God makes promises. And then he waits. Sometimes for a really long time. Long enough for us to wonder if we imagined the promises. Long enough for us to wonder if he’s forgotten them. Maybe we misheard? Maybe we misunderstood?
The Struggle of Waiting on God’s Promises
It could be said that the biggest promise God ever made to a person was his promise to Abram. So big it took the whole universe to describe it. So big it promised to burst beyond Abram’s single life across time and space. God sings this promise to make one man into a whole nation, to bless all the peoples of the earth. And Abram believes it. But belief can wear thin.
How Abram and Sarai Waited on God
I wonder how often Abram recounted the promise to his wife, Sarai. I wonder how many months she waited for the signs of change in her body before she became bitter with disappointment. Perhaps over time, she asked, “Tell me again exactly how he said it. How can you be the father of a nation without first being the father of a son? How can you be the father of a son unless I am the mother of a son?” Months turned to years, and the promise turned to dust in their mouths.
Who can say if Abram and Sarai even knew what it meant to be the seed of a nation? Who knows if they could even fathom the cosmic blessing they’d received? Like all people of their time, they just wanted to feel God’s ordinary blessing of a child—someone to love, someone to care for you in your old age, someone to carry on your legacy. Is it so bad to want such things? After all, family is God’s invention, and the desire to procreate is a God-given, human instinct. After ten years, the sweeping promises given under an open sky have shrunk.
When God Makes Promises but Delays
Ten years of waiting and disappointment, waiting and disappointment have become a maddening cycle. And now, in despair, Abram and Sarai see only one option: to take matters into their own hands.
I’ve been in that place. There’s been a promise given, but can’t God see all the ways it’s impossible? I’ve waited a long time, but nothing’s happened. I don’t want to question God’s power. I don’t want to give up hope on the promise. But this is getting ridiculous. It would be easier to forget he ever said anything. It would be easier to stop anticipating—is today the day? No? Maybe today?
I see Sarai’s logic: On the one hand, God has promised Abram he will be a father. On the other hand, as she puts it in Genesis 16:2, “The Lord has kept me from having children” (NIV). If these two truths exist, it’s time to act, time to find a plan B. This cosmic plan for all the generations seems to have shriveled in one woman’s body. So Sarai proposes a way to resolve the pain and tension (and in so doing creates new pain and tension). Her years of worrying and weeping in her tent have made the problem very local. This cosmic hope has become a personal failure of her body, her family. So she looks close at hand for the solution—her own maidservant and her own initiative: “Perhaps I can build a family through her” (Genesis 16:2, NIV).
I’ve been in that same place. I guess when God made the promise he forgot I’d have limited opportunities and limited resources. He didn’t see how this person would block the path or that system would make the promise impossible. When God promised all nations would be blessed, he mustn’t have known about the stupid decisions humans would make. When he said all things will be made new, he must have not factored in all the brokenness of the world. When he said the gates of hades would not prevail against his church, he obviously didn’t foresee what’s going on today. When he promised he’s restoring all things, surely he didn’t actually mean all.
When God doesn’t get on with acting in the way he promised, the choice seems to be between giving up on the promise entirely and forcing the promise in our own strength. The harder choice is to trust he’s working, in ways we cannot see, to ask each day, What is my part in the promise and what is not?
Learning to Trust God’s Timing
I have twelve documents open in various stages of completeness. I rarely turn off my computer for fear that one of these tabs or documents will not open again when the computer flickers back to life and it will drop off my screen—literally and metaphorically— forever. Even as I reach one milestone—the church is growing— now there are more milestones hidden behind that one: find and train someone to lead a children’s ministry; create a new Bible study to meet new needs. If feeling confident in my success, feeling real as a person and a pastor, means pointing to outcomes, I’m just out of luck.
But somehow we’re moving forward. In this awkward tripping and catching, tripping and catching, we’re getting somewhere. It’s not my preferred way of getting somewhere, but is it possible I’m learning a kind of grace in it, even an embrace of the ridiculousness of it all? Maybe there are new muscles being toned in me, tiny tendons that normally go unused? Maybe my task is not to wish for a steady gait while doing whatever this strange other thing is. Maybe the invitation is for me to set aside my resistance, my desire to look competent and comfortable and in control.
Father,
I confess that I would much prefer a structured space
where goals and outcomes are clear, where my tasks are set
out for me and I’m able to measure results.
Would I trust you less in that kind of work?
Would I still ask for your help?
Would I lose the point of what I’m doing as it became an end in itself?
I hope that something significant would be different,
since this way costs me dearly every day.
Will the discomfort be worth it?
May all the plans still in process, all the documents and
sermons and emails and decisions yet incomplete, keep me on
my toes for the tripping and catching.
May they keep my eyes on you if for no other reason than
because I have nothing else.
Amen.
Taken from Confessions of an Amateur Saint: The Christian Leader’s Journey from Self-Sufficiency to Reliance on God by Mandy Smith. Copyright © 2024. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
