So the Lord must wait for you to come to him so he can show you his love and compassion.  For the Lord is a faithful God.  Blessed are those who wait for his help. Isaiah 30:18

God has promised to meet all the needs of those who come to Him for help. Sometimes, that help takes longer to arrive than we’d like.

The Bible says that God longs to show us love and compassion and that a person is blessed if they wait for God’s help (Isaiah 30:18).  Most of us, however, are impatient and the hardest time to wait on God’s help is in a really bad situation. We’ve got some great examples of people who waited on God and some of people who “helped God out” on their own when things looked grim.

Abram, the father of the Jewish people, was known to take things into his own hands.  When he moved with his beautiful wife, Sarai, to Egypt to avoid famine, rather than rely on God to protect him and Sarai, he told Sarai to lie and tell the Egyptians she was his sister so that they wouldn’t kill him and take her. Poor Sarai!  She was taken but God exposed Abram’s lie and rescued her.

Fast forward—God had changed their names to Abraham and Sarah and promised them a son. But the years ticked by and, no baby. This time Sarah pitched in to help God out and gave Abraham her handmaid to bear his child. This was not God’s plan.  God’s baby did come along eventually but Sarah and Abraham suffered because of their unwillingness to wait. Steven Furtick points out: “Something harder than waiting on God is wishing you had.”[1]

When God makes a promise, He is able and faithful to fulfill that promise, at just the right time.

[1] Furtick, S. (n.d.). Facebook. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from facebook.com/StevenFurtick/posts/something-harder-than-waiting-on-god-is-wishing-you-had-we-have-to-be-careful-wh/1014883765199705/