Janice Gaines - The Overflow DevoSample

Wait On You

Often when I read popular stories in the Bible, I forget that the characters and their experiences were real. I mean, I know they are real, but there’s something about the ability to read the beginning, middle and end of a story that takes away from its feeling of reality. For instance, I forget to imagine what it might have been like to be Sarah, a woman surely beyond menopause, to be promised a child within a year. Scientifically, laughter is an understandable initial response. Or what about the moment when the young David saw Goliath for the first time? Even with courage, there had to be a moment of acknowledgment that this guy is HUGE.

It takes practice to really put ourselves in the shoes of the people that lived so long ago. I think, though, that this might be the key to trusting in God more. We must look back to what God has done for us and others. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is affectionately called the Hall of Faith, because it is a list of Old Testament biblical characters who believed that if they trusted in and waited on God, their reward would be great.

How could they know this? How can we know this? How can we know that holding on to our faith in Jesus in times when it costs us will be worth it in the end? The answer is in Hebrews 10:23. “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” We can declare that we are waiting on Jesus as everything we need, because the One who promised what we’re ultimately waiting on (Heaven and all it affords) is faithful. God is faithful and committed to us in a way that means we can rest in His intentions for us. They are good intentions, and that’s what everyone in that Hall of Faith knew. It says in that chapter that Noah so believed God that He followed instructions for salvation from doom that the earth hadn’t even seen yet. Imagine someone trying to sell you an umbrella before the earth had actually experienced rain!

That’s how full of faith we must be! Despite what others may think of us, we’ve got to choose to wait on God for all He has promised us—both now and for eternity.