Why is waiting on God so difficult?

But faith is different; it says, "Though the fig tree should not blossom," which means, not that there will be a poor harvest, or a late harvest, but no harvest at all. "Though my hands are empty, and every earthly resource has failed, and every human prop has been removed, and the whole world is a wilderness, yet will I confidently rest in the Lord." Faith can pass quietly through the storm; it does not look to any circumstance for help, but it takes hold upon God and finds Him to be greater than every circumstance. Faith can wait, and wait until God moves. It is distrust that is impatient and restless, and would take things out of God's hands, and seize upon the desired object prematurely. Look at Abraham and Sarah, distrustful and impatient, making a sad mess of things in the matter of Hagar; they could not wait for God. Look at Jacob and Rebecca, scheming, shamming, lying, deceiving; they could not wait for God. Look at Moses smiting the rock and speaking unadvisedly with his lips; he could not wait for God. Look at every man, good and bad, whose history God has given us. Most, if not all of them, broke down just here; Satan stampeded them at least once into action when faith would have been quiet and waited for God.

But faith is different; it says, “Though the fig tree should not blossom,” which means, not that there will be a poor harvest, or a late harvest, but no harvest at all. “Though my hands are empty, and every earthly resource has failed, and every human prop has been removed, and the whole world is a wilderness, yet will I confidently rest in the Lord.” Faith can pass quietly through the storm; it does not look to any circumstance for help, but it takes hold upon God and finds Him to be greater than every circumstance. Faith can wait, and wait until God moves. It is distrust that is impatient and restless, and would take things out of God's hands, and seize upon the desired object prematurely. Look at Abraham and Sarah, distrustful and impatient, making a sad mess of things in the matter of Hagar; they could not wait for God. Look at Jacob and Rebecca, scheming, shamming, lying, deceiving; they could not wait for God. Look at Moses smiting the rock and speaking unadvisedly with his lips; he could not wait for God. Look at every man, good and bad, whose history God has given us. Most, if not all of them, broke down just here; Satan stampeded them at least once into action when faith would have been quiet and waited for God.

These men had been born many years before the deliverance from Egypt came, and though their parents would seem to have been godly people, whose hope was truly in God, yet they had a long wait, and no doubt many of them passed off the scene, before the expected deliverance appeared. And there is a deeply important lesson for us in this wait. We are by nature so impatient. It is so hard for us to wait. Our expectation is in God, and if it is His will, He will bring it to pass; but often He permits us to wait long before turning our expectation into reality. What an encouragement to pray on, and to hope on. Jacob could say, "I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me." (Genesis 32:26); and in Hosea 12:4 the Spirit of God gives us His comment on this act. "Yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed; he wept, and made supplication unto him." We so easily grow weary of the waiting and "let go". The urgency of the desire passes away from us, as it did with Moses; and when at last the command comes to go and do the very thing he had tried to do forty years before, he all but refuses. But those forty years had not been wasted years, and now he goes in the strength of the Lord, whereas before he was going in his own strength. And we will find that the weary years of waiting have not been wasted years, but rather that God has taught us lessons in this waiting time, that could not have been learned in any other way.

But we must persevere. We must not faint, and give up, though the answer does not come as speedily as we might expect. It may please God to exercise our souls by keeping us waiting on Him for days, months, or perhaps years. The exercise is good. It is morally healthful; it tends to make us real; it brings us down to the roots of things. Look, for example, at Daniel. He was kept for "three full weeks" waiting on God, in profound exercise of soul. "In those days I Daniel was mourning three full weeks. I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, till three full weeks were fulfilled."

And it is this delay that searches out the humbled and stricken one. This "how long?" which it is meant that one should feel, and is a question rightly entertained, how it tests the one who has to ask the question! The help so needed, how can it tarry so long, when His messengers are "angels that excel in strength," and the elements wait upon Him? "How long?" What conditions must be first fulfilled? What survey of the heavens and earth it implies, if to ourselves we would answer it! And this exercise is itself what is wrought in the silence and the darkness, — all the soul awake and alive to its centre, the conscience stirred, the heart attent, the whole man in activity. The travail is, after all, for fullest blessing; the doubtful questioning will at last find assured answer; the heart will be enriched with knowledge of the highest kind, in the joy of which it shall be glad forever.

To realise, however, that God is "a very present help," calls for the exercise of faith, for His present help is not always immediately apparent. Sometimes we have to wait for the manifestation of His present help. Our natural tendency is to endeavour to extricate ourselves from trouble by our own efforts, and God may, for our blessing, keep us waiting until we have learnt that we are utterly without strength to meet the trial, and there is nothing left for us but to "be still" and learn that God is God.

Was it not thus, in the gospel day, that the Lord dealt with Martha and Mary when faced with the sickness of their brother? They were in sore trouble, and in their distress the Lord was their refuge. They rightly turned to Him and spread out their trouble before Him. They said, "He whom Thou lovest is sick." The Lord was indeed "a present help," though His help was not immediately forthcoming. Having received the urgent appeal of the sisters, we read that "He abode two days still in the same place where He was." Apparently He was doing nothing. He waited until death closed all hope in human efforts, and there was nothing left for the two sisters but to "be still" and learn that God is God.

Have we not to confess that, too often, this is our difficulty. We can believe in the power of God put forth in times past, and that His power will be manifest in days to come, but we are slow to believe that God is so truly "a very present help" that, when there is no duty to be fulfilled, we can "be still" and wait for His help to be made manifest.

Often the Lord makes one wait long as if He did not trouble Himself with the lot of His people. But when they are in the greatest distress, God acts. The extremity of man is the opportunity of God, the moment favourable and suited for Him to manifest Himself. It is difficult to convince man of this - that God loves him enough to think of him and deliver him. Faith has only God, and God alone is the resource of the people in the resurrection.

“Thou dost not save.” The issue here is not a spiritual salvation, but a a temporal deliverance. The anxious soul would like to see peace restored, and the violent ones judged and taken away. The violence is there, it occurs under our eyes, and — God does not answer! We repeat: this is not a lack of faith, but the cry of alarm uttered by a heart that, while not yet sufficiently established in trusting faith, sees itself confronted with a problem that thus far remains insolvable in his eyes. Why does God allow the evil? How can He seemingly forget His own who are defenseless in the midst of the wicked systems of man? The prophet would soon receive the answer, but a different one than he expected. He had to experience a sorrowful time of training that would become a rich blessing for his soul, before he understood what God would bring about in the hearts of His own in days of trial.

Our failure to believe that God's way is always best makes it hard to yield fully to Him and trust Him with all our heart. With distrust comes lack of confidence. With lack of confidence comes restlessness and unhappiness.