I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Psalm 27:13
I’ve never known God to waste time while having me pray about some need – in a long wait – where there’s nothing I could do personally to effect an outcome.
It seems sometimes that God will never answer your prayer. It can seem you’re waiting forever before He acts on your behalf. Years may pass before there’s a specific response to a prayer that matters most to you to see it happen. A loved one has a need, or there’s a personal request for yourself, that never leaves your thoughts. Know that if something stays on your heart and mind like that, God may have you praying for a specific need He fully intends to deal with, only not in the time that you want or expect.
There are prayers I’ve been bringing to God for years that I’m seeing answered just now. In some, He’s involving me as part of the answer. Others, I’m only supposed to keep asking Him to handle and He’s responding without involving me someway in the middle of it.
The good thing is I am able to lean on that faithfulness now. I can remember that God eventually acted.
One thing He has proven, though, is He does answer. A year or longer seems forever to us especially when we look at some situation in our lives and think we’re personally out of time not only to receive an answer from God, but to handle the answer He may send. We get to a point where we only see what He could do with our current ability. It gets tougher, at that point, to trust that God knows what He’s doing. That’s when it’s easy to feel like we’re having Lazarus (John 11:38-44) moments.. except instead of four days, we’re waiting four or more years. We wonder why God didn’t do something earlier in a time in our lives when a specific solution from Him would have made more sense.
But when you’re not sure what God is doing – and we all go through times of uncertainty – taking courage by continually keeping His goodness in mind can make all the difference in how you respond to circumstances.
Not only days or months, but years passing, full of wondering what God will do to fix a problem that just doesn’t seem to ever budge, David reminds us in the Psalms that remembering God’s goodness does get us through, that He has a purpose, a specific plan for our waiting.
The encouraging thing about getting through times we cannot possibly understand at the moment, that make no sense whatsoever, is that God has shown His faithfulness in the past, and in other areas and events in our lives. That, we can hold on to with confidence. We gain strength to lead and to serve because trusting God with long waits is a gift from Him.
It takes humility to receive such gifts from Him because it takes turning to His ability, to His way of responding.
And from those times when we seemed to hear Him loud and clear, and noticed more strongly that His presence was in our circumstances, we can not only believe, but know He is just as present, just as much working, and just as concerned about what makes no sense to us in some area of our lives or when He seems completely silent.
Turn it over to Him, whatever it is to you and ask Him what He wants to do. Every time you’re reminded of what you cannot see or make sense of, praise Him that He’s working everything out even though you cannot begin to fathom how. Keep asking Him how to pray, and keep thanking Him for what He’s doing to answer.
