When waiting feels like a Lifetime…

Have you ever felt like you’ve been waiting a lifetime? Waiting with God is a vital part of a believer's life. Waiting is the way into both divine living and divine timing. Why waiting? What is it about waiting that makes it so important for us and for God?

Two things come to my mind: first, it prepares us for what God wants to do in us and for us. Just because we think we can’t wait another minute does not mean we are ready for Heaven’s answer. In the wait time, He is working things out in us that will make us ready to receive His answers for our lives. The second thing that comes to my mind is the Old Testament story of when the Jews entered the land of promise for the first time. Forty years earlier the chosen nation failed to enter because of fear and dread [unbelief]. That bought them 40 years of waiting before God would set up a second chance for them. Talking about waiting a lifetime!

The second time around, Joshua sent a pair of spies into Jericho to scope out the area. What did they discover? Oh, it was great news! The entire city of Jericho would be the first piece of land the Jews could claim as their own within the land of promise. And this time it was the people of Jericho who were now full of fear and dread. They had been hearing the rumors of the Jewish God for 40 years and became fearful of the Jewish people and their God.

This says a lot about what waiting with God is doing. Our time spent with Him is not only preparing us for His answers, but it is also giving the Lord time to go before us and be at work on the other side of our desires. During those forty years, God was busy making the land ready to be occupied by the Jews before they ventured that way to take it for themselves. Can you see a way of God in this story? Should we not also expect God to be taking full advantage of our “hang” time to not only prepare us but to also prepare the other side for when the time is right in His eyes?

-Gary

This reminds me a little bit of my wait once I had heard from God about Gary for me. You could say I was like the spy who saw the promised land and wondered why Gary did not see it, too. What was clear to me needed time to become clear to him, and there was nothing I could do or say to bring him what only God had planned to bring Himself: revelation. It took four years of waiting with God before what was “missing” was given: faith.

During those four years, I was slowly being set apart to become, not only a wife but an equally yoked partner. Not equal in value but in purpose. When it came to my calling, I had at least four “irons in the fire”, so to speak. I enjoyed teaching and coaching in a variety of topics, but in the waiting God was narrowing all those down to the one iron I was made to fire up with Gary: the romantic. While I was being prepared to be given, Gary was in his own land of waiting. He was being prepared to receive what he first could not believe.

Many times when we tell our love story, Gary recalls very clearly how he did not have faith to see us as any more than good friends. There was no spark of faith for him. He had had plenty of girl-friendships before me where he looked for that spark, and it was never there. Many of those potential girls made sense to him but they never made faith in him. He paid a great price mentally and emotionally to stay faithful to that one vital element he knew would bring God the greatest pleasure and to him the greater grace to do more in a marriage than he’d dare to dream. If you’ve read our book, Violets in the Snow, you’ll know that day of faith’s fire came in the most unconventional of places at the most unusual timing. It was a day God was saving just for Himself and Gary.

Gary shared his Jericho insights with me as I was making my coffee. I saw how both sides of the wait were working for God’s best story. While He was preparing the promised land to receive the promised people, He was allowing the time to pass to cleanse the promised people of deep unbelief. The forty-year wait was not a second thought, a plan B, or a lesson to be learned, nor a consequence to be reconciled. It was His divine wisdom working both sides at the same time to set up a God-story. Not a Joshua story. Not a Jericho story. He Who sees the beginning from the end intended it all: the good reports, the fear and dread, the old passing away, and the new coming into place, along with the rumors of His coming to take the land into a good work of transformation and testimony. It was all about Him, as it should be.

I know your waiting feels like a lifetime at times. Choose the faith that pleases Him and let the ticking of time shed what unbelief remains because it is preparing you both for “I do”.

-Kim