We are going to begin a new series today called Waiting on God. Waiting is something that not many people like to do. How many times have you found yourself complaining about having to wait on something? The checkout line in the grocery store? The drive-thru at your favorite eating place? A spouse or parent/child? The doctor’s office?

We are a people that have been conditioned by our culture not to wait well. It has been said that we live in a microwave society, but we are called to a crockpot faith.

Sometimes, God reveals or promises us something, but we have to wait on His timing. In this series, we will look at four instances in the Old Testament where people decided to take matters into their own hands rather than waiting on God. Spoiler alert: the decision not to wait had a great fallout in every situation.

‌Abraham and Sarah

Abraham and Sarah are two important characters in the book of Genesis. Abraham was a man who was called to leave everything he had ever known and follow God. God made a covenant with Abraham. One key part of this covenant between God and Abraham is that God would make him a great nation.

1 The Lord said to Abram: Go from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

​Genesis 12:1–3 CSB

‌The Promise

God had promised to bring forth a great nation from Himself. This great nation would come through the descendants God would give to Abraham and Sarah. Up to this point, Abraham and Sarah were unable to have children. When we come to Genesis 16, about eleven years have passed since that promise, and no child has come yet.

Can you imagine waiting for a decade for a promise to be made good on? Many of us get bent out of shape having to wait ten minutes on something.

Something that comes to the mind of Sarah is that she may not be part of the plan. She has not been able to have a child. She begins to take matters into her own hands.

1 Abram’s wife, Sarai, had not borne any children for him, but she owned an Egyptian slave named Hagar. 2 Sarai said to Abram, “Since the Lord has prevented me from bearing children, go to my slave; perhaps through her I can build a family.” And Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So Abram’s wife, Sarai, took Hagar, her Egyptian slave, and gave her to her husband, Abram, as a wife for him. This happened after Abram had lived in the land of Canaan ten years. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she became pregnant. When she saw that she was pregnant, her mistress became contemptible to her. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for my suffering! I put my slave in your arms, and when she saw that she was pregnant, I became contemptible to her. May the Lord judge between me and you.”

​Genesis 16:1–5 CSB

‌Running Ahead of God

Rather than fully trusting in the promises of God, Abraham and Sarah take matters into their own hands. They begin to think they have to take care of all the details. What results is a long list of trials and tribulations.

• Sarah regrets her decision and gets angry at Abraham (v. 5).
• Sarah mistreats Hagar to the point of driving her off (v. 6).
• The creation of warring groups (Israelites and Muslims).

‌Lessons to be learned

As we read this account of Abraham and Sarah not waiting on God, we are given some important lessons that we would do well to understand.

‌God has a plan

One of the characteristics of God is He is a God of order. We can look around at creation and see the precision and order put into everything.

Even when we look at the human body, we can see ten significant systems that must work together perfectly for health to be possible.

When we think about this lesson, we come to the point of realizing that God doesn’t just have a plan; it is a perfect plan that will bring Him the most glory and us the most good.

God had the plan to make Abraham a blessing to the entire world, but that plan would come about at the proper time. Even as Abraham and Sarah tried to speed the process up, they could not rush God’s plan. They only created more problems.

‌We have a plan

One of the realities we must acknowledge is we also have a plan for our lives. God has created us with desires and passions. Those are not bad things as long as they are kept within the boundaries God desires them to be used.

When we think about our plans for ourselves, we can typically see those plans centering around what is best for us.

Abraham and Sarah were excited about the fact that God was going to give them a child. They wanted to experience that blessing now. They couldn’t see the hurdles that lay before them in the coming days and that particular moment was not the right time.

While we may have a plan for our lives, we are finite beings limited in our understanding of things. We cannot see all the necessary elements in play.

While we cannot know everything, our gracious God does. That is why the third lesson from this passage is so important.

‌We must wait on the Lord

As we walk with Jesus, we must remember He has the understanding that we lack. He sees the future as if it has already happened. He knows about the coming move that we have no clue about right now. He knows about the coming diagnosis even though we haven’t scheduled the doctor’s appointment yet. He knows what the stock market will do before any of us could spell NASDAQ.

With that perfect knowledge, the Lord has the ability that no one else has: the ability to create a perfect plan that brings Him the most glory and His followers the most good.

As important as the “what” details of that plan are, the timing of His plan is just as important. The Lord is never late on anything. We need to trust His timing as much (if not more) than what He wants to do in our lives.

‌Conclusion

We can easily be tempted as Abraham and Sarah were to take matters into our own hands. We believe that the Lord’s plan is good and perfect, but do we recognize that His timing is also good and perfect?

We see that Abraham and Sarah decided not to wait on the Lord and trust His timing. This single decision brought a host of troubles that did not have to be. Do we really think we are any better?

Waiting is not an easy task in the world we live in. As I said earlier, we live in a microwave society but have been called to a crockpot faith. Remember, He is the Good Shepherd, and we are the sheep of His pasture. He leads the way, and we are called to follow.

What is there in your life at this time that you are being tempted to take into your own hands and run ahead of God with?