Daughter in Waiting Ministry

I’ve had a gut-wrenching revelation. One of those humbling experiences in the faith that shakes you to your very core. A revelation that’s made me realize, I’ve had this all wrong. 

God made me two big promises in the fall of 2023. One of which was the promise of marriage and kids. A promise confirmed with visions, dreams, and words of prophecy. God didn’t leave me room to doubt – at the time – that He had plans to fulfill this promise in my life. But in the midst of Him confirming His promise to me, there began my internal clock for how soon and how quickly this promise should be fulfilled in my life. 

When December 2023 rolled around, I was ecstatic to celebrate the holidays. I even picked out an outfit for the next year, because, of course, my husband will be spending Christmas with me then! There was just no way, on God’s green earth, that another year would roll by and I still wouldn’t be married. No way. Not when I’m a woman in my thirties. 

But then came month two of 2024, and month seven, and later…month twelve. The disappointment crept in and slowly, the bitterness and anger followed. I thought to myself, here we go, another year of a promise unfulfilled and then I began to hold the promise over the promise-giver. But I remained hopeful. I still had 2025. Except today, the promise isn’t here and I’ve found myself in another crisis of faith: God, how long must I wait?

See the conflict there? I held the weight of the promise significantly higher than I should have been holding my relationship with God. I used the promise to keep me near God, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. My own internal clock started to matter more than how my relationship with Him grew. I made a mental list of the ways He disappointed me and I pulled from this list to justify my distance from Him. I felt, in so many ways, that God had dangled a hope in front of me just to take it all away. Until I read and studied Genesis 16.

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
Hebrews 4:12-13 (ESV)

In simplest terms, God convicted my heart through the story of Sarai and Hagar in Genesis 16. I was quick to judge Sarai. Sarai, a wife who forces her servant, Hagar, to sleep with her husband, Abram, to bore them a child for their union. I asked myself questions like, why couldn’t Sarai just wait on God? What could have driven her to take matters into her own hands? And worse, how could she be so cruel and selfish to involve another human being into her mistake?

These were valid questions, but Genesis 16:1 was so important for me to read in order to understand the heart of one of the most vilified individuals in the old testament.

“Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children.”
Genesis 16:1 (ESV)

That’s it. Underneath the selfishness and cruelty of her decision and actions, Sarai felt fear in her waiting season. God made Abram a promise in Genesis 12 that Abram would have a son and heir. But by the beginning of Genesis 16, God still hadn’t given Abram a son. Can you imagine how often Abram and Sarai tried to bear children? I can picture the years rolling by and their disappointment creeping in. I can picture Sarai’s fear magnifying itself. I can only imagine the many thoughts of doubts that crept through Sarai’s mind as she wrestled in her waiting season between what God promised and what reality showed.

Sarai, in her fear, decided to take control of her waiting season. She formulated a plan that is considered selfish, impatient, and cruel, and bore Abram a son outside of God’s will. The bible says Abram was 85 when Ishmael, his son with Hagar, was born. The promise was made when Abram was 75! And we know from scripture that when Isaac was born, God’s promised son between Abram and Sarai, Abram was 100 years old. Twenty-five years later, the promise made to Abram came to pass! 

If I’m honest, I relate to Sarai. I could barely wait two years for God’s promise to be fulfilled in my life. I relate to the fear Sarai felt while waiting on God to fulfill His word. The fear of not being good enough, mishearing God, or even being shunned by society. My actions in the waiting season may not have been anywhere near the scale and magnitude of Sarai’s in Genesis 16, but my actions lacked peace. That’s how I know they were outside of God’s will for my waiting season. Whenever we do anything outside of God’s peace in our waiting, we should know at that moment, we relate more to Sarai than we care to admit. The God of peace wants us to be led by Him, to walk by faith according to His will, all while leaning on the truth and counsel of His Spirit (John 14, Psalm 23, Galatians 5, Hebrews 11).

Though God redeemed Sarai, Abram, and Hagar’s story, and He will continue to redeem His children’s stories despite our impatience in our waiting seasons, the fear that creeps in is something to take hold of and bring to Him. I hear it all the time, you need to wait well. It’s tough to hear when you’re in the depths of waiting on God for something you genuinely desire. How exactly does one wait well? God is the God of comfort and in His own words, He knows hope deferred makes the heart sick (Proverbs 13:12), but He has called on us throughout His word to wait by leaning on Him and one of the biggest aspects of that is waiting patiently (Psalm 40:1). I believe God wants us to take this question, how long must I wait? and surrender it to Him so that He can give us the patience, peace, and strength we’ll need as we wait on Him. 

As tough as it’s been to accept, my heart has softened to understanding God’s character in the waiting season. He’s not dangling anything over my heart for the bible says there’s not a good gift He holds from us (Psalm 84:11). Our desires in our waiting seasons can be the very confirmation that He plans to fulfill them (Psalm 37:4). 

So, we must ask ourselves, can we trust God in the waiting? He won’t give us a timeline, because our faith can’t grow if we can predict His every move. A sovereign God doesn’t give us His daily agenda (John 3:8). He’s given us room to walk by faith, not sight, and lean on Him as we walk. God’s works are glorified in our lives because He fulfills them outside of our own strength. The very fact that Sarai could control the situation between Hagar and Abram was already a testament that her actions were outside of God’s will. The very fact that Sarai’s actions caused distress to her and Abram and led Hagar to run away was already a testament to the lack of peace – hence these actions being outside of God’s will. 

God moves in a miraculous way and as Ephesians 3:20 states, He does more than we can ask, think, or even imagine. Our waiting seasons are meant to strengthen our faith and grow our trust in Him. They expose our doubts and idols. They expose those things we should hold onto and the ones we should let go of. They expose the needs we have that we want met outside of Him and His will over our lives.

So, if you’re asking today, God, how long must I wait?, I pray you surrender this question to Him and trust that He’s still the God who has promised us a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11). He’s still the God who knows our inner most being (Psalm 139) and the deepest desires of our hearts (1 Chronicles 28:9-10). Most importantly, He’s still the God who fulfills His word (Numbers 23:19, Joshua 21:45, Joshua 23:14, 2 Corinthians 1:20).

Sincerely,

Anne

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If you’re looking for a deep-dive study into Genesis 16, please refer to this study. 
A scripture to meditate on this week:

He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.”
Acts 1:7 (ESV)