A second. A minute. An hour. A week. A month. A year. Waiting doesn’t always come with a known time limit, especially when God is the one holding the stop sign. With God time isn’t determined by gravity moving down the grains of sand in an hourglass or on a clock ticking, for He is an eternal God. He has all the time in the world. With God waiting does not depend on the person in front of us to move forward, because the one in front of us is God himself. Lately, I’ve been comparing my life to every single person next to me. Everyone has a job, why don’t I? Everyone is traveling, then I must too. Everyone is doing such important things with their lives, why does mine look so dull? The comparisons go on and on. God has been teaching me though that I shouldn’t worry about what everyone else is doing because my life isn’t supposed to look like theirs. Our lives shouldn’t look the same. Our reasons for doing things should not be “because everyone else is doing it” but “because I really want to do this”. And sometimes we will genuinely want to do this and that or have this and that, but God says, “Not now” and we need to learn to be okay with that. We need to be okay with having to wait. God isn’t taking us down our individual paths in life at the same pace. Some of us will sprint through life and others will stroll along through life. The pace God individually moves us at, whether fast or slow, is specifically in line with His specific timeline for each and every one of our lives.
Why is it that when we think God has stopped moving for us, according to what we can visually see, and has us wait we start walking ahead and away from Him? God is always on the move for us. Every stop that he places and step that he takes is for our benefit not His. When we move without Him we think we are moving ahead but in reality, we are moving backward. Our hopes and dreams can only be attained with and through Him. Sometimes, God has us wait because we aren’t ready to receive what He has in store for us yet. We are only moving farther and farther away from Him by moving ahead of Him and trying to make things happen on our own. Without Him, we will go around in circles. We might attain or accomplish something, but it will fall short in comparison to what God has in store for us. He is after all the giver of every good and perfect gift. And good things take time, perfection takes patience.
Waiting is a time to open our hearts to God, to seek Him, and to listen to His small still voice whisper into our hearts. It’s a time to refocus our hearts and minds to what really matters as He removes all distractions from our lives. The more we push Him away, the more we ignore Him, the more steps we take backward the longer we’ll be waiting to move on because God isn’t going to move forward without us. The truth is that God stops because we have lagged behind. Somewhere along the way we have let go of His hand and grabbed on to the desires of our hearts rather than holding on to the One who can make them all come true, the One who should be our greatest desire. He’s waiting for us to catch up to Him. He’s waiting for us to remember that He has never left, because sometimes when things don’t go how we wish they would or when we don’t get what we want when we want it we turn away from God, and as time goes on we forget He promised to never leave or forsake us and that His promises for us still stand. But most importantly He is waiting for us to realize He is all we need and n Him is everything that we want. It’s while waiting that the distance from our heart to His heart is measured. With time the people, distractions, problems, worries, and anything that makes up that distance separating our hearts from His will be moved aside. And when we finally turn around, catch up to Him, and take hold of His hand the grains of sand will continue to fall, the clock will continue to tick, and with each step, we’ll be one step closer to the promises He has in store for us in His heart. Hold on and don’t let go.
