The season of advent is all about waiting because advent itself means arrival. We are all waiting on the arrival of something from God, the healing, the husband, the baby, the job, the retirement, the house, the end, or the beginning. As soon as it's delivered, we'll be waiting on something else. It's the how we wait that matters the most.
I guarantee every lady in this picture is waiting on something new and probably something they have been waiting on since that night. I know the one in the middle sure is. What have we believed while we are waiting?
There are some professional waiters in the Bible. Today let's take Abraham; he waited like it was his job. It's literally what he is known for:
"No unbelief made waver concerning the promises of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised" (Romans 4:20).
Abraham's story appears on every flannel graph that was ever in Sunday School. Something I learned much later, not in the flannel graph lesson, is that the time between God's promised child and his delivery was about 25 years. If God was going to build a nation through Abraham, why the time lapse?
I am starting to learn that God doesn't build things like we expect.
God also doesn't waste one thing, which is what has led me to the conclusion that waiting was the act of doing what God intended for Abraham's life. The waiting was his purpose. I think that Abraham did with those years exactly what I do when I am forced to wait. He prayed. It's something I don't always choose to do when I am not in a waiting place.
I believe Abraham stored up 25 years of prayer for his children.
What if those years of prayers that Abraham poured out in faith to God for his children weren't just for his children?
God promised that he would be the father of many nations, and I think that while Abraham was praying for his descendants, he was also unknowingly praying for years and years for those of us who would become the family of God. Because in Christ, we are Abraham's children; we are adopted into the line of Abraham.
What if God's timing was intentionally allowing Abraham the time to pray, not just for his son, but for generations of his children physical and spiritual who would follow in his footsteps of faith.
Just think about those years of prayers and faith stored up and multiplied by God for us. We serve a really big God. It's consistent with His character to give Abraham the blessing of looking down from heaven now and seeing the results of those years of his prayers being poured out on us still.
What if his prayers trickle all the way down to us? That really reframes that 25 years of waiting.
How does God want to reframe your waiting?
I'm willing to bet that prayer is one of the ways.
When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do, but on the basis of what God said He would do. Romans 4:18
What we label waiting, God labels building. He was building in Abraham a faith to sustain generations.
What are you going to believe about your waiting?
Will you believe God is building?
In hope let's believe against hope and let that anchor our prayers in the waiting.
Father, I want to honor you with my belief. I want to let waiting root me in prayer and establish blessing that I may not see now, but can surely trust.