Trusting God's Timing
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you
As humans, we want what we want and we want it right now, and it is difficult for most, if not all, of us to wait for things we want, especially if there is no guarantee that we will ever get what it is that we want. It is human nature to grow impatient when we know what we want or need, or when we think we know what we want or need, especially when it is something important, and sometimes we are afraid that God has forgotten about us and feel that we must make, whatever it is, happen on our own, but it is always a mistake, and often disastrous, to rush things and go with our own plans and our own timeline instead of following God’s plan and timeline. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5) is extremely good advice, and I know from sad experience that leaning on my own understanding instead of trusting God only leads to heartbreak and trouble.
Sometimes when we get impatient and are not willing to wait on God’s timing we settle for things we know are not right, even things we know will not make us happy, if for no other reason than the misguided feeling that having something, anything, now is better than waiting for something far better that may never come. When we don’t trust God’s timing we don’t trust God and are afraid that he will never give us what we need or deserve. I think this is especially true in relationships and, almost without fail, when we rush into a relationship that is not right there are a multitude of warning signs or red flags that we choose to ignore in order to convince ourselves that the relationship is in our best interest, and that route leads to heartache, not sometimes but always. When something, or someone, is part of God’s plan for our lives there are no red flags to ignore, and we don’t have to convince ourselves that it is right, we just know that it is right. You will never have negotiate your way into the heart of someone who wants you there, and if they are the person God put in your life than they will want you there.
When I was dating my ex-wife there were a lot of red flags, and even on our wedding day when she was walking down the isle toward me, I was more terrified than happy and I considered postponing the wedding for a while because I was not absolutely certain that I was doing the right thing, and honestly, I think the only reason I did not postpone the wedding, either on the wedding day or well before, is because I was afraid of how everyone would look at me and I was afraid that if I postponed the wedding everyone would hate me, even if we did later get married. Had I paid heed to the warning signs and dated longer before getting engaged, or even had a longer engagement, I have no doubt that we never would have gotten married, and it would have saved both of us a lot of grief and heartache.
When we were dating, my ex acted like she loved everything about, even my over the top cheesy jokes, but as soon as we got married it was obvious, and painfully so, that she did not marry me for who I was but rather who she thought she could turn me into and immediately set about striving to change almost every aspect of my personality. Practically the moment we said “I do” my ex tried to turn me against my family, especially my dear mother, and did everything within her power to keep me from spending any time with them. My ex even went out of her way to ensure I knew she loathed my jokes and would no longer even tolerate them, much less laugh at them. She also went out of her way to offend and mistreat my parents, and one year after they drove over twenty hours to visit for Thanksgiving she forced them to sleep in the garage, even though there was more than enough room in the house and my step-father had medical issues. I can’t overstate how ashamed of myself I am for allowing that to happen. I guess I was more interested in keeping the peace with my wife than treating my family with the love and respect they deserved.
If I had trusted God’s timing instead of leaning unto my own understanding and trusting my emotions I would have paid attention to the red flags and warning signs and would not have gotten into that relationship in the first place, and I have no doubt that I would have avoided many years of pain and suffering. The worst part of not trusting God and going after what we think we need instead is that when our ill conceived plans fail we often then blame God for the trouble that we got ourselves into, and I was certainly guilty of that, and not just in my failed marriage.
Part of the reason I got into a relationship that was not good for me is that I was depressed and felt like I needed someone in my life to make me whole, and as one of the teachers said in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, “We accept the love we think we deserve,” and at that time in my life I didn’t have an overly high opinion of myself. If a person is deeply depressed and feels they need someone in their life in order to make them happy and/or make them whole than he or she is absolutely not at the right place in their life to be getting into a relationship. If we expect another person to fix us we have unrealistic expectations and it is not fair to us, and it is not fair to them. No one can fix us or make us whole, only God can do that, and until we have allowed God to do that, a relationship is probably a bad idea because we will expect the other person to do something that is not only not within his or her power, but also not their responsibility, and when they fail to meet our expectations we blame them for something that is not their fault. Also, I am not saying that any person who entered into a relationship that they were not emotionally ready for is completely, or even mostly, responsible for its failure as the other person had to either ignore red flags as well, or else they took advantage of the other person’s vulnerable and broken emotional state.
If you have to wonder if a person loves, or even likes you, they probably don’t. When someone loves you it is obvious, even if they don’t say it. God is good and is not going to put someone in your life that doesn’t love you. God knows how to give good gifts and if the person you are with is making you miserable they are certainly not a gift from God, even if, and especially if, they tell you they are. Jesus said that if we, being evil, know how to give good gifts to our own children and will not give them a serpent when they ask for a fish, or a rock when they ask for an egg, than God, who is a much better parent than any of us could ever hope to be, will certainly not give us something that will hurt us when we ask for something we need (Luke 11:11).
It is still relatively early on in the relationship, but I care deeply about my current girlfriend, and in fact I love her, and I have not the slightest doubt that she feels the same about me, and I am convinced that God helped us to meet each other at just the right time in both of our lives. If we had met ten years ago we may not have liked each other because we were both completely different people then, and just because we are right for each other now does not mean that we were right for each other then, and I can almost guarantee that we weren’t. God know what we need and sometimes he is not just preparing someone for us, which is what we often pray for, but he is preparing us and changing us into the person that the other person deserves and is praying for. We are often overly worried about finding the right person, but I think God is more interested in making us the right person. I had been praying for someone just like the wonderful woman I have in my life now for many years, but when I first started praying for her I was not deserving of such a person, and perhaps that is why both of us have been single for so long before we met each other because God was making us the people we needed to be, and the people we needed each other to be.
If God is making you wait for something, be it a relationship, a career or anything else, it is not because he doesn’t love you, doesn’t care about you, is a cosmic buzz kill or because he has forgotten about you, it is because he loves you. If God is making you wait for something you are in good company and many people in the Bible were forced to wait for things, often times things that were rightfully theirs. David was forced to wait many a long years to become king, despite the fact that he was chosen by God to be the next king of Israel. When David was just a boy he was anointed as the king by the prophet Samuel, but did not actually become king for many years, and even then only after a bloody war. David trusted God’s timing, and even though he had several chances to kill Saul and take the throne, each time he spared Saul because he knew it was not God’s will for him to kill Saul, and therefore it was not God’s appointed time for him to be king. When a philistine came to David, thinking he would get a reward for killing Saul, he was put to death instead for killing he Lord’s anointed because, as desperately as David wanted to be king, he wanted to follow God even more, if only he had kept up that level of devotion to God throughout the rest of his life.
God’s timing is just as important as God’s plan, and in almost every aspect of life, timing is everything. When children are first learning math it usually does not take long to realize that the order of operation matters and if things are done in the wrong order that it will never lead to the correct answer. The same is also true in cooking and if the proper things are done and the proper ingredients added, but in the wrong order, the end result will be far from desirable. As with math and cooking, so in life, and even the right thing, at the wrong time, can be the wrong thing. If Ruth and Boaz had met before the time they were supposed to meet, even before Ruth married Naomi’s son, they would not have wound up together. It may not always make sense to us at the time, but God has a plan for our lives, and while it may not look like what we thought it should, God’s plan for our lives is always better than any plans we can devise on our own.
Jacob made a deal with Laban to work for for him for seven years in exchange for the hand of his daughter Rachel, but at the end of that seven years he learned that he had been hoodwinked and Laban had pulled an old switcharoo and tricked Jacob into marrying his older daughter, Leah. Jacob was understandably upset when he found out that he had been tricked, but ultimately agreed to serve Laban an additional seven years in order to marry Rachel, his true love.
Moses waited 40 years to see the promised land, and after that long wait, seeing the promised land from the top of the mountain was the most he was ever allowed to do as God did not permit Moses to cross over the Jordan River into the promised land. Moses could have felt cheated and became angry with God, but instead he glorified God and praised him for all that had been done for him in his long life.
It took Joseph thirteen years to be made the second in command in Egypt, and he had to go through a lot of unpleasant circumstances to get there, including being sold into slavery by his own brothers and then he spent more than two years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. However, if Joseph had put his trust in God instead of putting his trust in man (the royal cup bearer) it is likely that he would have spent far less time in prison, but I guess we will never know for sure. If it was not for the many years and the experiences he went through to make him the man he was, Joseph would never have been chosen to lead, nor would he have been qualified to do so. Because of the adversity that Joseph went through he became the man that was needed to both save Egypt and the Children of Israel.
Despite how much faith we have in God, there is a time, or will be a time, when we fail to trust his timing when we don’t get what we want when we want it, and at such times, we should remember that God has never failed us yet and that he never will fail us. Just like small children who think they should be allowed to play in the street, stay up all night and eat candy for every meal or the teen who doesn’t understand why they are not allowed to do things they are not old enough to do and must wait, we don’t always know what is actually best for us, and as any good parent would, God gives us what we need, when the timing is right, instead of what we think we need, when we think we need it. It may take a while, at least from our perspective, but God will always do what is best for us, we just have to be patient and trust him.
The Bible teaches us that “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with [us],” (2 Peter 3:9). I am truly grateful that God has chosen to be more patient with me than I have been with him and to ignore my requests when I ask for foolish things and instead has given me greater things than I thought I deserved. You can never go wrong with trusting God.