Waiting: How Faith Grows

I absolutely, positively, do not like to wait.  If I am at a store and the line is long, I get impatient.  If I'm in traffic at a stoplight and can't make it through before it turns red again, I get frustrated.  If I am at a restaurant and my food doesn't come within 20 minutes, I begin looking at my watch.  If I'm warming food in the microwave I wonder why it isn't completely heated in a minute and a half!  If I order something from Amazon and have the option to get the item the same day for free, I click on that option, not because I need the item that day but because I don't want to wait!  Our society these days has made it to where we don't have to wait much for things anymore, and this has produced in me a silly tendency to get impatient every time I do have to wait for something. 

My experience since God called us back to Humble has been a lot of waiting.  Flash back to late March when He told me specifically to go back to the land of my father.  My astonishment at the call led to fear and eventually to peace and has developed into anticipation.  Yet I am in waiting mode.  I am waiting to complete my current work at Emerson, am waiting to start the new work, am waiting to pack up, waiting to end my time at Calvary Everett, and waiting to sell the house.  If you will allow me to be transparent with you, the last item on that list is the one that has bothered me the most.  The house hasn't sold yet!

When we moved up to Everett, we had a fairly quick turnaround on things in that situation too.  God called, I began applying for jobs in the Seattle area (and waiting), and when the job finally came through I had just a few weeks to wrap things up in Houston before moving here.  Had you asked me at the time I was just certain that we'd put the house on the market and that it would sell at exactly the right time.  Exactly the right time to me would have been to have the sale go through in enough time to get us a house in Everett without having any delay.  God had other plans.  We wound up in a two-bedroom apartment for several months while we waited for the house in Houston to sell.  We lived with about 10% of our possessions in the apartment and the other 90% in storage, making things work as best we could.  And it worked just fine.

My recent experience in attempting to sell the house has brought up old memories and fears that I faced the last time we went through a major cross-country move.  Where will we live?  I can't afford to pay two house payments every month, meaning we have to sell this house before we get into another one.  Will we have to move around?  Will we be in an apartment again?  Will it take a day, a week, a month, or a year or more to sell the house?  And what are we going to do if it takes a long time?  At times this type of thinking has been on my mind almost constantly and I have had to go to the Lord with it often.  And we still wait.

During my really stressed out times thinking about selling the house, the Lord has drawn me to several passages that I will share with you.

James 1

² Dear brothers and sisters,^[a] when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. ³ For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. ⁴ So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

⁵ If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. ⁶ But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.

Psalm 27
Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.

Who had to wait in the Bible?

Waiting on God is a significant theme of the Bible.  Abraham had to wait on God to show him where he would eventually be living, and he waited on God to bring him the child that had been promised.  Noah waited on the rain for 100 years as he built the boat God told him to build.  Joseph had to wait at least 13 years before the dream God had given him came true.  The nation of Israel had to wait a few hundred years to get released from slavery in Egypt, then they had to wait 40 more years before they actually got to enter the promised land.  Moses had to wait for 40 years before God felt he was ready to lead the Israelites.  David waited to become king.  Paul was converted to Christianity and became a powerful proponent of it, but he had to wait 3 years alone in the desert so he could be trained up by the Lord.  The list goes on and on and on.

What does God do in making us wait?

Why does God make us wait for things?  Can't he just deliver immediately and be done with it?  Of course He can.  There is no doubt in my mind that He could have given everyone listed above an immediate answer to what He had promised them.  But instead God had them wait and He is having us wait.  What's the point?

Waiting produces several important things through waiting that develop us spiritually and bring us closer to God.  First and foremost, waiting develops a deeper desire to be with the Lord and understand Him better, which is THE goal God has for your life.  We have a choice in times of waiting to go our own way which is a path littered with anxiety, worry, lots of activity to try to solve things ourself, depression, and hopelessness, or to go God's way.  Going God's way means we deliberately turn to Him and release our cares to Him, waiting patiently for His response, His deliverance, and even His presence to overwhelm us.  That's why James said that "when troubles come our way, consider it an opportunity for great joy."  Joy comes in knowing God, being known by God, relating to God in prayer, and hearing from Him through scripture reading and meditation.  Waiting and faith go hand in hand.

Waiting also develops endurance.  When I first started running recreationally, I was not able to run multiple miles in the beginning.  I remember having my goal first to simply get to one mile, and after that mile I huffed and puffed!  But several weeks later I was able to do a mile and a half, then two miles, then three, and my distance continued to increase.  By running I prepared my body by strengthening muscles, and I also developed the mental capacity to keep going even when it was uncomfortable.  

Runners will tell you that a lot of what goes into running is mental, especially when running long distances.  Just as it is with running, so it is with faith.  You won't wake up one morning with more faith.  It is developed over time by being in situations that require faith, and as you see God deliver, your faith and endurance grow.  And your faith needs to grow because right now God is preparing you for future things that will require even more faith.  Just like with running, God is putting you out on the road and making you go one mile, then two, then three.  And the whole time He is running right next to you.  He never leaves us to our own devices.

And as your endurance grows, you eventually become "perfect and complete, needing nothing."  I actually think this statement is quite significant for you and I.  This tells me that God is always working on me.  God is always preparing me for the next thing.  God is always trying to work more of Himself into my life so I push more of myself out.  As I go through difficulty, uncertainty, and discomfort, I learn to allow more of Jesus in.  Since Jesus is "perfect and complete, needing nothing," I also begin to take on those attributes because the Lord lives in me.  Does this necessarily mean that I will be a perfect person who does not sin?  Not in this life I won't.  But just as a piece of metal becomes gradually more magnetized when it spends time around a strong magnet, so you and I will become more like Jesus as we spend time with Him.  And our faith will just keep growing, meaning we will understand the Lord more and more and more as we walk through life with him.

I won't pretend to any of you that I'm now some immovable rock of faith when it comes to our upcoming move and our attempts to sell the house.  At moments I am trusting God completely and at other moments I'm very nervous and "seeing the wind and the waves" like Peter did when he walked on water with Jesus.  I'm definitely not comfortable right now and many times if I could choose to be delivered from this situation, I'd choose that!  However, the Lord continues to emphasize that this all has purpose and that I should be coming to Him with it.

What about you?

You may be waiting on the Lord to deliver you through a season of life right now.  Perhaps it is a vision He has given you for future ministry that just hasn't come to pass yet.  Perhaps it is deliverance from a health condition you have or that a family member has.  It may be a financial concern or your living conditions that you are enduring.  Whatever it is, you and I must go to the Lord with those things.  This means we must pray when we feel like it and pray when we don't feel like it.  We must seek to understand the Lord and His ways as we pray.  We also must read God's word and stop to think about what it is saying to us right now.  And as our anxiety raises and we become bothered by waiting, we should pray some more.  And remember that God already knows how you feel about things, so be honest in your prayers to Him about it just like you would be honest with a friend when you are talking to them about something bothering you.  You will discover that God is right there with you.  

Getting no immediate deliverance from your situation does not mean He has abandoned you.  It may in fact mean He is right there with you, seeing the "you" that He intends to make you into and relentlessly working toward that end.  And the end He has in mind for you and me is Himself!