The bible said it best. If we do all the things we hope to do for the Kingdom of God, yet have no love and do it without love, we gain nothing.
“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
1 John 4:16 (ESV)
God is love, His Spirit is love, and to abide in Him is to abide in love. 1 Corinthians 13 gives us a further understanding of what it means to abide in love by defining to us what love is and how God views love. And the first adjective He uses to describe it is patient.
“Love is patient and kind.”
1 Corinthians 13:4 (ESV)
I find it interesting and soothing that God’s love is first driven by His patience. When meditating on this aspect of God’s identity, I couldn’t help but praise Him for how it revealed itself in my own personal life. God patiently loved me as I disregarded His calling over my life to pursue my own ambitions that were far from Him, His word, and His kingdom. It was because of His love for me and the world that He patiently allowed me, in my own free will, to eventually come to Him.
Abiding in God’s love should encourage us to have the grace to be patient with ourselves and others. Because if the God of the Universe can patiently wait on His creation, who are we to not extend the same grace to the strangers we meet or the loved ones we want saved? Why are we so quick to dismiss or to move hurriedly instead of abiding in the patient love He’s freely given us? As Christians, we are told to embody God’s character so that others can come to know Him through our fruits. A patient God expects patient servants.
“If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.”
John 15:7-8 (ESV)
This revelation of God’s patient character convicted me to not see waiting seasons as punishment. Instead, to view a waiting moment with God as a reflection of His love. God is not in a hurry and neither should I be.
“For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight, for the LORD will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.”
Isaiah 52:12 (ESV)
How often do we read God’s word and sympathize with biblical figures who were desperate for God to show up in their circumstances just for God to seemingly appear slowly? As if He waited until their very last second of hope to reveal Himself. Yet, somehow, even in that perceived slowness, it was still His perfect timing.
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV)
If I trust that God makes everything in my life perfect in His time, I should also trust that the waiting seasons will have an end (Ecclesiastes 3) and that all I go through will work out for my good (Romans 8:28). To accept God’s patient love in my life is to also be expectant of the good work He’s preparing on my behalf. It’s to look out over my life through the hopeful lens I have in Him and to look out with glee knowing that God has something good in store for me. It’s to trust that because His love is patient and kind, the waiting is not the end. And the end tells me that everything will be beautiful despite what I currently see.
The Death of Lazarus
(passage in John 11)
“Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”
John 11:5 (ESV)
John tells us that because Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and their brother Lazarus, He waited to go to them after receiving news that Lazarus had died. Why? Jesus is the full embodiment of God (Colossians 2:9) and what do we know about God and His love for us? It’s patient. He will not move in a hurry as if He’s not in control. Though we may fret and worry and go through every emotion known to mankind as we wait on Him, God knows that in Him, everything is made beautiful in its time.
Mary and Martha’s timing was bleak. Understandable and expected as I would have also expected Jesus to immediately show up. But, Lazarus died in their timing. In God’s timing, Lazarus was resurrected.
Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.”
John 11:40-43 (ESV)
God is an intentional God and I believe that He wants us to hold onto this biblical truth when we wait on Him. That there’s no circumstance or situation that we go through that He’s not guiding us through, has already gone towards, and already has a perfect plan according to His will. As His children, our faith should rest in knowing that He will never leave us nor abandon us (Deuteronomy 31:6-8). God guides us in His victory even if we feel it’s outside of our timing. Even if, like Martha and Mary, we look at our situations and deem them hopeless. Even if things seem dire, bleak, or hopeless, God isn’t. God can resurrect the dead relationships, dead dreams, and dead jobs. He has the power to resurrect it all and has exemplified this to the world through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. In Jesus, death is swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54). In Jesus, God’s children can rest in that victory.
It’s with the certainty that all things are made beautiful in their time that we patiently love and wait on Him. It’s with this certainty that we patiently love others.
Sincerely,
Anne
Comment below and share your testimony! When have you had to patiently wait on God in your life and how did He reveal Himself in the waiting?
Here are some scriptures to meditate on this week:
“The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.”
2 Peter 3:9 (NIV)
“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”
Joshua 1:9 (ESV)
Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”
Isaiah 30:21 (NIV)
“But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”
1 Timothy 1:16-17 (ESV)
“But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”
Romans 8:25 (NIV)
Daughter in Waiting Ministry 
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