Elda Othello-Wrington

Time. It waits for no one, yet the wait can sometimes feel ‘weighty’ or ‘heavy.’

Ecclesiastes 3:1 reads, “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens.” But the funny thing about time is that although it might seem that you are waiting for “the next thing,” next season, next prayer to be answered, next breakthrough to occur, next door to be open or shut, what time really does, I am finding, is test the heart.

There is a specific prayer I have been praying and believing for… for what feels like a decade, and yet no answer, no change, no transition. For me, at least, as time moves, the weight of waiting has become unbearable, and my heart seems to want to shift. I went from believing for the impossible, believing for change, believing for breakthrough, to wondering… will it ever happen?

Is it even God’s will? And if it does not happen, will my heart be okay with the “no”?

Questions like, “Should I stop praying?” flood my heart and my mind.

Friends, have you been there?

Here’s the thing about God’s timing… It’s perfect.

Even if you or I never get to see it on this side of heaven, God is still moving and working through the prayers we’ve prayed.

He is still in control…

Friends, if you are in that same place, let me remind you and encourage you: “Be confident of this, He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” – Philippians 1:6.

Here’s the thing about the wait: although heavy, it teaches us a lot about ourselves; it reveals the nature of our heart and its posture; it tests our character, and it eventually will lead us to understanding the sovereignty of God if and only if we are willing to get to that revelation.

That revelation can be found only by surrendering our will and control.

Up until now, you might be reading this and have never accepted Jesus into your heart. You have never surrendered control. Can I encourage you to do so today? The Bible says in Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” It is that simple, and only with the Lord can you find peace, hope, and strength to persevere in the waiting.

Isaiah 40:31 reminds us: “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.”

That is the process of waiting on and with the Lord. At first, you fly in the beginning of the waiting season because you are on fire for God. Eventually, you learn to run in the waiting season because you know He is with you. And because you trust the Lord while you wait, you learn to walk without getting tired, because He assures you that He is with you to the very end. “And teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” –Matthew 28:20

Waiting with God verses waiting on God can look and feel different depending on your heart posture. When we wait with God, we know that all things are possible. “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” –Matthew 19:26. Waiting with God, we know there is a process: beginning, middle, and an end. That process is called perseverance. James 1:3-4 says: “Because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” By waiting with God, we cultivate faith, appropriate what we know to be true, and trust God in the process.

My encouragement to you as you are waiting with the Lord, when it starts to feel that your waiting on God to move is far off and distant, is that you “Throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith” – Hebrews 12:1-2a. In doing this, the weight of waiting on God (because waiting can sometimes feel like God is distant and far away) is no longer heavy; instead, you learn to “Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.” –Romans 12:12

Friends, to sum up what I’m saying: when your mind and heart are confident that in the waiting, God is with you, and you are inviting Him into your circumstances daily, hourly, to sit with you in the uncomfortable place of time, things will shift from you carrying the weight and trying to make sense of it all to you being completely free of the weight of waiting because you have the assurance Jesus is with you.

How do we trust God’s timing? Through unshakable faith. Hebrews 11:1 says: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” What I love about this chapter is that it records accounts of those who lived by faith but died, some never receiving or seeing the things promised. Still, they held on to hope. “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.” —Hebrews 11:13

Friends, are you assured Jesus is enough?

I will end with this. I recently learned that Francis Jane Alstine, also known as Fanny Crosby, writer of the famous hymn “Blessed Assurance,” was blind from birth, yet she wrote beautiful lyrics that show strong faith.

My favorite lines from this one hymn are:

“Perfect salvation—all is at rest! I in my Savior am happy and blessed!

Watching and waiting, looking above, Filled with His goodness—lost in His love!

This is my story! This is my song! Praising my Savior all the day long!”

My prayer for you as you read this is this: as you wait for Jesus’ response to your prayers, that you wait with the Lord. That you will “trust the lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” –Proverbs 3:5. Get out of your feelings and stay in the Spirit. Then, just like Fanny, you too may find peace in the watching and waiting. “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” –Psalm 27:14.

Friends, “The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him.” –Lamentations 3:25.