What To Do When God Says Wait

By Katrina Daroff

Waiting. Photo by Katrina Daroff

            When you are in a season of waiting it feels like it is going to last forever, especially when you are young. At 16, everything feels so far away. You are constantly waiting; waiting for summer, waiting for school to get out, waiting for the boy to like you, waiting your turn, waiting to be the adult they keep telling you that you are turning into. It is so frustrating because it feels like that time of waiting will never be over. And all you can do is just sit there and wait. Right?

            Wrong!

            Yes, God does call us to wait for him, probably more than we would like. In fact, there are 116 verses in the bible in which God says to wait. And yes, in some of them God does specifically say to be still and wait for Him to do what He is going to do, but that is not always the case. Most of the time, when God is telling us to wait for what He has planned He is giving us time to grow into that blessing and we cannot grow, if we just sit. Yes, wait, but also live your life.

            I remember when I was in college, I desperately wanted to be a cabin leader for the high school group at the summer camp I had grown up attending and they kept not asking me! I knew I could do it. I would be amazing at doing the silly songs and playing the games. I knew all of them. Every time I asked the people in charge they would tell me, “Not this summer.” Instead, I worked in the kitchen. Instead, I spent the Summer helping my friend Sarah organize wedding events. Instead, I worked at my school’s library fixing printers. Every spring I asked and every summer I ended up doing something else.

            Then, the summer after I graduated from college, the phone call came in. “Katie, do you want to be a cabin leader for senior high camp?” I hadn’t even asked yet. I ended up spending the entire summer at camp that year working with all different ages and can you guess what I learned? Being a cabin leader was not what I expected it to be.

IT WAS HARD!

Wake up for campers was at 7:00 which meant I had to be up for a staff meeting at 6:00. I had to spend a significant part of my free time planning small group activities. I had to shepherd my campers to activities on time and always know what was happening next. I had to answer hard questions and do bed checks. All with no car or smart phone and the nearest Starbucks forty minutes away. If you’re having trouble easing your way into drinking black coffee… that’s the way I started.

The other thing I learned was that I could not have done it one… two… three summers before because the things I learned doing other things those summers were the skills and knowledge I used to be a cabin leader. I had been so frustrated with waiting but if I had just sat and waited for my turn, I would have never been ready.

The other day I was frustrated with waiting for it to be my turn again and in the midst of my frustration, I was reading through my bible and came across the Jeremiah 29: 4-14.

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the Lord.

This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

These verses take place in a period of time when God is telling the Israelites that it is time to wait for deliverance. They were going into exile where they would have to wait 70 years before God fulfilled his promise to them and brought them back. This verse hit painfully hard right in my heart. At the time I felt like I was being sent into my own personal exile, but, unlike the Israelites, there was no one to tell me what I had done wrong or how long it would last. The Israelites were going into exile and God was telling them to go and to wait there to be delivered. Maybe God was telling me to go quietly into exile as well and wait. After all, He had already told me to wait for what I had been praying for, even though it felt incredibly unfair to have to keep waiting for something He had no problem giving to everyone else.  

Then I read this passage again.

God did not tell the Israelites to go into exile and just wait. God told them to go and build houses, plant gardens, get married, make the country they were going into prosper. God told them to live their lives because when the appointed time was up and he gave them what they were waiting for He was going to use those good things. They were going to need those good things. Just like Jacob and his family needed the good things Joseph created while he was exiled from his family. God did not want them to just go and wait until he kept his promise. God wanted them to go live their lives and not worry about how he was going to keep his promise because he was going to keep it. And do you know what happened while the Israelites were waiting? What God used that time to do? The stories of Daniel in the lion’s den, the fiery furnace, and Queen Esther all take place during the Israelites’ exile to Babylon. God took that time of waiting and used it to do incredible, impossible things that shaped Israel’s future.

I know that when you are young you are always waiting. At least, it can feel that way. Waiting to graduate. Waiting to be old enough to make your own decisions. Waiting to be asked to prom. Waiting… waiting… waiting. But just because you are waiting does not mean that God cannot use you or teach you things. This is the time God is using to prepare you. What impossible things do you think God will use you to accomplish in that time?

So, go, live your life and let God take care of the thing He has told you to wait for.