The beauty of waiting

Welcome to a new week and an exciting adventure into God’s Word for your life. In this new episode of TOTAL EXPERIENCE, we will begin to discuss a subject that does not resonate much with this generation and that subject is WAITING. 

This generation would rather want to discuss the subjects of how to increase speed, arrive faster and achieve quickly. Our generation is rightly described as a fast one, a jet age, where everything is on the fast track, where everyone wants to travel on the fast lane; and to tell anybody to wait for whatever reason, sounds first and foremost, inimical and constitutes an obstacle to the wheel of progress.

However, contrary to the assertion of our age, there is beauty in waiting. Waiting is a virtue necessary and required to bring out the beauty of our lives. Waiting is an ingredient of tangible, enduring success. The absence of the virtue of waiting has become the real obstacle to the progress of many people in our world. Most especially as Believers in Christ Jesus, our consciousness of one fundamental of our faith, as a call to a lifestyle that does not always run on the same ideals with the philosophies of this age, will give us courage to travel such lonely roads as this route I call “path of waiting” to get to our desired destination. 

Waiting means the act of staying where one is or delaying action until a particular time or event. Waiting means to hold on in the midst of challenges, that is, despising negative circumstances and holding on to the integrity of God’s Word. Waiting doesn’t mean laziness. Waiting doesn’t mean irresponsibility. Waiting means standing your ground until God responds concerning an issue. There is beauty in waiting. There is blessing in waiting. There is honour in waiting. There is favour in waiting. There is fulfillment in waiting. There is mercy in waiting. 

There’s so much capacity in you to become all that God wants you to be but all of that can be destroyed by the lack of this virtue of waiting. To maximize our potentials, we must take deliberate steps to reorient ourselves, reprogram our minds to think and appreciate in a new dimension, the beauty of waiting. To see waiting sometimes, not as slowing down our wheel of progress, but in the real sense, enhancing progress in such unique ways than we readily know. 

The Prophet Isaiah draws our minds to the beauty of waiting in two scriptures I will want us to reflect on at this point in our discussion: 

ISAIAH 28:16, “Therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, I lay in Zion a stone for a foundation. A tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; Whoever believes will not act hastily”. 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”. The Prophet tells us in Isaiah 28:16; faith or believing, conditions us to act in certain ways and also empowers us to refuse to act in certain other ways. Here it says, WHOEVER BELIEVES WILL NOT ACT HASTILY. Whoever believes what? This is the first question that helps you destroy the power of acting hastily. What this means is that waiting is an act of believing. Waiting is an active expression of faith in God and what He is doing. When you believe that it is God who is at work in your life, it kills the tension and pressure to be in a hurry or haste. Haste is actually a denial of faith. In other words, haste and faith are not consistent. Haste destroys faith. If you believe in the integrity of God’s word, you will not be in a haste. 

There is no short cut to victory. Every short cut, cuts people’s lives and destinies short. When you are in a hurry, you can’t escape regrets. When you are in a haste, you frustrate the grace of God in your life. Haste is the nature of the weak in faith. Haste is the devils tool against people. Haste destroys people. Haste destroys destinies. Haste closes the doors of favour. Haste closes the doors of opportunities. 

Beloved, there’s success and greatness in you. You have been raised a unique creation of God to make a difference in your world. As a Believer, Jesus said you’re the salt and light of the world. Mathew 5:13-14, “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden”. God Has Distinguished you with His grace. He has separated you. You are different. You have received a unique, supernatural power through the gift of the Holy Spirit according to Acts 1:8. This power is the ability to effect change. You can change your world. You have the ability to change your situation. You can be an Oasis of love in a troubled world. You can have victory in the midst of challenges. Ps 34:19 says, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the Lord delivers him out of them all”. After you are born again, the only reason that can keep you down or poor is by choice. Nothing can keep you down or poor except by your choice. There is no place for failure in your life. There is no place for reproach or defeat in your life. Because God is working in your life, you can rise to the top in life. You can be effective, influential and productive in life. The capacity is in you but can be fully harnessed through the virtue of waiting on this God that is working in you. 

This virtue of waiting is one vital ingredient and force missing in the Church of today. Many Church people today are in a Haste. They prefer microwave kind of Christianity. Everything must happen within the push of a button. This attitude of haste has wasted destinies. It has destroyed or limited potentially great destinies. It has robbed people of the glory of their lives. If you truly believe, you will wait. You will not act hastily. You will seek to walk with God according to His timing and process. Our God is a timeless God. Our God does not live in time but eternity; yet He has a time table for all of His purposes in time. According to the Preacher, there is a time for everything.  Eccl. 3:1-2, 9-12 (GNT):

“To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven:

A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted; What do we gain from all our work? I know the heavy burdens that God has laid on us. 

He has set the right time for everything. He has given us a desire to know the future, but never gives us the satisfaction of fully understanding what He does. 

So I realized that all we can do is to be happy and do the best we can while we are still alive”.

There is a time for fulfillment of promises and prophecies. There is a time for every miracle. Our God is a faithful God. He is too faithful to fail. The reason people are wasting is because they don’t like to wait. God’s time is actually the best. What looks like a delay sometimes in God’s timing is actually the working of the best for our good. However, it takes an understanding of the working of the Spirit to manage delay and wait on God. It takes an unwavering confidence in the wisdom of God to work with God’s timing. In life, we win with the wisdom of God not by worry. We win with the wisdom of God not by struggles. Eccl. 8:1 says, “Only the wise know what things really mean. Wisdom makes them smile and makes their frowns disappear” (GNT). The wisdom of God is the Word of God. 

When you lack the wisdom of God’s Word, you will misinterpret what seems like a delay to mean denial. However, God’s delay is never denial. This is abundantly clear in the scriptural account of Lazarus’ resurrection. John 11:1-6: “Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. Therefore the sisters sent to Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.”When Jesus heard that, He said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 

So, when He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was”. Don’t ever leave your place of waiting because there seems to be a delay. God’s delay is not denial. The longer it takes to happen, the longer it will also take happening. In other words, if it takes time before it begins, it will last longer. It will take time before it expires. If you truly believe in what God has told you whether by His written or spoken Word, then don’t be in a haste, wait! Waiting is what keeps you in a spiritual position to experience all that God has spoken to you about. 

DECISION TIME

The best gift of life is time. The best gift of time is now. The best use of now is the decision to secure and prepare for eternity. If you have not accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, please don’t let this moment pass you. You’re just a decision away from a secured eternity. You can pray this prayer to surrender to Jesus: “Lord Jesus, I believe you died for me. I accept you into my life as my Saviour and Lord. Forgive my sins and give me power to live for you the rest of my life on earth”. Amen. Congratulations! If you have prayed this prayer, you are now born again. You can contact us to let us know about your decision or visit us at the address above to learn more on how to grow in your Christian life. God bless you.