Photo by Haberdoedas on Unsplash
Full disclosure, this is an AI adaptation of a sermon I preached. I wrote the sermon all by myself! But AI took my sermon notes (which are typically very detailed) and adapted the content into a blog for your enjoyment. I reviewed and made minor adjustments to this post.
Learning to trust God when He doesn't do what we want, when we want.
Have you ever found yourself wondering why God isn't doing something? Maybe you've been praying for healing, but nothing seems to be changing. Maybe you're waiting for a new job, a restored relationship, or a breakthrough in some area of your life. You've prayed, you've trusted, and you've done everything you know to do. But God still hasn't acted. And eventually, you start asking the question we've probably all asked at some point:
God, what are You waiting for?
Psalm 37:7 gives us an instruction that is incredibly simple and incredibly difficult:
"Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him."
I don't know about you, but waiting patiently isn't always my strong suit. Especially when I think I know exactly what God needs to do to fix my problem. But perhaps that's part of the problem. We assume we know what God should do, and we assume we know when He should do it.
And sometimes, God has something entirely different in mind.
When Jesus Didn't Show Up on Time
One of my favorite examples of waiting on God comes from John 11, where we read about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus was sick, and his sisters, Mary and Martha, sent word to Jesus. They knew Jesus could heal their brother. They had seen what He was capable of, and they trusted that He could do something about their situation. But Jesus did something strange.
He waited.
In fact, after hearing that Lazarus was sick, Jesus stayed where he was for two more days. By the time he arrived, Lazarus had died. Can you imagine how Mary and Martha must have felt? They knew Jesus loved their family. They knew he had the power to heal Lazarus. So why hadn't he come sooner?
When Jesus finally arrived, both sisters expressed essentially the same thought: If you had been here, our brother wouldn't have died. And they were right! Jesus absolutely could have prevented Lazarus from dying. But Jesus had something else in mind.
Rather than simply healing a sick man, Jesus was about to raise a dead man back to life. Mary and Martha wanted a healing. Jesus was preparing a resurrection. They thought Jesus had missed his opportunity to do something wonderful, but he was actually preparing to do something greater than they could have imagined.
The Arrogance We Don't Like to Admit
There's something about this story that challenges me. Mary, Martha, and the disciples all seemed to think they knew exactly what Jesus should do. They also thought they knew exactly when he should do it. And if we're being truthful, we often approach God the same way.
We pray for God to act, but sometimes our prayers are less about asking for his help and more about informing him of the plan we've already put together.
God, here's the job I need. Here's the person I need you to change. Here's the problem I need you to solve. And if you could take care of it by next Tuesday, that would be great.
Of course, we don't usually say it quite like that. But isn't that often what we're thinking? We assume we know the best solution to our problems, and we assume we know the best timeline for that solution.
The problem is that we're not God. We don't see everything He sees. We don't understand everything He understands. And we certainly don't know what tomorrow holds.
Learning to wait patiently on God requires us to admit two things:
I don't necessarily know the best way to solve my problem.
I don't necessarily know the best time for my problem to be solved.
That's humility. And it's an essential part of trusting God.
God's Love Doesn't Always Look Like We Expect
There's a fascinating detail in John 11 that I think we often overlook. John tells us that Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. And then, immediately after establishing how much Jesus loved this family, John tells us that Jesus waited two more days before going to them.
That seems backward, doesn't it?
We tend to assume that if God loves us, he'll act quickly to remove our suffering. If he really cares about us, surely he'll solve the problem before things get worse. But in this story, Jesus' love for this family didn't result in an immediate solution. Instead, his delay became part of something extraordinary.
Now, that doesn't mean every difficult situation in our lives will end with a miraculous resolution. Sometimes the healing doesn't come. Sometimes we don't get the job. Sometimes the relationship remains broken. Some of us may spend the rest of our lives waiting for something that never happens.
But that doesn't mean God has stopped loving us.
Isaiah 55:8–9 reminds us that God's thoughts and ways are higher than ours. We aren't always going to understand what he's doing, and we aren't always going to understand why he's allowing us to wait. Our hope isn't that God will eventually give us everything we want.
Our hope is that God knows what we don't, sees what we can't, and loves us even when we don't understand his decisions.
What Should We Do While We're Waiting?
So what are we supposed to do when we're waiting for God to act? Psalm 37 gives us some wonderful guidance.
Throughout the first seven verses, we're encouraged to stop worrying, trust in God, do good, dwell in the land, delight in the Lord, commit our ways to Him, and be still before Him.
Notice that waiting on God doesn't mean doing nothing.
While we're waiting, we can continue pursuing him. We can serve others. We can find joy in his presence. We can do good right where he's placed us. And perhaps most importantly, we can spend time in his Word. One of the most powerful things about Scripture is that God can use it to give us comfort and direction in the middle of difficult circumstances. But we have to actually read it!
Think about how much time we spend worrying about situations we can't control. What if we devoted some of that time to reading Scripture, praying, and learning to trust the God who actually does have control? We don't have to wait until Sunday morning to receive encouragement from God's Word. That opportunity is available to us every day.
And the more we learn about God's character, the easier it becomes to trust him when his plans don't match ours.
Learning to Release Our Plans
Maybe you're waiting on God to do something right now. You've prayed about it repeatedly. You've imagined how everything should work out. You've even figured out the timeline that makes the most sense.
But what if God's plan is different? What if the first step toward finding peace in your circumstances is admitting that you don't actually know what's best?
Proverbs 19:21 reminds us that we can make all the plans we want, but ultimately, God's purpose will stand.
And that's good news.
Because if God's purposes depended on our ability to figure everything out, we'd be in serious trouble. We don't need to convince God to follow our plans. We need to learn to trust him with his. So keep praying. Keep trusting. Keep doing good. Keep pursuing God in the middle of whatever you're facing. And when you find yourself frustrated that God hasn't acted according to your timeline, remember Mary and Martha.
They thought Jesus was too late.
But Jesus knew exactly what He was doing.
Being still before the Lord doesn't mean we've given up hope. It means we've placed our hope in someone who knows far more than we ever will.
And that's why we can wait patiently on him.