WAITING ON GOD: HOW LONG IS 'LONG'?
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12 (NIV)
When your dreams are yet to come true, it is easy to become depressed. Notice though that the "hope" is not necessarily failed, it is only deferred. Proverbs is saying that when your hope takes a long time to come to fruition, when it drags, the time of waiting can be very sad and disappointing.
You can imagine how it feels to wait for something, something that you believe to be very important, even the realization of your dreams. You start to wonder if God is ever going to give it to you. You start to wonder why He’s taking so long. Does He really love you after all?
Thus while the fulfillment of our desires can be a very good thing, the pursuit of this fulfillment can always also be a temptation to sin. Are we allowing our heart to become sick because of our desires and our expectations about when and how they should be fulfilled? Are we, like Adam and Eve, trying to grasp now what might be given to us at a later time, on our own terms rather than on God’s?
“Heart sickness” is a very complicated thing, but it always takes us to an encounter with God. What do we think about Him and what He is doing in our lives at this moment? Do we place our hope, as well as our faith, in Him or are we still hoping for something else?
We all have our prayer list, you know, the one listing of all the most important things we’ve been praying for. Those things that weigh heavily on our hearts, block our thoughts and make us sigh under the pain and sorrow from time to time. List of our nearest and dearest, our children, friends, spouse, financial situations, health, and future. Some of those things are on that list for years on end, some briefly visit the list and some give up on the list, like it will never happen.
Many of us have asked, pleaded, fasted, made promises and tried to clean up our acts in order to speed up the breakthrough. We have asked for prayer time and again in church prayer meetings, and we have exhausted our friends by talking about these things through the years.
We must ensure that our desire for the "Tree of Life" does not become a desire for something more, for something that is not ours to take on our own terms. We must learn to wait on the Lord, to trust that He knows best. As we trust Him, we will find that He is the true fulfillment of our desires.
I want to encourage you to hang I'm there. God is showing up for you. If you choose to wait on God, you won't wait for long.
The Lord hears and He cares. He is our Father, and He is the only one who has the last word in this world and in heaven.
