The Myth About Waiting

‘Wait’ is such a heavy word. Whenever anyone says it you almost feel like sand bags are being placed on your shoulders, and the extra weight slows you down to a tedious crawl. You can’t get where you want to go, you automatically feel paralyzed, and a seed of bitterness starts to grow in your heart towards the person who uttered that awful word. Wait. 

Wait for the right job.

Wait for marriage.

Wait to travel the world.

Wait…wait…wait.

Even just typing those words makes me feel suppressed, like someone is desperately trying to stifle my dreams. Proverbs tells us that “hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12). Waiting, in a sense, is deferring a hope. It’s postponing our dreams and saying that today we will not be fulfilled. That sounds pretty terrible to me, especially since I have lots and lots of dreams I want to see come to fruition, and in this lifetime please.

Yesterday I was having coffee with a friend in downtown Nashville. We were talking about this sort of thing, and she said something that sent me off my rocker:

“We’re never really waiting for anything – we’re preparing. God’s timing is perfect, and he gives us these seasons to treasure and prepare for what is to come.”

Just like a young couple who is pregnant; they’re not waiting 9 months for the baby to arrive, they’re preparing. Setting up the nursery; taking time off work; preparing the siblings for the new arrival, and so forth. (Thanks Nashville Life Christian Church for that insight!) Slowly, methodically, and thoughtfully, they are preparing for the promise that God has given them of a child.

I'm saying this as much to myself as I am to those reading, but I beg you to trust in this time of preparing that everything you are doing is not in vain. Noah built an entire ark simply through trust and faith in the Lord. Plank by plank he labored in the sunlight to build everything just as the Lord directed. He wasn’t waiting idly on the storm to come, he was faithfully preparing for it. And it did; right on time.

Going back to my coffee date, just as my friend was talking about God’s timing a butterfly flew right into her coffee. She hurriedly scooped it out and it crawled onto her pointer finger. She sighed a bit, laughed, and then stated, “Butterflies are the sign God always gives me to show his faithfulness.”

You’re not waiting for God to show up; you are preparing in faith that He will. 

"Blessed is a man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit."

Jeremiah 17:7-8