Waiting on God’s good and perfect timing
With spring just around the corner, many of us have already started the countdown to longer and brighter days, warmer weather and the burst of new life that we love about the spring season. After a long and cold winter, we eagerly look forward to the springtime and its promise of better, brighter days to come. While we know that the winter won’t last and that nature must take its course, we cannot help but want to speed up time and get to what’s ahead, even though all we can really do is wait until the appointed time. Just as God created the four seasons, each with its own purpose and timeline, He too appoints different spiritual seasons and times in our lives where we must simply wait and trust that He is working together something wonderful for us.
He has made everything beautiful in its time.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
The book of Ecclesiastes tells us that there's a season for all things in life--an appointed time for everything to take place under heaven according to God’s good and perfect plan. As Christians, we may not always understand or particularly enjoy all the seasons we experience in our life but we can trust that even in the most difficult times, God has a divine purpose for the season that’s meant to produce spiritual growth and beauty as we wait on Him.
Consider the cold, dark winter season. Did you know that it even serves an important purpose in the growth process? The winter’s shorter days and colder temperatures allow plants to become dormant and store up enough energy for new growth in the spring. Without the seemingly useless or unpleasant winter months, the beautiful flowers would never bloom in the spring. The same can be said about our spiritual life.
In the seemingly fruitless seasons in our lives, we tend to want to skip over the waiting period and just fast-forward to the good part but that’s just not how the growth process works. For something beautiful to blossom, it requires time to grow, something that simply can't be rush. Just as a flower needs the right growing conditions to grow strong and healthy, we too must have the right heart posture to receive the good blessings that God has in store for us. If we try to do things our own way, we risk spiritual prematurity and become unable to properly steward the the gifts that God plans to give us.
There’s nothing more protective than God’s timing for us. Even a good thing, when done at the wrong time, could have a potentially devastating impact on our life. That’s why we must trust in God’s plan for us and submit to His perfect timing. As the loving and all-knowing God that He is, we can trust that He knows what’s best for us and that He will make good things happen in our lives at the opportune time. In hindsight, we are often able to see just how perfect His time really is.
Just as we trust God to eventually turn the winter into spring and the seed into a pretty flower, we can trust that He is working on our behalf and that He has something beautiful blooming for us to experience in the appointed season. The process may be invisible to the eye and slower than we would like but God will make it come to pass when the time is right. If you are waiting on God today to do something special in your life, do not get discouraged when you're required to wait. Place your full confidence in Him and rest knowing that beauty is birthed in the waiting.
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