When God Takes His Time

I started praying for healing about fourteen years ago. I started praying for a baby twenty years ago. Of all the things I have prayed for in this life, those two things have topped my prayer list the longest. With an autoimmune disease that has only fairly recently been tamed, I’ve spent many agonizing nights crying out to the Lord to take my pain away. I’ve loved the children God brought to me through adoption, their presence putting an end to the aching prayers for anything else.

Still, like most Christians, I have long wondered why God operates the way he does. Like the psalmist (and again, most Christians), I’ve cried out more than once “How long, O Lord?” I’ve heard all the sayings offered when one questions God’s timing or his “no” regarding your long-prayed prayers for relief, deliverance, or change: “If you could see all that God sees, you’d choose God’s way, too.” Or, “God’s ways are higher than our ways.” And the ever faithful, “Be patient! God works all things together for good!” All of those things are true, of course. God does work all things together for those who love him and are called according to his purposes. God’s ways are higher than mine. And, if I had the sovereign seat in heaven with all the divine knowledge and power that God does along with his holy, sinless character, I would write the story the way he has down to the last sentence.

But, I’m not God. And I don’t have his omniscience or omnipotence, and I’m not yet glorified to that sinless state promised to me in heaven because I’m still here in the rising conflict part of the story on earth. So I’ve prayed for many things for many years, and I’ve wondered why he delays when I’m walking the floor in pain in the middle of the night. Or why he said “no” through years and years of negative pregnancy tests. Why does he seem to move so slowly when he could do anything in less than the moments it took me to ask?

I’ve pondered those questions again as I’ve been studying the book of Exodus. God’s people suffered oppression for four hundred years before he raised up Moses to deliver them. And he waited until Moses was eighty before sending him to Pharaoh with a guarantee that it wouldn’t go well. And, then there were the ten plagues, one right after the other, desolating commerce, food and water sources, livestock, personal health and comfort before finally snuffing out the lives of the firstborn sons. The God who could plague the land with gnats and frogs and darkness could also have ended it all in one fell swoop. He could have kept Pharaoh’s heart soft. He could have stopped when the Nile turned to blood. He could have simply ended it all with a single word. But he didn’t. He took a slower approach. He was, in a sense, playing a long game. He was taking his time.

Israel, God’s chosen people, had lived in captivity in Egypt for generations. They’d lived in a land known for its idolatry, and it’s likely many had adopted those idolatrous patterns of worship. Scholars believe that the ten plagues corresponded with certain gods of Egypt. God asserted his authority and power over the created things the Egyptians worshiped, proving himself superior with each plague. Moses tells us over and over in Exodus that God sent each plague so Pharaoh and his people would know that Yahweh is God. But that’s not all. God also wanted Israel to know he was God. Everything happened exactly as he said it would because he always keeps his word. He wanted to display his power so that when the day came for their release, they’d follow his lead. He wanted them to see him keep his word ten times over so that they would trust him in the wilderness when his Word was all they had to live by. If they could trust him in Egypt, they could trust him in the desert. If they could see his power and divinity in the midst of slavery, then they could see his power and divinity in their freedom. He was taking his time, making sure that they would believe that he was who he said he was and he would do what he said he would do. There would be years and years of temptation ahead of them to doubt him, to wonder why he was moving so slowly in their estimation, to feel that tug towards the false gods of their neighbors. God knew this. He was preparing them in Egypt to trust him in the wilderness.

If you continue through the book of Exodus and on into the rest of the Old Testament narrative, you’ll see God and his prophets refer back to these scenes in Egypt again and again as a reason to trust him and worship him exclusively. The years waiting, the plagues, the Passover, the exodus itself—it was all training ground. See God’s power, see God’s faithfulness. Trust his future power, trust his future faithfulness. These stories would be remembered, preparing God’s people for the coming of Christ, the ultimate Deliverer who would free us from the power of sin, Satan, and death.

The problem is this: we rarely assume that God is purposeful and kind in his long game. We demand instant healing, plead for immediate answers to our prayers, cry out for quick escape from our trials. But God seldom moves at our pace. So we assume it’s because he hates us or is mad at us. We assume he is forgetful or slow or unkind. We never assume it’s because he loves us and is deepening our trust in him. We never assume he is rebuilding our faith. We never assume that he’s cultivating growth and maturity from our trials. We never assume that he’s molding us to be more like Jesus. We never assume he’s preparing us for heaven.

But he is more interested in proving his faithfulness than giving us immediate gratification. He’s more interested in reordering our loves so that ease and comfort fall well below our desires for what we need most: him.

All those years I prayed for things he delayed in giving or did not give at all—he was purposefully taking his time. He was proving himself faithful in every day of waiting, in every night of pain. He was keeping me close in prayer. He was present. Steady. True. When I look back at the years of praying, I see how he carried me. I see how he taught me about who he is rather than what I thought he should do for me. Who he was then, he is now. He will be.

The Lord is building our future faith through our present sufferings. He’s wrenching trust from our trials, patience from our perseverance, love from our low estate. Though he is mindful of our circumstances, he is far more interested in our hearts. He knows what we fail to assume when life takes a hard turn or drags on in continued undesirable stagnancy: when God has your heart, temporary trials can produce long-term faith. If he takes his time, assume it’s because he loves you.

When God has your heart, temporary trials can produce long-term faith. Share on X

Photo by Aren Nagulyan on Unsplash