When God Says Wait {How God Answers Prayers | Part 2}

We’re continuing our series on the three ways God answers prayers. We’ve talked about how God will sometimes answer with a “no” and how to trust His heart and His will even in those hard seasons.

Today, we're going to discuss the next way God answers our prayers and that is with a “wait.” What do we do when God is simply telling us to wait? Now, often God will do this because there's something in your waiting season that He wants to teach you.

Unfortunately, sometimes when we are in a waiting season, we feel like we're in this holding pattern where we're just circling the same situation over and over again, waiting for God to change something in our lives, waiting for Him to answer our prayers, and we feel like we can't move. We feel like there's nothing we can do until we get an answer to the prayer.

God is not saying that. God's not saying hold your breath. Now, sometimes if you've been waiting on something for a long time and then you finally get it, you'll let out this big sigh of relief, and that usually means that you've been holding your breath until you get what you were waiting for. However, that's not sustainable in the long run.

God's not calling us to hold our breath and put our lives on hold. He still wants us to breathe in faith and breathe out fear so we can continue to live. Because God wants us to grow in our waiting season as we learn to trust Him even while waiting. This is hard because when we don't know how a situation is going to turn out, it tests our faith. We'd prefer  to know what's going to happen next week and next year. We have our five year plan, we have our planners, we have all of our schedules, but sometimes God wants us to be flexible. He wants us to surrender to His will at any moment so that we can be led by the Holy Spirit and not our to-do list or five year plan. So sometimes He'll put us in waiting seasons where the only thing we really have to do is trust Him. Now we can work on our skills. We can move on with our lives and we should, but ultimately we can grow here if we don't allow this waiting season to cause us to give up on our faith.

Ultimately, we have to understand that God's timing is perfect and that if He has us waiting, He has a good reason for it. 

Did you know that different animals have different gestation periods? The gestation period is the time it takes for a baby to develop in its mother before it's birthed, and that time period is different for different animals.

For a human, it's about 266 days, about nine months. For a horse, it's a little bit longer. It's about 330 days to 342 days. For a kangaroo, it's less time. It's 42 days. So depending on the type of baby that's being developed determines how long that development period is. 

In the same way, so many of us are in waiting seasons because God's trying to grow something in us and depending on what God is trying to grow will determine the length of the waiting season. 

God’s trying to develop us and mature us in this waiting season, and for some people, it's gonna take longer than others. So we can't be tempted to look to our left and look to our right because what God has for someone else, might be completely different than what He has for us requiring different development time. 

We have to stay focused on our race and the lane that God has us in and trust Him because if our developmental period is cut off too short, we might get what we want, but we won't be prepared for it, we won't be able to sustain it, or it won't be healthy. In our waiting seasons, it's important for us to respond to God with trust and to understand that His timing is perfect and His ways are higher. A waiting season is not a punishment and it doesn’t always even mean you’re not ready for what you're waiting on. Sometimes the world may not be ready for you yet and God has you in a hiding season in the form of waiting, covering you to protect you until the right time comes for you to be revealed. 

 Be encouraged, trust God’s timing, and don’t be in a rush if you are in a waiting season. God has not forgotten you, He’s working everything out for His glory and your good, and often that takes time.

I want to leave you with Galatians 6:9 that says:

 In a waiting season you will be tempted to quit, give up on faith, and think that God forgot you. 

This is why I love Galatians 6:9 and the reminder of hope that it provides for us that in due season, we will reap. Now, we don't know what that harvest is going to look like, but we do know that we won't receive it if we give up, and the only prerequisite for us to receive that harvest is to keep going. To keep trusting. To keep having faith because waiting is not a punishment from God. It's actually a blessing to give you His best at the right time. I want to encourage you, regardless if God answers with a yes, a no, or a wait, Ephesians 3:20 that says:

Regardless of how God answers our prayers, as our heavenly Father, His will and heart for us is always good. It's important for us to remember that prayer is not always about the answer, as much as it's about our God. This is why in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus says:

 This is how Jesus teaches us to pray. Yes, we ask for what we want, but then we pray that our hearts and our minds will be in alignment with God's will and with His heart because His heart and will are for us, for our good and His glory always.

 Now I’d love to hear from you Beloved. What’s a lesson you learned in a waiting season? Let’s encourage one another in the comments.

 Did you know God made us all beautifully different even in the way we pray? That’s right. Your prayer personality is the unique way you are most likely to communicate with God and knowing which of the 3  prayer personality types you have can equip you to hear from God more clearly and overcome any obstacles to your communication with Him. 

I invite you to take my Prayer Personality Quiz to learn how you best hear from God, how you most likely connect with Him in prayer, and to just have a little fun. Take the quiz now at prayquiz.com or find the link in the description of today’s video. Then be sure to come back and comment to let me know your results.

If you enjoyed today’s videos, will you do me a favor and share it with a friend because you just never know who might need some Beloved encouragement today. 

For more Beloved encouragement, be sure to join the Beloved Women app for instant access to the most highly curated collection of spiritual growth videos for Christian women where you can enjoy daily audio devotions, hhundreds of videos, and guided prayer meditations conveniently in the palm of your hand. I look forward to connecting with you there. 

As always, thank you so much for watching, and until next time, be beautiful, be blessed, and be loved.