“The hardest part of Faith is the waiting and the hardest part of waiting is the last half hour.” Jim Cymbala
Many years ago I was asked to speak at a women’s retreat for my home church in Florida. The title of my message was “Believing God While you Wait.”
At the time I said I would speak I was expecting my 3rd child and I thought I would parallel waiting during pregnancy to what it is like to wait for God to answer your prayers and move in your life. In my head, it was a great analogy and I was excited to have the opportunity to share what it looks like to believe God while you wait. This was all going to be so good, then I went for my routine 9 week check up to hear the heartbeat and how everything was all good with the pregnancy. Except it wasn’t.
The ultrasound tech couldn’t find a heartbeat and called the doctor to explain to my young self what was happening. I was going to have a miscarriage. I didn’t want to believe God while waiting on this. This was not supposed to be a part of my happy hope-filled message.
It was like a kick in the gut and it only took a second for the tears to bubble up in my eyes. Then, to have to walk out in the waiting room and see all the other pregnant women was hard…really hard to say the least.
The message I was to give at the retreat on Believing God While You Wait would be about 3-4 weeks later. With the news of an impending miscarriage, I no longer wanted to give the same message.
It’s one thing to believe God is good when life is good, but it’s a whole new ball game to believe God is good when life stinks.
Whether it’s a baby, a husband, a house or a dream you are waiting for to come to pass, it requires a lot of faith to believe God while you are waiting.
Through that season, I did learn a few things about how God tells us to wait through the examples of people in scripture.
He taught me we are to wait in these 4 ways.
- Believing – Believing His Word is true and God is who He says He is in scripture and He is faithful.
- Expecting- Expecting to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
- With Courage – I was to wait without fear because to be controlled by fear meant the death of faith. ” Without faith, it is impossible to please God” Hebrews 11:6
- With Hope – I read somewhere that hope is to believe there will be a better outcome when there’s evidence to the contrary. My evidence said I may not have more children but my hope was in the Lord and what his Word promises and says.
Since this season, I did have 2 more children, and many more life experiences to teach me more on how to believe God while you wait. Like this picture says, the hardest part of Faith is the waiting, and the hardest part of waiting is the last half hour.
God doesn’t always work on our time frame, but He is always working on our behalf to make his purposes for our lives come to pass.
So don’t give into fear, and keep believing God while you wait…even in the last half hour.
