| “Why are you so downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” |
| —Psalms 42:5 |
Don’t you just love procrastinators? They say they will send you something, or come to visit you, or do something for you or others, or take care of an issue, but you can’t depend on when, or if, they will actually do what they have promised. You watch and hope they will come through. You wait, and you wait, and you wait.
Many accounts in the Scriptures make God look like a giant procrastinator. We wait and wait and pray and pray and nothing seems to happen like we think it should. We have many examples in the Bible:
- Joseph, son of Jacob, stayed in prison for a crime he didn’t commit for two full years. (Genesis 41:1).
- Hannah wanted a baby, but the years went by and she remained childless. (1 Samuel 1:7).
- David was anointed king. But, before he was crowned king, he still spent years being chased by the murderous King Saul. (Books of 1 and 2 Samuel).
Yet, in the study of all these stories, and many more, we see that God actually had a long-range plan and, which was His right as God, He waited for the right time to bring that plan to pass. A pastor I once knew called it: “the eventuality of God’s working.”
In the Book of Habakkuk, we read the prophet’s cry in Habakkuk 1:2:
“How long, O Lord, must I call for help?”
Then, God answers the prophet in Habakkuk 2:3:
“For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.”
Finally, in Habakkuk 3:17-18, we read that the prophet himself has taken up the word “Yet”:
“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
When we seem to “hope” our procrastinator friend will come through, we actually “wish” more than having a godly hope. But, when we wait patiently on God to act, the Bible encourages us to depend upon real God-given hope.
The Psalmist speaks of such a hope in the verse found at the beginning of this blog post. As we read in Lamentations 3, the Prophet Jeremiah, whose “splendor, and all he hoped for from the Lord was gone,” used the word “yet” and spoke of the “hope” he had.
What a God-given hope it takes for us to believe that, after months or years of praying, and believing, and waiting, God will eventually act according to His plan and His love for us. We must always wait, and pray, and believe. We must trust God to strengthen us for the waiting days ahead. And, to encourage us in our waiting, let’s read biblical accounts of faithful servants who hoped, and waited, and finally received that for which they prayed to God.
