Why God Makes You Wait (Even When He Loves You)

We don’t like to wait.

Even when we know the reason for the waiting.

Much less when we don’t know.

But for some reason, woven into our experience of living are numerous moments where we can do nothing but wait. And if we are honest, sometimes that brings disappointment.

And in this disappointment of unmet timelines from God, questions abound.

• Is my disappointment sinful?

• What am I supposed to do with my disappointment?

• How do I wait faithfully?

• What if I never get what I’m waiting for?

Jesus’ Timing

There is a story in the Gospel of John, chapter 11, where a man named Lazarus has recently gotten sick. The family sends a messenger to Jesus to let him know - “Lord, the one you loved is sick”.

We aren’t told much about this relationship, but Lazarus and Jesus must have been close friends. Which only adds depth to this story.

We then read:

5 Now Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus. 6 So when he heard that he was sick, he stayedtwomoredays in the place where he was. 

What? We expect to read that because He loved them, He rushed to Lazarus, not that He stayed two more days. It is in this place we must ask a crucial question:

Is Jesus doing something intentional in the waiting?

Does Jesus ever make mistakes? Does Jesus ever do anything by accident? Does Jesus always have intention and purpose in his choices and actions in our lives?

Before Jesus tells his disciples that He is going to wait two days before going to Lazarus, he says something:

4 This sickness will not end in death but is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.

Jesus Response To Our Waiting and Confusion

Jesus does end up getting to Lazarus, who has died from his sickness. Both Martha and Mary (relatives of Lazarus) meet Jesus with confusion and confrontation, saying:

• Martha: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. Yet even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” 

• Mary: “As soon as Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and told him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died!”

Martha was honest with Jesus, but had tremendous faith in Jesus. Mary, although she does have faith, doesn’t seem to say anything else other than pour out her heart of disappointment.

Can you hear it in their words? A slight accusation? Perhaps confusion. They had sent a messenger to Jesus days ago; it didn’t take that long to get to them. Why had He waited? They told Him in time for Him to get here before Lazarus died. “Lord! If you were here when we asked you to be, He wouldn’t have died!”

Do you have a category for talking to God like that? Not out of disrespect, but out of honesty.

How does Jesus respond to their, and our, honest feelings and confusions and hurts related to His timing being different than us?

35When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying, he was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled… Jesus wept.

Jesus’ Heart

When Christ looks at people he loves, confused and sad over His timing. His response isn’t to demand faith at first, although he does challenge her later on. Nor does he explain all things to them in that moment. The text says He is moved within his spirit, deeply, and has compassion.

He has solidarity with them in their waiting.

Could you believe that?

As you wait on a spouse. As you wait on a new job. As you wait for the email from the doctor about potential cancer.

As you wait…

The heart, the compassion, the sympathy, and the empathy of our Lord goes out to you.

As Dane Ortlund says in Gentle and Lowly:

“If you are in Christ, you have a Friend who, in your sorrow, will never lob down a pep talk from heaven. He cannot bear to hold himself at a distance. Nothing can hold him back. His heart is too bound up with yours.”

Jesus is not indifferent to the difficulty and pain of waiting in your life, and He longs to meet you as you pass through it.

Jesus Waited

Jesus can meet you in your waiting because He himself had to wait.

He waited in Heaven until his time to come to Earth. He waited as a child until his faculties and wisdom and strength grew. (Luke 2:52) He waited on the cross for the suffering to end. He waits now to come back down to Earth and bring full redemption and crush the evil that does us harm.

Jesus’ life was and is marked by waiting. He has entrusted himself to the Father’s timing.

He can understand and enter into times you must do the same.

Waiting Isn’t Wasted

That story of Jesus and Lazarus ends with this comment from some Jews:

37 But some of them said, “Couldn’t he who opened the blind man’s eyes also have kept this man from dying?” 

They did not know that Jesus, in fact, had reasons for waiting.

Perhaps that is what we need to hear today.

There are reasons you may not see in your waiting.

The reasons don’t take away the difficulty or the sadness waiting often brings. But this principle gives us hope. Trust. Faith, like Martha.

That our waiting isn’t wasted.

In John 11 we have this beautiful mix of God’s intention behind waiting, mixed with people being honest with God about how waiting is hard, and Jesus meeting their sadness with comfort.

God’s wise purposes in your waiting does not cancel out his compassion with your reaction to the waiting.

All of this to increase your faith in Him and “for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it”.

Waiting in my own ways with you,

Josh.