I’ve been waiting on God to answer a prayer of mine for a long time. He hasn’t yet. And the waiting can be enough to drive anyone mad. On my way out of the house the other day, I ruffled my boys’ hair and kissed Missy goodbye. She stopped me at the door and said, “How you wait matters.”
“What?” I asked, a little confused. “How you wait matters,” she said again. I just nodded and left.
She’s right, I thought as I drove off. It’s just so easy to get discouraged when you have to wait a long time to see a promise in your heart come to pass. You start to feel completely helpless.
It can take a ridiculous amount of time for something we’re waiting on to become a reality. In the process, we can become bitter or we can become better, depending on how we handle the waiting.
And if I’m honest with myself, I start to become bitter. But if I listen to the wisdom of my wife (as we all should!) there might be something there. Here’s a few reasons why Missy just might be right:
- When we’re forced to wait, it reveals our motives. Waiting forces us to slow down and think through our true intentions. It reveals why we want something to come to pass. If we’re honest enough to examine our true motives, we can better understand if what we’re hoping for is really going to be what’s best for us in the end. Sometimes it won’t be.
- The longer we wait, the more we appreciate. We don’t value things that are just handed to us with little work. They quickly lose their shine. But the longer we wait in faith that we’re going to see our breakthrough, the more we appreciate it when our hope becomes reality.
- Waiting builds our character. I know, nobody likes this one. We all hate the “it’s building your character” spiel. If you want to annoy someone, tell them not to worry when they have a problem. Say that it’s building their character and slap them on the back. They’ll love that. But the truth is that spiritual growth happens only when we’re completely dependent on God and one of the best tools He has is for us to depend on Him for a promise to come to pass.
Here’s the deal. Whatever you’re going through right now probably won’t matter that much a few years down the road. But how you handle the time that you spend waiting will absolutely matter.
Who we become while we wait just might be the best part of waiting. In Romans it says that hope that is seen is not hope. If you have hope for something, you are waiting. It’s in the waiting that we have the opportunity to become transformed and how we wait can change us from the inside out.
Yes, it will teach us patience (sorry). Yes, it will help us appreciate things. But it will CHANGE who we are, CHANGE how we handle the next challenge, and CHANGE our relationship with God.
Maybe that’s the point.
Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards. If you’ve been waiting for a prayer to be answered, take some time to look back on your life at similar situations that you’ve been through. Remember how you felt while you were in the messy middle and realize that how you wait matters. It just might be the most important part. And know that His blessings are always worth waiting for.