Ephesians 5:15-17
Here are 3 common signs that mean you are in a season of waiting that will end one day and God is using this season for a specific purpose so you need to be careful you don’t miss it.
1. If Your Waiting for Something That Comes After a Serious of Steps, This Is a Sign God Has a Purpose for This Waiting that You Need to Take Advantage Of
Imagine you are in college dreaming about being successful in your career. But if you waste your years in college by partying, cheating on tests, and doing everything you can to graduate without actually learning anything useful, your dream of being successful in your career is less likely to occur. Your dream about being successful in your career should motivate you to take the necessary steps in college to actually prepare for that season when you will be working.
This same idea can be seen in many other areas of life. Many times we are waiting for things that are many steps away. For example, let’s say you are single and you want to have a godly marriage: you will first need to be single still until you meet someone, then you two will date, get engaged, and then live as a married couple. Or if you are single now but you are waiting to be a mom or dad, there are many steps you will need to take before experiencing parenthood. These types of hopes and desires can be many steps away from where you are currently at in your life.
If we just wait and we misuse the time God is giving us now to prepare for what he may have for us later, we will be less prepared than we could be for what is ahead. Embrace your wait. Use each season for its intended purpose. Waste nothing. God will use your efforts and mature you for the future he has planned for you. As Romans 5:3-5 instructs:
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
2. If You Are Going Through a Season of Life Everyone Has to Go Through Before Getting to Something Else, This Is a Sign God Is Telling You to Use This Waiting Before It’s Gone Forever
The examples I gave in point 1 don’t relate to everyone. There are some paths in life that are totally optional, like college, marriage, and parenthood. However, there are other phases in life that every human always goes through. For example, when a baby is born, it’s just a matter of time before they go through childhood, then puberty, then their teens, then their young adult years, then their 30s, then their middle-aged years, and then their older years.
While age is the most obvious example, there are other unavoidable seasons we all have to go through. There are seasons of a bad economy and a good economy, times of war and times of peace, times of health and times of sickness, and so much more that all humans experience at some point or another.
These types of seasons are out of your hands. All you can control is how you respond to these seasons that you will go through. Will you waist your 20s, sleeping around and living worldly? That’s your choice, but eventually your 30s will come and if you want a godly marriage then, the way you lived your 20s will hinder and not help that desire. Do you want a successful business in your 40s but you racked up a bunch of debt in your 30s? Those choices will hinder your dream from coming true.
Nothing is impossible with God. Certainly his grace gives us many things we don’t deserve. But there are also natural consequences for the choices we make today that will affect us tomorrow. If you are wasting your life now, you will pay for it later. Use each season the way God wants you to because the clock is always ticking. The next phase of life is going to come whether you like it or not, so you might as well prepare wisely.
As Ephesians 5:15-17 instructs, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”
3. If You Know Your Older, Wiser Self will Be Disappointed with How You Are Using This Season of Your Life, This Is a Sign God Is Warning You Not to Waste This Season that Will Come to an End
It can be a really helpful exercise to imagine yourself at the end of your life giving your younger self right now advice. Imagine what regrets you hope to not have when you are on your deathbed. Imagine what lessons you will have learned when you are much older than you are now and then try to tell yourself those lessons now. Try to imagine how beneficial it would be if you could go back in time and give yourself advice, and then try to reverse engineer this by living today like you know your future self will wish you had lived today. Do yourself a favor and think about who you will be in the future and seek to make that person happy.
While this is a healthy mental exercise to do, it really is most important to think about eternity. Throughout the Bible we are taught to not live for today but to live for eternity, not for the fading glory of man but for the never-ending glory of God. As Jesus said in Matthew 19:28-30, which states:
Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
Your season of waiting for eternity will one day end. Therefore, don’t waste your waiting. Use your life to store up treasures that will last for eternity in Christ.
