How to Wait Well (Part 2)
Welcome to part 2 on ‘waiting well’. Many (including our family) are in a time and season where they are waiting on God to fulfill promises he has made. These writings are me processing what I am learning about how we wait well, and my prayer is that they can also bless you if you are in a similar season.
In part 1, we looked at how waiting on God also means entwining ourselves with him, in other words, intimacy. If you missed it, read it, as it is vital to understand this! Today, I want to focus on God’s nature. Let me explain what I mean.
In Genesis, we see God introduce himself to a man named Abram, later renamed Abraham, who was 75 years old, and he and his wife were unable to conceive children. When he introduces himself to Abraham, he tells him that he is going to have as many descendants as the grains of sand on the seashore and the stars in the sky – a pretty incredible promise considering all of his circumstances pointed to the very opposite of that.
You would think that with Abraham and his wife Sarah being so old, that God would be in a rush to give them that child. But he isn’t. Time goes on and no child comes. But when we get to Genesis 15, we see another encounter Abraham has with the Lord. God asks Abraham to cut some animals in half and line them up with the halves on each side of a path. So, Abraham did, and even then, God did nothing for a while.
I wonder if at any point in time, Abraham thought, “maybe I’ve gone crazy. Maybe this God thing is just my mind playing tricks on me.” But regardless, he stayed the course. And as the sun went down, Abraham went into this trance, and the Lord reemphasises the promise he made to him. After this, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the animals that have been laid out.
To us, this all sounds strange, but what was going on here was significant. In those times, this was a ritual that was done when a binding agreement was being made between two parties. By walking through the pieces of the animals, you are declaring, “may what has happened to these animals happen to me if I do not fulfill my side of the agreement, or covenant.” You are literally putting your life on the line by doing this. And God was making this declaration to Abraham. He was saying that he will surely fulfill the promise he has made.
What is interesting about this encounter, is that only God walked through the pieces of the animals, not God and Abraham. God was the one who was making this happen. He was the one who was taking on the responsibility of fulfilling this promise. All Abraham had to do was believe the Lord would do what he said he would do. Now this doesn’t mean perfection. Abraham certainly had moments where he wavered…hello Ishmael, hello laughing to himself in disbelief in chapter 17, which is so reassuring, as he is listed as one of the mighty heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11 – examples we can look to of people who have gone before us and are now cheering us on from the eternal home that we will all one day dwell in too. And, as we know, God certainly did fulfill the promise. NOTHING is too hard for him.
I am recounting this story because it is an example of God revealing his nature to us. We can take great comfort in the fact that God WILL do what he says he will do. We see it time and time again throughout Scripture. In Hebrews 6, this fact about God’s nature is restated, and I love the way the writer expresses it:
So it is impossible for God to lie for we know that his promise and his vow will never change! And now we have run into his heart to hide ourselves in his faithfulness. This is where we find his strength and comfort, for he empowers us to seize what has already been established ahead of time—an unshakeable hope! We have this certain hope like a strong, unbreakable anchor holding our souls to God himself. Our anchor of hope is fastened to the mercy seat which sits in the heavenly realm beyond the sacred threshold, and where Jesus, our forerunner, has gone in before us. (Hebrews 6:18-20)
Just soak for a minute in the truth that is expressed in these verses. It is IMPOSSIBLE for God to lie. It’s not even something that can happen. This mean the same God that caused a bush to burn but not catch on fire, the same God that parted the Red Sea, the same God that caused the flooding Jordan River to stop flowing, the same God that caused the fortified walls of Jericho to fall down, the same God that caused Elijah to run ahead of a horse and chariot for many miles, the same God that caused countless women to have children after being declared barren, the same God that raised Jesus from the dead, will also do what he said he will do in your own life.
So, what is our part in all this? As the passage in Hebrews says, ‘we hide ourselves in his faithfulness, and we draw on his strength to receive what has been established ahead of time.’ That means that your promise has already happened, we simply receive what has already happened in the spiritual, holding onto that until it manifests in the natural. We align ourselves with the conclusion that God has made. We thank God in advance for that answered prayer and for that promise. And we hold firm to that, even when things around us point to the very opposite.
I am certainly doing that for some big promises the Father has declared over my life. Have they come to pass yet? Not that I can see, but I know that God has already made them happen. So I thank him advance for all that he has said he will do. Do I doubt and fall into unbelief at times? Absolutely! Often, my prayer reflects the desperate father pleading with Jesus in Mark 9 – “I believe! Help me in my unbelief!” But I also spend a lot of time meditating on the very nature of God, reflecting on and declaring Scriptures that speak about his nature, allowing my mind to dwell on this aspect of who God is, rather than the seeming impossibility of the things I am facing. I spend time focusing on the promises that God has fulfilled in my life in the past, as well as those he fulfilled in Scripture. And I do that until I see the promises he has declared over my life take place, whether it takes an hour, a day, a month, a year or longer.
If you’re not already doing this in your own life, let this be an encouragement and a reminder that God knows the promises he’s made to you. He hasn’t forgotten. Nothing is too hard for him. So ask him to align your mind and heart with this reality. Write down Scriptures that speak to this element of his nature. Speak them out. Thank God in advance for the fulfilment of these promises. And if you have a time where you doubt, don’t beat yourself up. Just say, “sorry God. I receive your forgiveness and take back the hope that you provide and is mine because of who you are.” And join me next week as I share part 3 of what I’m learning about ‘waiting well’.