On Waiting on the Lord
Good Morning,
They That Wait by Fred Hammond featuring John P. Kee
There are many of you all to whom God has spoken a promise and you have been waiting to see when God will make His promise come to pass. Waiting on God is not always easy. We are constantly trying to navigate what to do as we wait. Do we try to work and make the promise come to pass in our own strength? Or do we just sit back and believe that the word that God spoke will be made manifest? The truth is that there is not one simply answer. Personally, I do not believe in just sitting around and twiddling your thumb, there is often a work to which God is calling you in your season of waiting. And I believe that as we wait on God to fulfill a word that He has spoken over our lives, one of the best things that we can do is simply to continue to seek out His presence in worship and His word, and in seeking out His presence, we can ask Him, Lord, please show me what would you have me to do as I wait on you.
For some of you, you are waiting on God to heal a deep wound that you've carried for years and you're wondering when you will finally be free from that hurt.
For others, you are wondering what in the world you are doing with your life and you are waiting on God to make clear the purpose that He has for you.
And for many more, you're waiting on a relationship. You are waiting on God to bring you someone who will see you as you are, love you as you are, and walk with you in becoming your best you as you do the same for them.
One of the challenges of waiting on God is the battle with doubt. As we wait on Him, the enemy often tempts us to believe so many lies. Maybe God has forgotten about you? Or he would have you to believe that God doesn't care about you, or that God isn't faithful. The enemy would have you to believe that God isn't trust worthy or that you should go out of your way to attain to the promise in your own strength in means that are outside the will of God. If you're seeking out healing, he may tempt you to self-medication with narcotics, unhealthy eating habits, or unhealthy sexual habits to make yourself feel better, but these things eventually start to fall short.
If you are seeking out purpose, the enemy may tempt you to compare yourself to others all the time and make you feel inferior for not having what they seem to have or for doing what they are doing. He'll try to make you believe that you're the only one who doesn't have your life figured out and that everyone else is just care free, and then you begin to question your self worth and what's wrong with you.
If you are seeking out a relationship, the enemy may temp you to begin doing things that you otherwise wouldn't or trying to be someone who you aren't just to someone else's attention or just to have someone say they love you. He may tempt you to accept emotional or physical abuse in the false name of love or he may tempt you to dishonor God sexually believing that that's the only way that you can get and keep a (wo)man.
Fam, the enemy has been running these games since the beginning of time. There's nothing new under the sun. I pray that God would grant us the grace to see these lies, and to repent, to turn away from the distraction of the enemy and turn our hearts. to God. I want to encourage you to remember that:
God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill? Numbers 23:19
18 Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”[d] 19 Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead.20 Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21 being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. 22 This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” 23 The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, 24 but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. 25 He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.
God gave Abraham a promise that He would do the impossible in His life-that He would grant him a son even though his wife was barren. It took 15 years for this promise to come to pass (which I know is a daunting reality for many of us to hear), but in that whole time, God never forgot Abraham. The Lord God used that 15 years to grow Abraham into a nation by granting him favor with Kings, giving him strength in Battle, growing his influence, and so much more. God used that time to shape Abraham's character so that he would be in a position to receive the promise. Abraham's time of waiting was full of trials that would have him to believe that God forgot him, and there were even times like with Hagar, that Abraham tried to bring the promise to pass in his own might. Even all of these trials came to teach Abraham how to trust more deeply in the Lord in turn drawing him closer to God.
This time of waiting also taught Abraham not to put his hope in the promise, but to learn to put his hope in the Giver of the promise-in the Lord God.
So my prayer for us is that as we wait on the Lord to fulfill specific promises that we would seek His face and His presence, and that He would grant us the grace to take to heart this word:
28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
Isaiah 40: 28-31
In Jesus' name.
