Bible insights on trusting God's timing
Nowadays we live in a world of fast cars, fast food and instant credit. We expect to phone a helpline to arrange a mortgage in about 20 minutes and get cash whenever we feel like it from ‘holes in the wall’. Instead of a leisurely afternoon tea served to our table in a café we queue for a burger and milkshake. The Internet gives us immediate communication through e-mail. We can have a conversation via a screen with someone on the other side of the world, as if they were in the room with us. On cable TV we can shop in an instant, while some supermarkets let us scan our shop-ping as we go, using the computer labels on the groceries. Why wait in line if we don’t have to? And if we are the instant generation, the mind boggles to think at what speed our children will expect things to happen.
It hasn’t always been like this. We do not have to look hundreds of years into the past to see how standards and expectations have changed. Even in the 1950s life was very different. Britain was more like pre-1989 Eastern Europe with rationing still commonplace and queuing practically an art form! On Fridays, the weekly pay day for most manual workers, women would line up outside the butcher’s shop to buy the meat for the weekend. Most people did not have cars, so they walked, cycled or went by train or bus, which usually meant standing for some time at a railway station or bus stop (maybe some things have not changed so much!). Those were the days when it took six weeks to sail to New Zealand, rather than the 24 hours that an aeroplane flight takes now. Before the days of washing machines, laundering the family clothes was a major household chore which took hours. Just 30 years ago, I remember my mother having
to put our clothes through a mangle before hanging them out to dry. Most homes had no television and the computer game had not even been invented, so there was more emphasis on spending leisure time as an extended family with singsongs, parties and board games.
Relationships were conducted differently too. Engage-ments as long as two to five years were acceptable because couples did not marry until they had enough money to set up a nice home—or at least the best they could afford. Sex before marriage was rarely an option; in pre-pill days, most people waited until the wedding night.
Like society in general, the church-going population has experienced major changes too. Overall church attendance has declined, especially among young people, but there has also been a growth of the ‘New Church’ movement. These churches meet in schools and community centres and have moved away from the more traditional type of service. When I was a teenager attending a relatively ‘middle of the road’ Church of Scotland congregation, it was not unusual for the youth group to sit through a morning service which included a 40-minute sermon. The minister did not feel it necessary to jazz up the service with drama or introduce gimmicks like coloured slide shows to hold our attention. When the youth group led a service, we felt we were being radical if we used choruses instead of hymns. I remember an elderly lady in our church giving her testimony and telling us how she had spent ten years praying and waiting for a particular event to happen. To a teenager then, it seemed for ever. Even now as an adult, I view with awe anybody who could wait that long for something.
Many congregations these days expect services to be short, sharp and to the point. We want sketches, video clips, interviews, and the latest worship songs rather than hymns. The preacher tends to be discouraged from talking for more than ten minutes because people grow restless. Sometimes it feels as if our services, like our society, have grown too geared to an instant culture. Of course most people would agree that, to some extent, we need to reflect our society. We want church to be ‘relevant’, but where has the quest for a ‘relevant’ church taken us? Sometimes I attend a reflective service where I may be asked to pray longer than in a ‘normal’ service, or spend time meditating on God’s word. To be honest, I find it tough going. Sitting still and quietly reflecting on God is something that many of us struggle with these days. More and more, it seems that we have lost the ability to wait and listen to God. We are happy if God gives us a ‘Yes’ answer to our prayers and we can even cope if he says ‘No’, but if he says ‘wait’ we want to know how long—a week, a month, maybe two months? Surely not years.
I visited the Toronto Christian Fellowship (formerly the Airport Vineyard Church), about three years after it first hit the headlines for the dramatic way in which people experienced God in the services. I had heard some strange stories about what went on at the church, involving people making weird noises and falling over ‘in the Spirit’. I was more than a little apprehensive about visiting, however. I had a sense that God wanted me to go, and be open to hear-ing what he might reveal to me about my future. When I arrived at the church I found there were no song books—instead a computer projected all the words of the songs on to a large screen. By the end of the service a recording of the preacher’s talk was already available so that overseas visitors could take it back home—the speed of it all was impressive! By the end of the first meeting, it was obvious that the rumours I had heard were exaggerated. The leaders came over as very humble people and the main impression I got was that they wanted to serve God to the best of their abilities. God’s presence at their meetings was clearly dem-onstrated in the peaceful atmosphere and the joy in the people’s faces.
I went to Toronto anticipating that I would in some way hear from God. I hoped that either through a Bible reading, through the speaker or even through the person sitting next to me, God would somehow show me what he wanted for my life. Although my expectations were high, God had a few surprises for me. It was not until the last night that I felt God speak to me and when he did speak, through the message that night, he was saying, ‘Wait’. To say that my initial reaction was one of disappointment would be an understatement. After travelling halfway around the world, leaving at home my husband and baby son (both of whom I was missing dreadfully), I was expecting something startling and instantly life-changing. Not just ‘wait’.
When I came home, I immediately decided to look in the Bible to see if I could find anybody else who, like me, had felt God tell them to wait. I wanted to see how they coped with the time of waiting because I urgently needed some help to do so. What I found amazed me: in having to wait I was in very good company. Many of the biblical characters whom I most respected had to endure long periods of waiting for God to fulfil his promises to them. Not only did they have to wait a long time for God, but some of them were not at all patient. I realized that in developing the necessary patience for waiting, I would have to unlearn the way I thought, and that I had been influenced, not just by society but by some of the church teachings too. As it was, I expected instant solutions and answers to all my problems, just like most of my friends.
Maybe you feel you received a promise from God a while ago and that you are still waiting for something to happen? Maybe you have seen this promise fulfilled in part, but along the way have made mistakes and now you fear that God will not deliver on the rest of the promise? If so, then I hope
you will find this book helpful. I have chosen well-known biblical characters and I study the events which show how they had to learn to wait for God’s timing—and how they, and the people around them, responded to that challenge. Some of them saw only a partial fulfilment of God’s promise to them, some never saw their promise fulfilled at all during their life-time, while others saw it completed. Maybe you will find help in your present situation by relating to one of the Bible characters who has gone through a similar ‘waiting game’ to you. Maybe you will learn something from their mistakes and successes. Above all, I hope that you will be encouraged in your time of waiting and be open to learning the lessons God may have in store for you.
But they who wait for 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.
Isaiah 40:31 (RSV)
Abraham and Sarah: The 25-Year Labour
‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.
And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you
exceedingly.’
Genesis 17:1–2 (RSV)
Abraham and Sarah came from a society that worshipped idols and statues of many different gods. When they left home in obedience to God’s call, their relationship grew with the one true God. They learnt to accept waiting as a normal part of life, even though at times it put them under great strain. Even though they often made mistakes, God continued to bless them. They learnt that he could right their wrongs, and that obedience to him, the living and loving God, was more important than anything else.
Abram, as he is first known, is 75 years old when God begins to speak to him. Abram’s immediate response is astonishing—he immediately does what God says! In the city of Ur where Abram lived, people worshipped many gods, and the idea of a personal, direct encounter with one God would have been extraordinary. Leaving your home, uprooting your family and following direct instructions from this one God would have been viewed as more than a little mad, especially as Abram did not even know where he was going. In response to criticism he would have said, ‘I am leaving because the one and only God has told me to, though I do not know exactly where I am going. But he did tell me that he would guide me.’ Abram had an amazing degree of faith and he must have had such a powerful experience of God that it seemed worth giving up everything for.
Over the years Abram and his wife Sarai (later Sarah) received a number of promises from God. Genesis 12:1–3, tells us the first promise: ‘Leave your own country behind you, and your own people, and go to the land I will guide you to. If you do, I will cause you to become the father of a great nation; I will bless you and make your name famous, and you will be a blessing to many others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you; and the entire world will be blessed because of you’ (LB).
This promise must have both encouraged and frightened Abram. God promised him land—something tangible that Abram would be able to see realized or not—but the main promise was that Abram would be the father of a great nation, even though Sarai could not have children. And if we look more closely at this first encounter with God, we see that Abram is asked to do something extremely difficult—to leave everything. Only if he does this will God give him the promised blessings. We are told that Abram was a wealthy man: he must have enjoyed a comfortable life. Leaving everything he knew for the unknown was a great risk, but Abram did it. And Sarai went with him. Either Abram had convinced her that this God he was following was worth it—or maybe she was just trusting in her husband.
Abram did not, however, follow God’s word to the letter because he took his nephew Lot along. We discover later that Lot caused Abram much trouble. Maybe God knew what he was doing when he suggested leaving the relatives behind?
This part of Abram’s life amazes me. If God had spoken to me when I was not a Christian and told me to leave everything and head for an unknown destination, I would not have listened to the rest of what God had to say! I would have assumed that I had imagined the voice of God, and I would have certainly refused to involve my family in such an uncertain situation. Or I would have decided that God’s message was for someone else. This is in stark contrast to Abram’s reaction. We can learn from him to be more spontaneous, more open to God’s guidance. What we should remember is that God knows our circumstances before he asks something of us. We may be stronger and better equipped than we know for the task ahead.
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of this part of the story is how God honoured Abram as though he were an old friend. We would only make a special promise to a friend if we had known them for years, but in God’s very first encounter with Abram, he offers him more than he could ever have dreamed. And in return he asks for obedience. God does not wait to make us promises until we have been Christians for a certain number of years—checking us out, as it were. All too often we feel as if we have to pass some kind of spiritual assault course before he will speak to us. Looking at Abram’s life, this appears not to be true.
God also honours Abram by saying that whoever he blesses or curses, God will bless or curse (Genesis 12:3). He is already indicating to Abram how special this new relationship will be, making significant even the words Abram speaks.
So Abram leaves his familiar surroundings and starts travelling. When they arrive in Canaan (Genesis 12:5), God promises that he will give this land to Abram’s descendants (the promised great nation). But after building an altar and worshipping God, Abram goes on to Egypt, not because God told him to, but because of famine in the land. Rather than consulting with God he relies on his common sense, going in search of food. As the story goes on to tell, this gets him into serious trouble.
Even though Abram had just had another intimate encounter with God, with a further revelation of the promise, he forgot to wait patiently for the next step. Instead he reacted to the very next circumstance by taking hasty action without recourse to God. Maybe you recognize yourself in Abram at this point? We can be walking steadily in the will of God; then an opportunity arises—promotion at work, for example—and we do not consult God before accepting it. We assume it must be right and it may only be much later that we realize it was not necessarily best for us—it was not God’s intention.
When Abram and Sarai arrive in Egypt, they decide not to admit to Sarai being Abram’s wife, to protect themselves or, more particularly, Abram, who fears he will be killed if another man wants to take the beautiful Sarai as his wife (Genesis 12:12). And when Pharaoh hears of Sarai’s beauty he invites her to join his household, giving Abram many
gifts as payment for her (Genesis 12:16). At this point, Abram may have given up on Sarai as lost, no longer part of God’s promises to him. Once a woman became part of the Pharaoh’s harem, it was unlikely that she would walk free again. It is God, then, who has to intervene to save Sarai. A plague comes upon the household, and Pharaoh is shocked to find out that Sarai is Abram’s wife. He returns her to her husband and has them both escorted out of Egypt (Genesis 12:20).
God knew that Sarai was part of his promise to Abram, even though Abram himself doubted that in Egypt. We now see Abram returning to Canaan and his altar once again to worship God (Genesis 13:3–4), returning to the old intim-acy. Despite a major error of judgment, he has enough faith to trust that God will accept him back and so he goes back to the place where he last heard directly from God. When we feel that we have grown far away from God, perhaps through making a mistake, it can help to visit a place or a person through whom we heard from God in the past. It reminds us of the times when we felt close to God, when we heard him speaking clearly and unmistakably. If we are enduring a time of waiting, we can feel as if God has given up on us, but in looking back we remember what God has done for us in the past.
Abram’s experiences, in Egypt and later, also remind us that after times of remarkable spiritual encounters with God, times of great testing, waiting or long silences may follow. Naturally we may feel deflated when the time of the special encounter passes, and when the next time of testing comes along we assume that God has let us down, that the closeness of the special encounter meant nothing. In fact, God may be waiting for us to develop and mature, so that he can work further in our lives.
Over the next year, God reinforces his original promises to Abram. Again he promises land as far as the eye can see and descendants as the dust of the earth (Genesis 13:14–16). We then get a small insight into the growing relationship between Abram and his God, because this time Abram begins to question how the promises can be fulfilled —especially the promise of descendants, because Sarai is infertile and he still has no son, no natural heir.
Like Abram, we too can question God about his plans for our lives. Looking elsewhere in the Bible, we find Moses, who questions God at the burning bush (Exodus 3), Mary the mother of Jesus, who questions the angel about how she will conceive when she is not married (Luke 1:34), and Gideon, who tests God by laying out fleeces (Judges 6:36–40). Like them, we find that if we ask God for help, for answers, before acting in obedience to his command he is gracious and answers in some way, even when we have put conditions on our response.
After the events in Egypt, we have a ten-year gap in the narrative. No events are recorded and life probably just went on as normal. God was waiting for the right time to enact the next part of his promise. The temptation would be strong to think that God was being inactive. Perhaps he needed a helping hand?
Trying to help God out can complicate not only your own situation but that of others too! We do not know whether Sarai just got fed up with waiting or whether she decided
to solve the problem of an heir in the customary fashion. Maybe she felt she should do something because it was her failure to have children that was preventing God from ful-filling his promise. So Sarai offered her handmaiden Hagar to Abram (Genesis 16:1–3). Hagar’s son would become Abram’s legitimate heir, thus fulfilling God’s promise to them. But there was one major problem with this arrange-ment: she did not consult God first. And the mess that resulted needed God’s intervention to remedy it.
Delighted with her fertility, Hagar taunts Sarai, Sarai blames Abram, Abram washes his hands of the whole situ-ation, Sarai beats Hagar and Hagar runs away (Genesis 16:6). Sarai’s attempt at a solution has made everyone unhappy. Hagar runs to the desert and encounters an angel who tells her to return to her mistress. She comes back to Sarai, having had her very own encounter with God, and then gives birth to Ishmael.
I feel particularly sorry for Sarai. She did what I would have done—she found a practical solution to a problem. She had decided quite sensibly that because she could not humanly have children, God would obviously fulfil the promise by the only other practical solution—surrogacy. But common sense can be a dangerous thing if it excludes the workings of a supernatural God.
Some close friends of ours, Grant and Emily, had spent four years trying to conceive a baby. Someone in their church believed God had specifically told them that Emily would be pregnant by the time she was 26 years old. The couple had numerous tests and hormone treatment without any sign of success. They were due for more serious medical intervention but then, a week before her 26th birthday, Emily found out she was pregnant. What a time of joy! The amazing thing about this couple is that throughout that time of waiting to conceive, they did not grow bitter. They willingly looked after other people’s children, and had be-come an adopted aunt and uncle to our own young son. They held fast to the promise that they felt God had given them, despite the discouraging prognosis.
When everything seems to conspire against the promise we believe God has made to us, we can do nothing else except hold on to the word of God.
Returning to the adventures of Abram and Sarai, we find that Abram had not heard from God for 13 years after the birth of Ishmael (Genesis 17:1–2). Presumably during that time Abram treated Ishmael as nothing less than his first-born, his rightful heir and the realization of God’s promise to him. He is 99 years old when God speaks to him again (Genesis 17:1–5) and makes a covenant, an eternal and unbreakable promise, with Abram. He promises that Abram will be the father of not just one but many nations and then changes Abram’s name to Abraham, meaning ‘father of many’. And this time God declares that the contract he is making with Abraham will stand from generation to gener-ation and that his descendants will inherit the land of Canaan. And this is a two-way promise: in return God requires Abraham to circumcise all the males in his house-hold, both family and servants (Genesis 17:9–14), as a sign that he and his descendants would keep their side of the promise.
God then changes Sarai’s name to Sarah, meaning ‘Princess’—an astonishing name to give an old woman, but indicating how God can look at the very heart of a person, not just their outward appearance. God then makes the amazing promise that Sarah will have a son and that she will be the mother of many nations (Genesis 17:15–16). When he hears this, Abraham actually laughs inwardly, and says in reply, ‘Yes, do bless Ishmael’ (Genesis17:18, LB). So God repeats himself and promises the birth of another son, from Sarah, by the following year. Abraham had assumed that God was talking about Ishmael—it is as if he just was not listening to what God was saying. So God graciously repeats himself.
Abraham’s faith shines through all his dealings with God. Although he debates and doubts, he ultimately obeys. The New Testament shows how we too can be like Abraham through faith: ‘Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham… So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith’ (Galatians 3:7, 9).
God’s next encounter is perhaps the most dramatic, the
most physical, and is for Sarah’s benefit as well, drawing her closer into the
covenant relationship. Genesis 18:1–15 tells the episode in detail: three men
visit Abraham’s camp and he lays on a feast ‘fit for a king’ for them. As
they are eating, the strangers ask after Sarah and dramatically repeat the
promise that Abraham has already received—that by next year Sarah will have a
son. Sarah is eavesdropping at the tent door, and her reaction is the same as
Abraham’s earlier: she laughs silently to herself! And then ‘the
Lord’—God— speaks and asks why Sarah is laughing. Does she doubt the power
of God?
For the first time, Sarah has heard for herself a promise
from God which directly concerns her, but despite her experience of God’s
power at work (for example, God rescuing her in Egypt and sending his angel to
save Hagar), she still cannot believe that this promise could really come true.
Yet God has decided that the time has come for Isaac to be born: as we hear
again in the New Testament, ‘By faith Abraham, even though he was past
age—and Sarah herself was barren—was enabled to become a father because he
considered him faithful who had made the promise’ (Hebrews 11:11).
Sometimes our own view of the past can cloud our vision for
the future and our ability to trust God. Looking back, though, can show us how
God has previously answered us, perhaps in ways we did not expect. And looking
back can help us to see that our expectations are often much lower than they
could be. What is impossible to us is fully possible to God—and his timing is
always perfect. He often brings us to the point where we have tried every
alternative before realizing that we can do nothing, that we must be totally
reliant on him. Then he can act in power.
Now that God has promised a son to Abraham and Sarah, more surely than ever, we might expect that from now on Abraham will trust God fully in every part of his life. In fact, what happens next is a repeat of the episode in Egypt. Abraham moves south for a while, telling the people there that Sarah is his sister (Genesis 20:1–2). The king in that region decides to take Sarah to his palace. God intervenes and tells the king in a dream that he is as good as dead because he has taken a married women. It is only through the prayers of Abraham that the king and his household are saved, the women having lost their own fertility as a punishment for what has been done to Sarah (Genesis 20:6–18).
In a strange way, this sorry story is a comfort to us. It
shows that even if we make the same mistake twice—even a serious mistake—God
will still forgive us. God forgave Abraham for his weakness, even though it came
after such a powerful encounter with God’s living presence.
Abraham and Sarah had waited 25 years for God to fulfil his
promise. They had been through many difficulties and made numerous mistakes, but
at last the promised son arrived. We can only imagine what Abraham and,
especially, Sarah were feeling on the day that Isaac was born. They had seen
their hearts’ desire made real. I remember how I felt when our son was born. I
thought he was a miracle and I had not waited 25 years!
How simple it would be if the story of Abraham finished
there with a neat happy ending, Abraham and Sarah had their long-awaited son,
Isaac. For eight years we can sup-pose they led a normal family life. Then God
intervenes once again and gives Abraham a horrific command: he must offer Isaac
to him as a sacrifice. Abraham may well have been familiar with child sacrifice,
as a number of ancient religions required it from their followers, but he must
have been appalled that God was asking him to do this. God challenges
Abraham’s faith in him to the uttermost, asking him to lay down the most
precious gift in his life, the son for whom he had waited so long. The whole
promised future, the whole covenant made with God, looks as if it will be
destroyed.
For three days Abraham travels with Isaac, carrying the
weight of the knowledge of what God is asking of him. He builds an altar, lays
Isaac on it and raises a knife to kill him. Only then does an angel intervene to
save Isaac. Abraham feared God enough not to withhold his son, yet had faith
enough to believe God’s promise that his descendants would come through Isaac.
According to Proverbs 1:7–8, ‘The fear of the Lord is
the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.’ It is
almost impossible for us nowadays to understand the right fear of God that made
Abraham willing to sacrifice his own son. Another word for this ‘right fear’
is ‘awe’, meaning ‘wonder or admiration charged with reverence’. Abraham
did not obey God because he was afraid but because he was in awe of God.
Today the concept of personal rights is very important to
most people. We may even expect everything to be fair in our relationship with
God. Some of us have been brought up with so little respect for authority that
we do not understand the concept of a healthy fear or respect of God. We may
think that being a Christian is only about love, and that fearing God is an
unhealthy Old Testament belief. Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac was
an exceptional test of his reverence for God, and it is unlikely that we will
have to face something of similar magnitude. We will certainly be tested,
though, and we should ask ourselves whether we can let our faith and trust in
God grow as strong as Abraham’s.
We may be tempted to look at somebody like Abraham and
doubt whether we could ever be as strong in faith as he was. Abraham became a
remarkable man of faith over many years. He made many mistakes along the way,
but he always humbly returned to restore his relationship with the God he both
feared and trusted. We too can build a faith like Abraham’s if we are willing
to learn from our mistakes and nurture a relationship with God which is as
honest as Abraham’s.
Like Abraham, we should long to become God’s friend and
for us this has been made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. ‘For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those
who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance’ (Hebrews 9:15).
We no longer have to live under the restrictions of the old covenant, but can
have an intimate relationship with God because of the sacrifice of his Son and
the new kingdom revealed by this.
Abraham and Sarah did not always wait patiently for God to
work. They tried to solve things for themselves, they lied, they doubted; yet
God was faithful to the promises he had made. We too can know this patient,
loving God, and if we stay in a close relationship with him, his hand will
direct our lives, mistakes and all.
‘Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as
righteousness’; and he was called the friend of God.
James 2:23 (RSV)
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