Introduction to a Proposed New Book

I am writing a second book, which I hope will comfort others. I intend to work through a main, but very difficult, part of the Christian life—waiting for God. So, if I don’t write much here for the next little bit, it is because I am working on “Waiting for God.”

Here is the introduction thus far:

Have you ever prayed to God, and He remains silent for days, months, or even years? How long are you willing to wait for an answer? Is the answer to your prayers more important to you than God himself?

Why wait for Him? Is He worth waiting for? I believe He is.

Because waiting for God remains a hallmark of the normal Christian life, these are good questions to consider and work through. For me, these questions are important and quite personal. Many times in my Christian life I have had to wait for God. From where I was sitting, He seemed to delay. These times have always proved a challenge, and I have not enjoyed them. And now, at the time of this writing, I find myself waiting for God again. Waiting for God is important but unpleasant.

We are introduced to the principle of waiting for God from the beginning. In His creation of the heavens and the earth, we should see the fulfillment and completion God had prepared for the man confirmed by the very act of God’s rest on the seventh day. Nothing recorded in the first two chapters of Genesis suggests the man was in a posture of waiting for God to do anything, or was otherwise waiting for something to happen, other than perhaps the waiting for a friend with which we are all intimately familiar.

And then catastrophe. The waiting for God to come in the cool of evening for fellowship had come to a tragic end. The man was thrust from the garden, the very place where the man could wait for God and expect He would soon be there.

Before the man was barred from the garden, God framed many aspects of what life after disobedience would be. For our purposes here, God addressed waiting in this way:

I will put hostility between you and the woman,
and between your seed and her seed.
He will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.       

In the midst of hostility and promised death, someone born of a woman would be coming to deal a death blow to the serpent with simply a bruise to his heel by comparison. God does not give any hint of the timing of this future victory. Man, with only the promise of returning to the dust, would have to wait. When subsequently driven from the garden, and barred from the garden by cherubim and flaming sword, the man must have known he would have to wait for some future opportunity for fellowship with God, and the expectation one feels when a friend is on the way.

And so we must wait for God; but in God, and in faith waiting for Him is not in vain. Waiting for God, or looked the other way around from where we sit, God’s delay, is not necessarily a sign of our failure as one might be inclined to believe. Maybe there is sin in your life, you might say. Maybe there is sin in your life, others might say. But I am not so sure that is very productive or accurate. Pray more if you want to, read more diligently if need be—but certain seasons of our lives will be marked by waiting for God. Indeed, if we would go on in God, we will find ourselves waiting for God quite a bit.

The aim of the book is to address the answers to the questions above and the end of the book is our mutual comfort and encouragement. Let’s dive in.

Image courtesy of Unsplash and Sincerely Media, @sincerelymedia