I hate waiting. Whether I am stuck in traffic, in a long checkout line, or at a doctor’s 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 God’s Church have come up with various ways to redeem the time, whether by listening to a recorded sermon or educational radio in the car, engaging in good conversation, or, if seated and waiting, reading helpful books, whether with physical copies or on a mobile device. Even so, no matter how we pass the time, most of us still hate to wait.
An expression we have all probably heard refers to something as actually being “worth waiting for.” For me, that would be especially true of my children. After nine long months of either nausea or back pain and heartburn, along with other not-to-be-named trials of pregnancy and more than 20 hours of hard labor, 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, but our Father has been waiting patiently to add children to His Family since the foundation of the world, 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. We are tested in this area every day, whether by our husbands, our children, our relatives, 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 again and again that human beings are not capable of doing this on our 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 us to wait on God? It means that we are prayerfully trusting His timing, whether that timing regards when He chooses to intervene and save us out of our trials or how quickly He chooses to bestow certain blessings that are desires of our heart. Why is it so hard? Well, most often, I find that my timing would be much faster than God’s. I think we all probably 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 at the biblical examples of Sarah and Rebekah, two godly women, I am encouraged to find that we are not alone. Abraham’s wife, Sarah, set us a wonderful example as a submissive wife (whose spiritual daughters we are, according to 1 Peter 3:6). However, Sarah had a very difficult time waiting on God to provide her with a child 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 Sarah 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 Proverbs 10:22: “The blessing of the Lord makes one rich, and He adds no sorrow with it.” One way we can sometimes 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 us that we must patiently wait on God to provide; we may need to wait on His intervention or a special blessing for family members or close friends. Often, we will want to be “large and in charge” and fix things we feel are unfair. 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—in this case, for her favored son.
One lesson I take is 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 her belief that he should have the firstborn blessings. However, Jacob was not at all ready at that time for what his mother tried to take for him when she disguised him and fooled her husband into giving him the blessing. In fact, even Jacob himself was hesitant to take part in the deception, out of concern that he might be discovered and receive a curse—but Rebekah would not listen to him either, instead telling him, “Let your curse be on me, my son” (Genesis 27:13).
Once we have decided something for ourselves, it is easy not to listen to others—and how very sadly this turned out for Rebekah in the end. She basically lost her son because of her deception, because Jacob had to flee for his very life and live far away from family and friends for a good many years. Rebekah’s unwillingness to wait on God also caused her to miss 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 those of us who are mothers of mature children—to be willing to trust fully 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 in the lives of our families. Some of us live alone, some 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, to give them a less stressful job, or to bless them with children.
What are the blessings of waiting on God? God’s word gives us enormous and beautiful promises concerning those who are willing to trust in His timing and will instead of their own. One of the most encouraging of these promises 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.” Scripture also gives us this uplifting assurance: “The Lord is good to those who wait for Him” (Lamentations 3:25). When we are worn out by the daily stress we face from work, family, or friends, it is reassuring to know that we can find rest in our God 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, “Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the Lord” (Psalm 27:14). We all want to be mature Christian women, and to accomplish this we have to follow the instruction to “let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete [mature, of full age], lacking nothing” (James 1:4).
Let us continue to help each other to look forward to the day when all our patient waiting will be over. Our reward has been promised: “To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time… for salvation” (Hebrews 9:28).