6 Reasons Why God Makes you Wait
We’ve all been there.
That feeling of waiting as your phone charges because you’ve fully exhausted the battery. All you can do is sit and wait until it’s charged. Sometimes it might take only a few minutes to charge, but nonetheless you grow anxious and find yourself growing increasingly impatient the longer it takes.
If you’re like me, you don’t like to wait. Waiting is infuriating. I’m that person who is stuck in traffic yelling at the cars around me even though it may not be their fault. We, collectively as a society, are always in a rush to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible.
This mentality or mindset tends to carry over into our spiritual relationship with God.
While we are always in a hurry, what we fail to recognize or accept is that God works by his watch, not yours. He doesn’t work with great urgency and although we expect him too, it’s not how he works.
He truly has a plan and a purpose for everything.
Yet, we still expect God to work with us according to our expectations and our timing.
Realistically, we understand that God’s reasoning behind making us wait for the things we want most is because it’s his way of developing us. He is providing us with a lesson, and that lesson may take time for us to fully grasp and understand.
We must be careful, because when we get discouraged, we tend to push God away. We get angry. We start resenting him.
And although we can’t understand in that moment of need why he may not answer our prayers immediately, we must understand and accept that God always has good reasons for making us wait.
Here are 6 Reasons why God Makes You Wait:
1. True Motives are Revealed
There is no doubt that waiting can bring out the best and the worst in people, and it’s clear that those people who are lacking good motive are not interested in the commitment it can take to understand why things happen the way that they do. They’re more interested in having their answers quickly with minimal long-term gains. Sometimes their gain comes at someone elses expense.
God is testing those who have to wait. He wants to see what’s really in your heart. When you hold onto your faith and confide in Him, He will take mercy.
2. Builds Character
When we are asked to wait for something, it has a way of smoothing out the rough edges of our lives. God uses this time to transform and build our character.
I have experienced this first hand. I used to be, and still can be at times, impatient and selfish when it comes to getting the things I want most. When I wait for what I want most, I see positive changes within myself.
This doesn’t mean that the time I have to wait hasn’t cause me pain and sorrow, it has, however; it has also built up my character.
3. Builds Patience
If we are unable to be patient when we ask God to help us with the small things, we certainly won’t be able to be patient when we ask him for something bigger.
Our priorities and perspectives are very different from God’s. We tend to focus on the larger things, such as finances and tangible items too much, when we should be focusing on how we can change the world and influence others, positively.
If we learn to be patient and wait for the small things, He will help deliver the larger things.
4. Builds Anticipation
Revert back to when you were a child. You’re sitting in your desk in last hour watching the final few minutes of school click by. Those few minutes are all that’s holding you back from summer vacation. You’ve waited an entire school year to go back on summer vacation. That’s anticipation.
Once we finally are granted what we asked of God, all of the anticipation that we had will suddenly come with a purpose or a lesson.
Anticipation is everything.
5. Creates a Stronger Relationship with God
If there is one thing we have all been able to take away from the Bible, it’s that every person who learned of their success and purpose in life was because of their direct intimacy and also their dependency with God. For many of those individuals, their relationship with God was a literal matter of life and death, not just a quick scheme to accomplish something short-term.
John 13:7 says..
“You don’t understand what I’m doing now, but someday you will.”
God never asks us to wait without Him. He tells us that He will be there with us during the good and the bad times. God will be that friend who stands with you through thick and thin, unwavering and courageous.
In Proverbs 18:25, we read that…
“..there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
What that tells us is that when everyone else has turned their back on you, whether intentionally or on accident, that He will be there. His presence will always be there.
6. You Learn to Appreciate
God instills appreciation in you. It’s easy to take things for granted when they come easily to you, but when they don’t, it’s more difficult to take those things for granted when God makes you wait for them.
There have been several times in my life when God has made me wait for the things I wanted. Many times, I have asked him “how long?” because I had been on the verge of giving up. But I didn’t give up. I sought God more.
I have learned that God is never late and he is never early. Both His timing and purpose are always perfect.
The promise of God that we have embraced and prayed for will come when we least expect it. The timing is His, and although we have to wait for what we want most, God never asks us to wait without Him.
I share with you these insightful reasons God makes us wait as I patiently wait for something yet again. The same thing I waited for only years earlier took me two years to receive. His timing then couldn’t have been more perfect, and although the wait was grueling and hard, it taught me many things along the way that I otherwise wouldn’t have been taught. I know that His lesson for me this time is larger than the last, and it’s important for me to keep my faith in Him and His timing.
When God makes you wait for something, it’s not his way of depriving you, but rather his means of changing you.-
