The Waiting Room
Okay so you’re believing and anticipating that God has new things for your life this year, right?! (See previous post if you’re thoroughly confused right now.)
You are joyfully and hopefully looking for what God will bring but, at the same time, you’re thinking “When is it going to happen though? I had to wait and endure through all of 2024 for something good. Now we’re 3 weeks into this new year and, I’m still not seeing anything yet.”
Despite a renewed spirit of hope, your circumstances remain the same: still waiting on God’s promises to be fulfilled in your life.
Well you’re not alone. God’s people, from the first generation to our generation, have always struggled in seasons of waiting. Impatience sets in and prayers become a broken record of “When?” and “How long?” As these prayers go unanswered hope starts to dwindle quickly.
The story of Abram and Sarai in Genesis gives us a look at a long awaited promise from God.
In Genesis chapters 12 and 13 God promises Abram that he will have numerous offspring and that his descendants will possess the land of Canaan.
What a promise! I’m sure Abram and Sarai are over the moon with such a promise.
Later, in Genesis chapter 15, God promises Abram “a great reward”. Abram replies, “Lord God, what can You give me, since I am childless…You have given me no offspring.” (15:2-3) God took Abram outside and said, “Look at the sky and count the stars, if you are able to count them…Your offspring will be that numerous.” (15:4) And God again promises the land of Canaan to Abram’s numerous descendants.
There’s just one itty-bitty problem: Sarai still has yet to conceive any children. How can they have numerous offspring when they can’t even have one?
10 years have gone by between God’s first mention of this promise and His second mention of it. With Sarai remaining childless all this time I’m sure she thought, “I guess we’re supposed to make this promise come true?” or maybe she thought God forgot. Either way, she takes action herself.
See, Sarai may not be able to conceive but her slave Hagar can; and God’s promise really only specified that Abram’s offspring would be numerous. So Sarai has Abram sleep with Hagar so that she can give Abram a child and fulfill the promise. They find a loophole.
Hagar does indeed conceive and Abram is 86 years old when Hagar gives birth to a boy, Ishmael. (Genesis 16) Ishmael must be the child God promised, right?
When Abram is now 99 years old, God speaks to Him and again reiterates the promise of numerous offspring and the possession of the land of Canaan (chapter 17). He tell Abram that Sarai will have a child herself in the next year, and this is the child that all future generations of Abram will be blessed through. So Ishmael, the child that Abram has already had for 13 years, isn’t the promised offspring.
Abram chuckles to himself after God speaks the promise this time. How could a 99 year old woman conceive and a 100 year old man be a father to a newborn?? Sarai laughs at it as well; but God fulfills this promise. Sarai gives birth to a boy, Isaac, when Abram is 100 years old.
From the first mention of God’s promise to its fulfillment, Abram and Sarai wait 25 years. Unsure of when it would happen and in disbelief of how it could even happen, they finally get to look down at their son and see God’s faithfulness in His promises.
We all have to live through seasons of waiting. Sometimes God keeps us there because we need to learn patience. Sometimes He has us waiting because there are still things He needs to accomplish before fulfilling His promise. Sometimes we have to wait because the circumstance is dependent on others being in the right place at the right time.
I don’t know why exactly God had Abram and Sarai wait so long but I know it’s because He had a greater purpose behind it.
I’m sure you know how annoying it is to sit in the waiting room of a doctor’s office where the patients are overbooked and the office is understaffed. You wait and wait and when you finally get in it feels like the doctor is rushing through to get you out of there, undervaluing your concerns and your time.
God is not like that; He does not needlessly keep you in the waiting room. If God has you in the waiting room right now it’s because He has a greater purpose.
Thanks to the story of Abram and Sarai, I’m comforted in the fact that my waiting seasons are not exclusive to my life and faith, I’m relieved to know that God can still carry out His plans even when I try to take matters into my own hands like Sarai did, and I’m encouraged that God always has a purpose behind my time in the waiting room.
I pray that you feel the same comfort, reassurance, and encouragement in your waiting.
-Stephanie Lauren Jordan
(formerly Stephanie Lauren Auman)
