WELCOME
Yesterday we looked at what the fire burns. Today we deal with the part nobody signs up for. How long it takes.
———
THIS IS FOR YOU IF…You got a promise from God a long time ago and nothing has moved since.
You’ve watched people who started after you arrive ahead of you, and you’ve had to work at being glad for them.
———
Waiting is where more faith dies than anywhere else. Not in the crisis. In the stretch afterward when the crisis is over and the answer still hasn’t come.
———
BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT
God is never late, and He is rarely early, because the delay is doing something no shortcut can do. He is building the person who can carry what you asked Him for. Getting it sooner would have cost you more than waiting does.
———
OUR SPRINGBOARD FOR TODAY’S DISCUSSION IS:
“Until the time that his word came to pass, the word of the LORD tested him.”
Psalm 105:19, ESV
———
JOIN US AS A FAITH PARTNER
A long wait is quiet, and quiet is where people drift. A voice at the same hour every morning keeps a person anchored to something while the clock runs.
Faith Partners keep that voice publishing, seven days a week, no gaps. Stand with the work and help me reach the person who’s about to give up in year four of a five year wait.
———
MAIN MENTORING
That verse is about Joseph, and it’s one of the most quietly brutal sentences in the Psalms.
He’s seventeen when God gives him the dreams. Then his brothers throw him in a pit and sell him to traders. He’s a slave in Potiphar’s house for years, does everything right, gets accused of something he didn’t do, and lands in an Egyptian prison. He interprets a dream for a man on his way out and asks him to remember him. The man forgets. Two more years.
Thirteen years between the promise and the throne room.
Now look at what the psalmist says was actually happening in there. Until the word came to pass, the word tested him. The promise itself was the pressure. Every year the dream didn’t come true, the dream leaned on him a little harder and asked him whether he still believed it.
Sit with that, because it changes how you read your own waiting. The thing God said to you is not sitting idle. It’s working on you right now, and it’s testing what you’re made of by refusing to arrive.
There’s a Hebrew word underneath “tested” there, tsaraph, and it’s the refiner’s word again. Same picture we’ve been standing in all week. The wait is not empty time before the real thing starts. The wait is the process.
So use some wisdom about what’s really going on.
You’ve been treating the delay as an obstacle between you and the promise. It’s the road to it. Joseph in the palace at seventeen would have been a disaster. He was a kid who couldn’t hold a dream without telling everyone about it, and the man who eventually ran Egypt could hold secrets, absorb betrayal, run other men’s households with integrity, and forgive people who deserved nothing. Nobody develops that in a good season. He got it in a pit, a house, and a prison.
God was not withholding the throne. He was building somebody who wouldn’t be destroyed by it.
Here’s what that means for you. If the thing you’re asking for arrived tomorrow, would it survive contact with who you are today? Ask that honestly. Most of us, if we’re truthful for ten seconds, know the answer.
Now the discernment piece, because there’s a wrong turn in every long wait.
Delay makes people improvise. Abraham waited a decade for a son and then produced one on his own terms, and the family is still living with what came out of that. When God takes long enough, almost everybody eventually reaches for a shortcut and calls it faith in motion.
So learn to tell the difference between an open door and a door you jimmied. A door He opens doesn’t require you to shade the truth, cut somebody out, or ignore the check in your gut on the way through it. If getting there means becoming someone you’d have to hide, you’re building an Ishmael.
And obedience in a long wait looks almost boring. You do the last thing He said, again, on a day when nothing has changed. Joseph ran Potiphar’s house well while believing he was made for something else entirely. He organized a prison. He served men who forgot him. Faithfulness in a place you never wanted is the exact training the promise requires.
———
OUR ANCHOR FOR TODAY’S LANDING IS:
“But they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
Isaiah 40:31, ESV
———
The word for wait there is qavah, and it isn’t passive. Its root means to twist strands together into a rope. Waiting on God, in Hebrew, is the picture of your life being wound around His until the two of you make one cord that holds weight.
Which explains the strength Isaiah promises. It doesn’t come after the wait ends. It comes out of the waiting itself, because every day you stay wrapped around Him is another strand in the rope.
Read the order of that verse too. Mount up, then run, then walk. It runs backward from what you’d expect, and that’s the point. The soaring days are rare. Most of a long wait is walking, and Isaiah puts walking last on purpose, as the final promise. You will not faint.
So tomorrow, when nothing has changed again, do the ordinary thing well. Show up where you didn’t want to be and do the work with integrity. Refuse the shortcut. And keep your ear open, because He talks all the way through a wait, usually about the next small step rather than the big arrival.
Thirteen years. Then one morning somebody remembered Joseph’s name, and by evening he was second in Egypt.
He was ready. That’s the only reason it held.
———
DAILY ACTION
Name the promise you’re waiting on. Then write one honest sentence about what would break in you if it arrived tomorrow. Take that sentence to God tonight and ask Him to work on it.
———
THE DAILY CHARGE
You are not stalled. You are being built. Stay faithful where you are, refuse the shortcut, and be ready when the door opens.
———
LET’S PRAY
Father, I’ve been counting the years and calling them wasted. Forgive me. You’ve been working the whole time and I’ve been watching the calendar instead of watching You.
Build what needs building in me. If I’m not ready for what I’ve asked for, make me ready, even if it costs me another season. Keep me from every shortcut that would get me there as a smaller person.
Help me be faithful where I am today. Keep my ear open while I wait, and when You open the door, let me walk through it as somebody who can carry it.
I want to hear You. I’m willing to obey You. In Jesus’ name, amen.
———
RAK CHAZAK!! Only. Be. Strong!.
Matthew Adams, The Power of God’s Whisper
Faith. Fire. Victory.
———
JOIN US
Somebody hearing this is one bad decision away from ending a wait God wasn’t finished with. I want a voice in their ear before they make it.
Stand with the work. Then send this to the person who came to mind while you were listening.
My Reasons To Believe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit myr2b.substack.com/subscribe
