What Happens When We Don’t Wait For God?

What happens when we don’t wait on God or wait for God? That’s the question we’re going to deal with here briefly today in light of the sermon that I shared this past weekend. And you can watch that if you haven’t had a chance to watch it or or listen to it. It’s from Isaiah, Chapter 26. And Isaiah chapter 26 has a wonderful promise of peace and joy and comfort for those who are going through a storm right now or who have just come out of a storm or will be going through a storm eventually.

Those storms of life can really rock our faith sometimes. And so we took a look at the promises that God provides to his people and those who put their trust in Him in Isaiah 26. And I shared in my sermon verse in chapter 26, where it says in verse seven and eight, the path of the righteous is level you the upright one, meaning God make the way of the righteous smooth. Yes, Lord. Walking in the way of Your laws, we wait for you.

Walking in the way of Your laws, we wait for you. Your name and Your renown are the desire of our hearts. And I shared how waiting is one of those disciplines that is a necessary aspect of our life. There’s times when we pray, there’s times where we plead to God to carry us through the storm or to just remove the storm altogether. And sometimes God doesn’t respond in the way that we want or when we want Him to.

And it can feel at times that God is distant or silent and we wonder, am I praying the wrong thing? Does God not care what I’m going through? And yet chapter 26 is saying, one of the disciplines that you and I need to learn is to wait on God’s timing. And the primary purpose in Scripture of waiting on God, that phrase waiting for God or waiting on God, the primary purpose of that more than anything is for us to learn to trust God more. We need to learn to trust his character.

We need to learn to trust that he is always working, even when it seems like he’s not. The promise of Romans 828 is that for those who love God and are called according to his purpose, god is able to work. He is working and he’s able to take the bad things and he’s able to somehow use them for good. And so in the process of waiting, we’re learning to trust God more. We’re learning to trust his character and his heart.

And so those verses I read just a moment ago are the language of love and intimacy to say God as we wait. We’re still praying, we’re still studying the Scriptures, we’re still crying out to you. And we’re going to trust that in your perfect way and in your perfect timing, you hear us and you’ll respond in a way that it may not be exactly how we want God to respond, but in his own perfect way, god can bring good in the midst of bad, and that’s the promise of God for us. But what happens when we don’t wait for God? That’s the question for us today.

And I think we have some examples in Scripture that we can certainly point to of people who did not wait for God, people who were impulsive and got out ahead of God’s timing, people who jumped the gun and tried to do something in their own strength and in their own timing. And that’s really what happens whenever we don’t wait for God is we’re saying, I’m moving forward, God, whether you’re with me or not, I’m going to do this in my own timing and in my own strength, and it never works out. Whenever we do that, you look at the life of Abraham and how God had promised him that he would one day have a son. And Abraham and Sarah, his wife Sarah, were in the process of waiting and waiting and waiting many, many years, and the promise wasn’t coming true. And so Abraham took matters into his own hands and tried to have a child through his maidservant.

And the results were not great. It was displeasing to God, and God somehow brought good out of that. But it was not a great situation. And Abraham was not waiting on God’s timing until later on in his life when he realized that God was up to something else. We can also look at the life of Moses when Moses in Exodus chapter two, is empathizing with his Hebrew brethren who are being enslaved by the Egyptians.

But instead of waiting for God’s perfect timing to free the people out of slavery, moses took matters into his own hands and he took the life of an Egyptian, and God was not pleased by that. And Moses had to flee for 40 years and to exile and to wait for God’s timing. One more example is the example of King Saul when Samuel, the prophet and the leader of Israel told Saul to wait until Samuel came before offering the sacrifice that Samuel would offer the sacrifice before Saul was to lead the troops into battle against the Philistines. And Saul didn’t wait the full time. And that was displeasing to Samuel and was certainly displeasing to God.

We need to wait for God’s timing. We need to wait for God’s perfect way and to trust that he knows what is best. I like how Greg Lori shares it. He says, waiting time is never wasted time. Waiting time is never wasted time.

It’s not a passive exercise. We’re saying, God, right now, we’re just going to press in even more. We’re going to hunger and thirst for you. I’m not moving forward without your leadership, without your presence, without your okay and guidance in all of this situation. When we don’t wait for God, we’re moving forward in our own strength, and it causes harm to ourself, it causes harm to others.

And we miss the lessons that God wants to teach us along the way. James one promises that trials can strengthen us and they can develop within us, develop character within us. And if we don’t learn the lessons that God wants us to, we are often bound to repeat those lessons later on in life. Let’s wait for God’s timing. When we don’t wait for God’s timing, we’re moving forward on our own.

But we want God to be with us, so let’s wait for his perfect timing. So thanks for that question, and we hope to answer further questions from you in the future. Thanks for tuning in today. Bye.