Luke 1:5-66
Here are 4 possible reasons God is making you wait for that blessing you have been asking him for.
1. God Could Be Making You Wait to Sanctify Your Motive for Obedience
It’s one thing to obey God when you believe he will give you what you want one day if you just keep obeying, but will you obey God even if he never blesses you with that thing you have been asking him for?
When the Lord puts us through extended periods of waiting, it forces us to choose what motive we will have for our obedience to God. Are we obeying him with a motive of a mercenary, just working for the promise of being paid one day? Or are we obeying God because we love him? The word “obedience” sounds religious to many, but in the Bible obedience is all about love. In John 15:7-11, Jesus said:
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. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”
Notice how interconnected love and blessings are with obedience. In verse 7 Jesus talks about how God wants to bless us with the things we ask for. But then he also teaches us how to please God and glorify him. He reminds us about the great love of our Heavenly Father. But then he also tells us that to love God we must obey God. God wants us to be joyful, but Jesus teaches us that true joy can only be found in obeying God, which is why he told us these things in John 15. The point is, in the Bible, obedience is not done for religious purposes or to get earthly blessing. Obedience to God is about our relationship with God.
Eventually, when the wait for that blessing becomes longer than you expected, you will be forced to decide if you will still obey God even if he never gives you what you want. And that’s exactly where God wants you to get. Certainly he does reward our obedience with blessings, but ultimately God is most concerned with your connection to him. Notice how these principles played out in the life of Zechariah and Elizabeth. In Luke 1:5-7 it states:
In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.”
Their bareness was not due to a lack of obedience. God saw their obedience, he knew they wanted a child, and yet God still made them wait. This waiting was a clear sign that Zechariah and Elizabeth truly loved God and were not just living righteously so that God would give them what they wanted. They had wanted God to bless them with a child, but they had already passed the childbearing years of life. And yet they still obeyed God and loved him.
God often puts us through seasons of waiting to help us sanctify our motives for obedience.
2. God Is Making You Wait Because We Are on God’s Sovereign Timetable
When the angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah to explain that he and his wife would give birth to John the Baptist, he said:
Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” (Luke 1:13-17).
God had heard the prayers of Zechariah and Elizabeth for years. But he waited to answer it until it was time. God blessed Elizabeth and Zechariah with a child when it was the right time for God. Notice how many times Gabriel used the phrase “he will” about their child. This shows that God was already looking far ahead rather than only looking at this moment. When John the Baptist became an adult, God used him to prepare the way for Jesus Christ. If John would have been born decades earlier, perhaps then he would not have been rightly suited as an adult for the ministry he had in preparing the way for Jesus. God chose to give Zechariah and Elizabeth a child on his timetable and not theirs because he was looking ahead.
Likewise, we don’t know why God is making us wait but we do know there is a purpose for it. God sees decades into the future and the things that happen now are often connected to things that will happen later. God’s timetable has eternal purposes in mind while our mind is often only focused on the here and now.
God hears your prayer, but God also sees the future. Therefore, we must trust God in the waiting.
3. God Could Be Making You Wait to Increase Your Joy Once the Time of Blessing Does Arrive
While all parents are certainly overjoyed with the birth of their baby, how much more joy do you think Elizabeth and Zechariah had when they finally gave birth to their baby, the baby they thought they would never have? As the angel told Zechariah, “And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth” (Luke 1:14).
God often uses waiting as a way of preparing us to experience a greater amount of joy when the Lord does finally bless us. When we instantly get what we want, we often forsake that blessing once we get it because we don’t rightly appreciate the value of it. But when you wait for years and then finally receive what you have been asking for, you are then better suited to value and cherish that blessing with a grateful heart to the Lord.
4. God Is Making You Wait Because He Desires to Bring Maximum Glory to Himself in Front of the Watching World
When rightly used, waiting often results in worship. God often uses seasons of waiting to draw attention to his goodness when he finally does deliver. This then draws extra attention to the works of God so the world can receive a witness about him. As Luke 1:57-66 states:
Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her. . . And all these things were talked about through all the hill country of Judea, and all who heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, ‘What then will this child be?’ For the hand of the Lord was with him.”
Would people have been talking about this baby without the long season of waiting God put Elizabeth and Zechariah through? While your story will be different than their story, this principle applies to us all. God’s purpose for your waiting is connected to his desire for you to be a witness to the watching world.
So whether you wait and finally receive what you desire or you wait and never receive what you desire, allow your waiting to produce supernatural worship so God may be glorified through you.