Waiting in Faith: Trusting God's Promises Through Delay

``But God's not late. God may not work on our timeline. God might not do things the way that we want him to, but he is at work, and God will fulfill his word. If God has given a promise through his word, it's as sure as if he's already happened to us. And the logic of men may fail, the seasons of life may pass away, and we may even face the end of our earthly journey before the picture fully becomes clear to us. But the word of God stands forever. We can trust this book. [00:59:39] (34 seconds)  #GodsTiming

A final aspect I want us to notice is that waiting requires worship. It tells us in verse number 13 that they they embraced the promises of god and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. This word embrace carries the idea of of welcoming, of of receiving it. They celebrated the promise of God and the of the land, and and they before they could even enjoy it, and they welcomed it because they could see it afar off. It's like they were already living in it. And this is the essence of a faith filled waiting. It's praising God for the answer while you're still in the middle of the problem. [00:56:30] (39 seconds)  #WorshipWhileWaiting

Sarah, somewhere along the line, moved from laughing at the impossibility to judging God as faithful. She stopped looking at the biology of the situation and started looking at the character of the promise giver. See, faith is not the absence of logic. It's the recognition of our higher logic. It is the realization that the God who created the laws that govern nature has the authority to suspend them if he desires to do so. [00:43:48] (31 seconds)  #FaithOverridesLogic

The delay that we experience sometimes is not necessarily a denial of God from God. It's it's a set time in his development and purpose of this plan. For Sarah, the set time required twenty five years of waiting at the initial promise. That's a long time. Twenty five years for god to keep his word and it kept getting more and more illogical. For the nation of Israel, it required four hundred years in Egypt and forty years in the wilderness before they were able to inherit the land that god had promised to Abraham many years beforehand. [00:58:42] (38 seconds)  #GodsSetTiming

Waiting requires refusal. It tells us in verse number 15 that Abraham and Sarah refused the opportunity to return. The temptation to go back to what is familiar is never stronger to us than when the promise in the presence of God feels so distant for us. It's so easy to go back to those old habits, to return to those old coping mechanisms, to to go back to the old that is there at the in the sit in the desert, a city waiting for us instead of looking for the promise of the of the city whose builder and maker is gone. [00:54:55] (35 seconds)  #RefuseToReturn

Imagine this, a childless, elderly couple packing up their entire lives to head toward an unfamiliar destination based on the promise of a child, a seed that would become a great nation. Logically, it made no sense. Biologically, it made no sense. Time was against them, and yet they moved out in faith, trusting that God would keep his word and that they would have a child despite their old age that would become a great nation. [00:37:12] (34 seconds)  #FaithAgainstTheOdds

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, were all given the promise of a land and of a nation. The land that today we call as the the the country of Israel. And yet at the end of their lives, Abraham was the only one that owned a piece of this property that god had promised to them. And the only part that he owned was a burial cave for his wife. All of these guys, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all of them died as wanderers in the land. [00:46:29] (37 seconds)  #DiedAsWanderers

But this reminds us that god's promises are not limited to our lifespan. operates on the timeline of eternity. He is not limited by the time like we are seventy, eighty, ninety years. Sometimes, god gives a promise to a father that is intended for a grandson. Sometimes, he waits until one person is out of the way so that the fulfillment is clearly seen as his work in his hand alone. You know, the Bible tells us that a thousand years is like a day to God. [00:47:06] (31 seconds)  #PromisesAcrossGenerations