Isaiah 51:2. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him.
Have you ever been promised something but then you had to wait for that promise to be kept? Maybe mom and dad promised that one day you would go someplace special, but then you had to wait for that day to come.
Waiting can be really hard, can’t it. We aren’t very good at waiting for things. We like to have things immediately. We call this “instant gratification.” Whenever I want something I get it right away. No waiting. McDonald’s gives us our food instantly. Amazon delivers our packages instantly. We can watch any movie on Disney+ instantly because we have high speed internet.
But God is the exact opposite of instant gratification. With him almost everything he has ever promised we had to wait for. And that was true for Abraham and Sarah too. Do you remember any of their story? Well, over the next several days, we are going to look at the story of Abraham and Sarah. We will read about the promises that God made to them, and we will see how they had to wait for those promises to be fulfilled. Mostly, we’ll get to see if and how they trusted God.
Isaiah 51:2 tells us to look at Abraham and Sarah. God wants us to learn from their story about how he made promises to them and then turned them into a great big family. Why is that a big deal? Because Abraham and Sarah couldn’t have children and they were very old. But God made them a promise, and he kept that promise.
But not right away.
They had to wait. They had to wait in the gap between the promise and its fulfillment. That’s where faith is tested. It’s easy to trust God when you have everything, but if you have to wait, will you still trust God?
If you are a Christian, then you are waiting too. Waiting for Jesus to come back and rescue us from this broken world full of sin and death. We are all waiting on God to make everything new. The questions is, will we trust him while we are waiting?
This is one of the most important things you must learn as you are growing up with Jesus – Most of life is waiting. God doesn’t do anything quickly. He doesn’t change us quickly, or answer our prayers quickly, and he hasn’t sent Jesus back to us quickly (it’s been over 2000 years).
Why is God so slow? Because he is testing our faith to see if we will trust him. Why does he test our faith? To strengthen it so that we can learn to trust him more and more.
So let us look to Abraham and Sarah like Isaiah says. Let them be an example for you of what faith can and should be as we live in the gap between the promises of God and the fulfillment of those promises. More importantly, let us look to Jesus. He is the one who makes our faith perfect. He is the answer to all God’s promises. He is our better Abraham who always trusted God in our place.
You: How good are you at waiting for things?
You with Jesus: How does knowing that Jesus lives in your heart make it easier to wait on God to do things, including sending Jesus to rescue us?
Prayer: Father, it is really had for me to wait for your promises. I know I can trust you because you saved me through Jesus, but I want to trust you more and more as I grow up. Amen.
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