6 April 2020
Greater Than Gold Blog
By Andrea Lucado
We’ve had some great conversation about waiting this month. From how to wait with perseverance, to when to stop waiting and ask God for what you need, to the biblical characters who also had to deal with long periods of waiting, we’ve covered the good and bad of the waiting seasons we must all endure at different times.
I see a couple of common threads running through these conversations:
1. Waiting is seasonal.
As we’ve talked about this month, a lot of people had to wait in the Bible. Abraham had to wait for a son (Genesis 15,21). The bleeding woman had to wait 12 years before being healed (Mark 5:25-28). There are so many others. Joseph sat in prison for two years for a crime he didn’t commit, waiting to be freed (Genesis 41). Many of David’s Psalms were written while he was running and hiding from Saul, waiting to be taken off Saul’s hit list.
But for each of these stories, the waiting was seasonal. They did not have to wait forever. Abraham had a son. The bleeding woman was healed. Joseph was freed. David was saved. Waiting is finite. Our own seasons of waiting are just that, seasonal. They will come to an end. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, but they will not last forever.
When the waiting does finally come to a close, it might not be in the way you expected. It could mean that your desires change or that your circumstances cause the waiting to cease. God’s ways are above our own. How we think our lives will, or should, go is often not how they end up going.
No matter when or how the waiting ends, know that it will.
2. Waiting is a part of God’s plan.
Waiting is not indicative of God’s plan gone awry. The opposite is true, in fact. Waiting is a crucial part of God’s plan.
Consider the Old Testament. Throughout its pages we read detailed lineages of the people of God. Those lists of names were written in anticipation of the name of Jesus, but the Israelites had to wait hundreds of years before Christ came to earth.
In a similar way, the followers of Jesus had to wait from Friday to Sunday before learning their Lord had been resurrected. They then spent their lives telling others about Jesus and waiting for his return.
God wrote waiting into his word. Almost every major character in the Bible had to wait on something for some amount of time. Waiting is a part of our lives as much as breathing is. All of the waiting mirrors one event: the Second Coming.
Jesus says in John 14:3 that he is going to prepare a place for us, and “I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” Until then, we wait. We wait for our King to return, knowing that the waiting is a part of his plan.
The Bible will bring us the most comfort during our seasons of waiting. In reading scripture, you will realize that you are not alone during this time. Others have endured long seasons of waiting, and God has seen them. Trust that he sees you too.
Greater than Gold has in-depth Bible studies available on several biblical topics and books of the Bible, including Mark, John and Genesis. Read more about them here: