I hate waiting. Whether I am stuck in traffic, in a long checkout line, or at a doctor or dentist’s office, it is totally frustrating. I am fairly sure I am not alone in this. In fact, I have never met another woman who enjoys long commutes, grocery lines or traffic jams. However, most women I have known in the Church have come up with various ways to redeem the time, whether by listening to a sermon CD or educational radio in the car, engaging in good conversation, or reading helpful books (paper or on an iPad) while seated and waiting. Even so, at the end of the day, we still hate to wait.
An expression we have all probably heard often is that something is actually “worth waiting for.” For me, that would be especially true of my children. After more than 20 hours of hard labor, and nine long months of either nausea or back pain and heartburn, along with other not-to-be-named trials of pregnancy, both of my children were definitely worth waiting for. And our Father in heaven is patiently waiting on each and every one of us, too. As the Apostle Peter wrote, God is, “longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). It is hard to imagine that our Father has been waiting patiently to see us in His Family since the foundations of the earth, when He determined to give up His only Son for all of us. He has confidence that we are worth waiting for!
As women of God, we are all trying to develop the fruits of God’s Holy Spirit, which includes being longsuffering or patient in our daily lives—not always an easy task. Every day we are tested in this area, whether by our husbands, our children, our families or our work, or simply by our own imperfect human nature. It is a constant battle. If you are like me, you have proven to yourself, over and over again, that no women (or men) can do this on their own strength. Rather, we can only make any lasting change in becoming more patient or longsuffering by seeking daily the help of Christ, who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13). I have come to see that the one thing most worth waiting for can sometimes be the hardest of all—that is, to wait on God.
What does it mean for a woman to wait on God? Basically it means that she is prayerfully trusting His timing, whether it be regarding when He chooses to intervene and save us out of our trials, or how quickly He chooses to bless us with certain blessings that are desires of our heart. Most of the time, I find that my timing would be much faster than God’s. I think we probably all want to be saved from trials and given the desires of our heart much more quickly than God knows is best for our spiritual growth.
Biblical Women Who Waited
Looking into a couple of the biblical examples of godly women, I am encouraged to know that we are not alone. Abraham’s wife Sarah set us a wonderful example as a submissive wife (whose daughters we are spiritually, according to 1 Peter 3:6). However, Sarah had a very difficult time waiting on God to provide her with a son, in His perfect timing. Becoming impatient, as we often do, she thought she would go ahead and do things her own way, and she even talked her husband into her idea.
The book of Genesis describes how Sarai decided that she thought God was restraining her from having children, and in her impatience and human reasoning, she decided to talk her husband into having a child through her Egyptian maid (Genesis 16:1–3). When we look at the results of that decision, we know why God gives us these examples to learn from, because the resulting family discord and eventually violence and wars between Sarah’s descendants and Hagar’s can still be viewed in the Middle East to this very day. I am sure we can all look at our own lives and see so many times when we “got ahead” of God when it came to something we thought was good and that we wanted very much to have or to do for either ourselves or our family. We can also undoubtedly see the wonderful results that came during those times when we did wait on God to bless us, or our family members, in a particular way. One of my favorite scriptures in this context, is in Proverbs 10:22: “The blessing of the Lord makes one rich, and He adds no sorrow with it.” One way we can know that something we want comes from God and is according to His will, is when there is no sorrow as a result of having it, either then or later.
Sometimes, it is not just for ourselves that we need to patiently wait on God to provide. We also need to wait on Him to intervene for, or bless in special ways, either family members or close friends. In reading over the account of Sarah’s daughter-in-law Rebekah, in Genesis 27, we see that she had the same tendency as Sarah, in that she chose to make things happen herself. Often, we will want to fix things we feel are unfair, and be “large and in charge.” One lesson I took here was that Rebekah did not ask her husband Isaac before acting. She probably knew he would not go along with her plan. Our husbands can give us perspective and help keep us from making foolish decisions in most cases, and they are a safety net that God has put into place for our protection. Rebekah, however—instead of waiting for God to give the birthright blessings to her son Jacob—intervened in the process because she thought she was right about her son’s character and that he should have the firstborn blessings. However, Jacob was not at all ready at that time for what his mother tried to “get” for him by disguising him and fooling her husband into giving him the blessing. In Genesis 27:12, when Jacob himself was hesitant to disguise himself lest he receive a curse, Rebekah would not listen to him either, but instead told him, “Let your curse be on me, my son.” How easy it is, once we have decided something for ourselves, not to listen to others—and how very sadly this turned out for Rebekah in the end. She basically lost her son as a result of her deception, because Jacob had to flee for his very life and live far away from family and friends for many, many years.
Another consequence of Rebekah’s unwillingness to wait on God included her missing out on the great blessing of seeing her son married and later spending time with her little grandchildren during their formative years! What a valuable lesson for all of us who are mothers of mature children, to be willing to fully trust that God will bless and intervene for our grown children, and that we can safely wait for His perfect timing in their lives.
Waiting for God’s Intervention
I know from hundreds of conversations that so very many of us are waiting for God to intervene in serious trials in our lives or our families’ lives. Some of us have to live alone, or with a hostile husband or family members. Others are in dire financial or health trials. Many of our lovely and dedicated ladies are waiting on God to provide them with a godly husband, a less stressful job, or to bless them with children. What are the blessings of waiting on God? Enormous and beautiful promises are given to us in the Word of God concerning those who are willing to trust in God’s timing and His will instead of their own. One of the most encouraging of these promises to us is found in Isaiah 40:31: “But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” In Lamentations 3:25 we are also given the assurance that, “The Lord is good to those who wait for Him.” When we are worn out by the daily stresses we all face from work, family or friends, it is reassuring to know that we can find, “Rest in the Lord” while we, “wait patiently for Him” (Psalm 37:7). During the low times, we as women, created to be sensitive and empathetic, can so easily become saddened or depressed by the large and small stresses of life.
Yet, we can also take heart from the words of David, who himself suffered many trials and loss of children, yet still encouraged us in Psalm 27:14: “Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the Lord!” We all want to be mature Christian women, and to accomplish this we have to follow the instruction in James 1:4: “But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete [mature, of full age], lacking nothing.”
Let us continue to help each other to look forward to the day when all the patient waiting will be over. We have been promised: “To those who eagerly wait for HimHe will appear a second time…. for salvation” (Hebrews 9:28).