Speaker: Bonnie Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.  Isaiah 43:19 NIV

“Life has no waiting rooms” Ann Voskamp blogged.  “Life only has labor and delivery rooms.”  If you’ve ever gone through labor or even been anywhere near a woman in labor, you know that labor is not a comfortable state to be in.  Quite bluntly:  it hurts.  A lot.  A woman in labor, who was previously overjoyed at the thought of welcoming a new little life into the world, may decide she’s changed her mind.  “Forget this baby idea—just get me out of this insanely painful place,” she may think. 

When we are forced to wait in this life, when dreams, plans and goals that seemed like they were positive, God-pleasing things, just fall apart, it hurts.  It hurts a lot.  Voskamp’s point, however, is a good one.  “Waiting rooms,” she says, “are actually birthing rooms and what feels like the contraction of our plans can be the birthing of greater purposes.”  Yes, for the believer in Jesus, there is a purpose for the pain involved in waiting.

Labor rooms, or birthing rooms are active places, usually abuzz with all the focus on the new life that’s arriving into this big, cold world.   But when we’re waiting for rain to fall, as Voskamp’s farming family was, waiting for exam results or waiting for someone you love to get well, to come home or to come to their senses–waiting doesn’t feel like labor.  It’s an uncomfortable, frustrating and painful place to be.

There are many famous “waiters,” people who were waiting, that we can be encouraged by in the Bible.  In the book of Genesis, a man named Joseph’s waiting room was a prison cell.  First sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, then falsely accused of assaulting his master’s wife, he sat in an Egyptian prison, forgotten and far away from his home in the land of Canaan.

Even after 11 years of slavery and two years of sitting in prison, Joseph still trusted God even though it looked like he could spend the rest of his life in prison.  “Until the time came to fulfill his word, the Lord tested Joseph’s character” it says in Psalm 105 (Psalms 105:19).    It’s encouraging to remember that Joseph was exactly where he was supposed to be—in prison, because it reminds us that although we may be waiting in a pool of pain, we are not necessarily out of the will and the plan of God.  Jesus told us, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33).

As Joseph’s trust was tried, his character was being molded.  Time and pain are important tools that God uses in our lives.  Rather than demanding an explanation from God for the circumstances that God allowed, Joseph continued, year after year, to believe that God was trustworthy.  God removed Joseph from that prison at just the right time and put him in a place of power to be able to save his entire family.  By the time his brothers showed up in Egypt, we see a man who comforts those who had treated him so badly, speaking kindly to them, saying, “God sent me before you…so it was not you who sent me here, but God!” (Genesis 45:7-8) The greater purpose that God birthed through Joseph’s waiting was the preservation of the family line that Jesus would ultimately come from.

As we are willing to give Him control of our lives, God uses even prisons as labor and delivery rooms because He’s never taking a break from birthing newness in our lives and in our characters.  When contractions bring a baby from her mother’s womb into the world, there may be a painful, dark night to labor through.  But as Psalm 30 assures us, “Joy comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5)

Resource Reading:  Psalm 30:1-12