met your tears.

Maybe you asked for purpose… and only heard the sound of your own doubts.

Waiting feels like punishment until grace shows you it’s protection.

Sometimes God delays the blessing because the blessing would crush us if given too soon. Sometimes He delays the answer because the relationship matters more than the resolution.

God doesn’t just want to bring you to heaven.

He wants heaven to be formed in you.

Waiting is where heaven gets its work done.

When Jesus waited for me

There came a season in my life where everything that looked stable… wasn’t.

I was in a position that made sense on paper. Leadership. Responsibility. Impact. A role I believed God had guided me into. And then the ground shifted. Suddenly, I was out. The same week, my marriage collapsed. The headline over my life changed from confident to confused. From productive to displaced.