How God Orchestrates Your Wait

This week, Pastor Steven closed the “Waiting Room” series with another timely, energetic message on how to wait on God. This week, Pastor Steven used Habakkuk 2:1-3 and 2 Peter 3:8-9 to display how God is everlasting and perpetually in control, even as we go through seasons of waiting.

Pastor Steven began this message by acknowledging the tension that exists between the two prevailing approaches to waiting on God. It seems that we are faced with the decision to either, “Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10),” or to “Go get your own goat (Luke 15:28-32).” While many of our waiting rooms are a result of our failure to activate what God has already given us, there are still times where we truly are waiting for God to make something right in our lives. Using these Scriptures as a foundation, Pastor Steven gave us three frames of reference to show us what God is doing while we are waiting on Him.

God’s transportation system operates through hubs and spokes. Pastor Steven used a running analogy of an airport to describe what God is doing while we are waiting on Him. The airline industry is set up using a “Hub and Spoke” model. That is, if you are traveling somewhere that does not offer a direct flight, you will need to fly to a “hub” airport and use a connecting flight to finally get to your destination. You may have experienced something similar in your own life. God will often take you somewhere that feels like it’s opposite to where you are going. As Pastor Steven said, “Often you have to go through (the process) to get to (the place) because there’s something God wants to do in you first.”

God doesn’t put you in a holding pattern to punish you, but to protect you. When you’re stuck in the process between the potential and the perfection, you can find yourself caught in another level of frustration. Habakkuk 2 says that God will certainly not delay. Yet sometimes, you can find yourself in God’s holding patterns, where the destination is in sight, but God is taking you the long way around instead of landing you when you would like. As Peter wrote in 2 Peter 3, God is never slow to respond to us. Although it may seem like it, He is never putting us in a holding pattern to punish us, but rather to protect us. God’s delays are not denials. Continuing with the flight analogy, God cannot land you at your destinations until He determines you are ready. He has the vantage point to determine whether or not the conditions are clear enough to land. Pastor Steven challenged us to believe that it’s better to be late for the destination He has for us than to not arrive at all, or to not be ready when we get there. God is simply making sure that we are prepared to maximize what He has prepared for us at our destination!

Trusting in God means crossing over the supernatural date line.When you find yourself doing all that you can do, praying all that you can pray, but you are still waiting on God, it’s easy to ask, “O Lord, are you not from everlasting (Habakkuk 1:12)?” In fact, God is everlasting. He exists outside of our understanding of time. 2 Peter 3:8 even says that a single day for us is likened to one thousand years for God and one thousand years for us is likened to a single day for God. Pastor Steven used an illustration of his recent trip to Australia, where he crossed over the “International Date Line.” Since Australia is 14 hours ahead of our time zone, Pastor Steven explained to his son, Elijah, that it was tomorrow in Australia and Elijah asked, “Daddy, can you tell us what happens tomorrow?” Since God exists in eternity, Pastor Steven suggested that our prayers cause us to cross over a “supernatural date line.” We often worry because we simply do not see how God is going to bring about what we believe He has prepared for us. However, Romans 4:17 states that God “gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they are.” You may have questions about how God is going to orchestrate your circumstances to fulfill His promises for your tomorrow. But through His word and the power of His Spirit, He will carry you trough to tomorrow!

What can the Lord tell you about tomorrow? What are your greatest questions as you wait for tomorrow? Using His word and the power of His Spirit, what confidence is God calling you to walk in today?

To watch the entire message from Pastor Steven click here. To learn more about overcoming the low points in your journey watch The Dip series.