Waiting on the Promise

When our daughter accidentally broke her phone this summer, my husband made her a promise. I will pay for your new phone, but you must wait until the start of school for it. She agreed to wait, that is, until we happened to be in the store with all the new phones on display.  

 

Suddenly, it didn’t matter that her father had promised to pay for one later.  It didn’t matter that only three weeks from now, Apple would release the I-phone 15 with all new bells and whistles. It didn’t matter that the phone on display will drop about thirty percent in value with the release of the new version.  

 

She was buying her phone. 

 

There’s something about us that is willing to settle for anything, but wait. Even thou the promise is guaranteed to far exceed the present.   

 

We cut ourselves short, simply because it’s far too difficult to wait. 

 

There's a story in the OT of the Israelite people. God promised to take them into the Promise Land. A place that would far exceed all their expectations.  

 

But as they were nearly there, a group of people insisted that the present land was far too beautiful to pass up.   

 

It didn’t matter that they were nearly already there. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t yet seen the Promise Land, to make a valid comparison. “There was just no way that the land over the Jordan could be better than this!”, so they thought.  

 

“...let this land be given to your servants as a possession. Do not take us over the Jordan.” (Num. 32:5 NKJV) 

 
This group was granted their request.  

 

But most theologians and biblical commentators argue that they forever lived short of God’s best. They weren't thriving in the center of God’s promise, as was the rest of the group. They didn’t have access to all the benefits the Promise Land had to offer because they settled to remain on this side of the Jordan.   

 

Waiting is definitely not what we do best. But truth is, it's really the only thing that can separate us from the best life God has for us. 

God aims to exalt Himself by working for those who wait for Him.

-John Piper

The Truth is that those who insist on having their own way often end up with unnecessary heartache, while those who wait on the Lord always get His best. 

-Nancy Leigh DeMoss 

When we surrender to His timing, He does mighty things in and for us, according to His will and His timing. God acts on behalf of those who wait for Him.

-Charles Stanley