I have been guilty of being frustrated when God does not immediately answer the good desires of my heart. If I come to Him in faith, surrender my situation to His care, and believe in His power to do what is right, then why do I not receive the desired results?

And to be clear, I don’t mean going to God and asking Him to give me fame or fortune. I mean asking Him to change my heart, to cure my selfishness and addiction, to mend my brokenness so that I can be a better person. These are clearly good things, ones that I genuinely feel are in alignment with God’s will for me, so why wouldn’t the desire to change be answered with transformation?

Recently, though, I felt this impatience rebuked as I considered the precedent that is set for us in the word of God. I do not feel the scriptures justifies my opinion that God would immediately deliver every good thing that is sought for. Rather, the Bible is full of examples of waiting, sometimes for very long periods of time, before the realization of promised blessings are fulfilled.

Think of Abraham being promised that he would be the father of a great nation, but that not coming to pass for hundreds of years. Think of Jacob having to toil for seven years to marry the woman of his dreams, only to be deceived and committing to serving another seven years for her. Think of Joseph waiting long periods as a slave in Potiphar’s house and then in prison, even though he had done no wrong. Think of Moses trying to help the Israelites, failing, and then living decades in Midian before being called to try again. Think of the Israelites, freed from Egypt, but waiting in the wilderness 40 years before they would receive the Promised Land. Think of Job being left to wallow in his afflictions for a full measure before he was restored. Finally, think of those that Christ healed, and how many of them had been held by their afflictions for years before their deliverance. For the woman with the issue of blood it was twelve years, for the man at the pool of Bethesda it was thirty-eight!

In some of these examples there was a period of waiting because the people were not ready, such as the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. In others, however, there was no personal fault, such as with Joseph, it was simply not yet the right time for his deliverance. So why could not either of these cases be the same with me? Maybe I’m not ready for my deliverance, but if I trust the Lord to prepare me eventually I will be. Or maybe I am ready, but it is not the right time according to the Lord’s wisdom, so I should rest in Him and let the better things come when they may. In either case, the fact that I have not yet been healed is not, in-and-of-itself evidence that something is going wrong. It may still be going exactly right. I might be rightly waiting in the wilderness, just where I’m supposed to be.