In the Waiting…

“All God’s promises are yes and amen!” I can’t even recount the times I have reminded myself of this truth during this past year. You see, there are times in our lives that we have nothing to stand on but the very Word of God! Our situations are screaming at us their impossibilities and there is no actual physical evidence that we will see happen what God has promised us will happen! It always makes me think of Abraham and Sarah. We all know this story…God promised Abraham that Sarah would bear a child and from that child, they would have decedents as numerous as the stars in the sky! We know that Sarah and Abraham were old, like really old! I mean way past childbearing years! But God promised and Abraham took God at His word! Over these last few months God has brought me back to Romans 4:17-21. It says: “As it is written, I have made you the father of many nations. [He was appointed our father] in the sight of God in Whom he believed, Who gives life to the dead and speaks of the nonexistent things that [He has foretold and promised] as if they [already] existed.[For Abraham, human reason for] hope being gone, hoped in faith that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been promised, So [numberless] shall your descendants be. He did not weaken in faith when he considered the [utter] impotence of his own body, which was as good as dead because he was about a hundred years old, or [when he considered] the barrenness of Sarah’s [deadened] womb. No unbelief or distrust made him waver (doubtingly question) concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong and was empowered by faith as he gave praise and glory to God, Fully satisfied and assured that God was able and mighty to keep His word and to do what He had promised.”

Abraham needed faith! He could not have believed that he and Sarah could have a baby if he would not have had faith. Our faith is important to God. In fact, His Words says that without faith it is impossible to please Him. But God doesn’t just expect us to have this great faith on our own. He didn’t expect Abraham to conjure up enough faith to believe Him. I have the Everyday Life Bible by Joyce Meyer and this is what she says about this scripture: “When God tells us something or asks us to do something, the faith to believe or do it comes with a word from God. It is ridiculous to think that God would expect us to do something without giving us the ability to believe we can do it.”

You see, the things I am believing for hasn’t come from me, It’s a promise that He gave me and because He gave me this Word, He is giving me the level of faith necessary to pray and believe for it to come to pass! And it’s not just a one-time thing that He gives us this. He knows that we are human and we will struggle. He knows that we get tired of standing. He knows that the enemy attacks us with fear and doubt, so He gave us His Word…the Bible, to read so that we can be encouraged! He can also speak a word of encouragement to our hearts. A couple of months ago I was just dead tired. Tired of believing for something that looked like it would never happen. Tired physically because I was near the end of my pregnancy…I was just plain tired. I remember being in town and it had been raining and then when it stopped we saw this beautiful rainbow and in that moment I heard God speak to my heart, “Haley, remember: I keep all my promises!” That word was like a breath of fresh air to my weary heart and soul. I knew God hadn’t forgotten me! He was standing beside me and He was working in our situation whether I could see it or not!

Let’s read Romans 4:17-18 again, but from the Message translation because I just love it so much! “We call Abraham ‘father’ not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn’t that what we’ve always read in scripture, God saying to Abraham, ‘I set you up as father of many peoples’? Abraham was first named ‘father’ then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was helpless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do…”

Sometimes our circumstances don’t look promising. They look terrible and terrifying, but God is asking us to trust Him anyway. He asks us to have faith that He will do what He says He will do in our lives regardless of how our circumstances look or how we feel. I can without a doubt tell you this is hard!! It’s hard getting up in the morning and your circumstances looking so terrifying that you just want to crawl back in the bed and go to sleep so you don’t have to face them. I know that fear that tries to creep in and strangle the life right out of you! But I also know that when I went to God and I cried out to Him, He dispelled my fears and gave me hope and helped me to have faith when faith was not in me! You see, His word says that without faith it’s impossible to please Him, but it doesn’t say that He expects us to have perfect faith at all times. He knows there is a very real enemy after us and he uses doubt and fear to try to get us to quit. If we again look at the life of Abraham and Sarah we see that they didn’t have perfect faith. Genesis 16:1-2 says: “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said to Abram, See here, the Lord has restrained me from bearing [children]. I am asking you to have intercourse with my maid; it may be that I can obtain children by her. And Abram listened to and heeded what Sarai said.”

They took things in their own hands and tried to make God’s promises happen in the way and the timing they thought was right. How many of us have ever done that? Probably all of us, right? We get tired of standing and waiting…we start doubting what God promised us. We convince ourselves that God needs us to do something in order for His promise to come to fruition. I think that’s the hardest thing about waiting on the promises of God. We are doers; we like to be doing something so that the promise can be fulfilled in the way and the time we want. I have been reading Lysa TerKeurst’s book It’s Not Supposed To Be This Way, and she said something that has just stuck with me. She wrote, “God loves me too much to answer my prayers at any other time than the right time and in other way than the right way.”  You see, no matter how much we want to believe we can change our circumstances or people, the truth is we can’t! Only God can change our circumstances…only He can change hearts. Trust me, I know how hard it is to resist this urge to change things…to make my circumstances work out, but most of the time when we step in, we just cause more pain.

A few weeks ago I was praying about the things that we’ve been going through and I said, “God when are you going to fulfill the promises you have made to me?” And do you know what He told me? He told me, “Haley, if you will step out of the way; if you will stop trying to do this thing, I will finish what I have started!”  What a humbling thing to hear! If we are trying to work out God’s promises in our lives we can pretty much guarantee that we are probably making things worse. Sarah and Abraham made things worse when they tried to intervene, didn’t they? Hagar gave birth to Ishmael and the decedents of Ishmael are still, to this day, in opposition against Israel (the decedents of Isaac).  Abraham and Sarah’s choices to intervene caused harm for generations! Maybe our interventions won’t cause problems for generations, but it just may delay our promise even more. Trusting is hard. Having absolute faith and hope in God when things look hopeless is hard! But if we will continue to keep our eyes pinned on God, it is possible to stand firm.

Lysa TerKeurst also wrote in her book, It’s Not Supposed To Be This Way, that at a time when she was horribly sick and in pain and practically at death’s door she couldn’t understand why God wasn’t answering her cries for help and relief. But later after they learned what was causing her pain and that the pain she endured actually saved her life, she saw God’s silence differently. She wrote, “I now have a completely different picture of God standing beside my hospital bed while I was hurting and begging Him to help me. He wasn’t ignoring me. No, I believe it took every bit of holy restraint within Him to not step in and remove my pain. He loved me too much to do the very thing I was begging Him to do. He knew things I didn’t know. He saw the bigger picture I couldn’t see. His mercy was too great. His love too deep.”God sees our bigger picture. He knows why we are still in the very messy middle of waiting. Waiting is hard. Trusting God can be so difficult at times when everything feels tumultuous. I know first hand just how hard it is! Just the other week something happened and I found myself just devastated and mad and confused and hurt. I couldn’t understand why God wasn’t doing what He has promised me He will do. This doubt and fear came just when I was starting to feel like I could finally stand! Just when I thought I was about to see God finally complete this chapter of our story, another wave seemed to just crash over and took me down. Trust me, I get it! I talked to my Mom and she encouraged me. She let me cry a thousand tears and she hugged me and told me God will work all things out even if I could see it or not at the moment. So Then I had to make a choice, would I let this wave keep me down or would I look to God and say, “God I trust You! I don’t trust the circumstance, I trust You. I know You will do what You have promised even if it doesn’t look or feel very promising right now…You’re still God. You’re still good. And You will work this out!”

I don’t write all of this from a place of complete victory. Yes, I have witnessed miracles, but I have not yet seen the completion of this story…and that’s ok. Sometimes I think it helps to know you’re not the only one in the very tough season of waiting. Your waiting probably doesn’t look my waiting, but that doesn’t matter, either. Just know, you aren’t alone! I believe that God wants me to tell you to keep pressing in! Keep fighting! I remember during one of the more intense trials we faced I went to God and I asked Him what I needed to do and He told me, “Haley, fight! You fight!! Your family is worth this fight! So, you fight! Don’t you dare back down or give up!” I had a choice at that moment, I could give into my fears and run or I could wage spiritual warfare with enemy who was trying so hard to take us out! I decided to fight, and by God’s grace I did fight. And I kept choosing to fight…and I still choose to fight! Because my family is worth the fight! Because seeing God’s promises come to fruition will make the fight worth it! I know that when I see this chapter finally close in our lives and God uses this story for the advancement of His Kingdom, every bit of this hard…every bit of this waiting will be worth it! And it’ll be worth it for you, too! That’s the amazing thing about God…He’s just as invested in your story, as He is mine! He cares for you just as much as He cares for me! I pray this word has encouraged you all. I pray that God speaks to your heart and breathes a breath of fresh air into your weary and worn spirits. Keep standing. Keep fighting. And keep believing, because God really will do what He says He will do! We may not be able trust our circumstances, but we can trust God!!