I'm sure that we can all look back at things or situations that we've had to wait for, whether it was as a child waiting for Christmas morning, so that we could open that present that we've been going on about to our parents for the last 6 months, or waiting for a cake to bake and cool, anticipating the taste as the smell permeates the whole house, or waiting the arrival of that long desired baby. In the moment, the waiting seems an eternity, but doesn't the event become all the more special because of the wait?
Let's look at some examples from the Bible of people who had to wait:
Joseph - He was given a dream by God but had to wait many, many years to see it come to fruition, including a spell of about 20 years in prison!
Abraham - He was given a promise that he would be the father of a great nation, but as an old man, with an infertile wife, he still had faith to wait - even when he was eventually blessed with a son, he was prepared to sacrifice him!
Job - He suffers terribly and cries out to God, but it takes until chapter 38 before God answers him.
David - He's anointed as a teenager, but it's over 40 years until he takes the position of King.
Lazarus - Jesus intentionally doesn't immediately go to the bedside of his friend Lazarus when he first hears that he's sick! Jesus delays going and only turns up after he's been dead a few days and is already sealed in his tomb, from which Jesus calls him to get up and come out!
Silence from God can be intentional. Don't let's be like Job's friends and try to come up with theories and solutions. Sometimes we need to go through the waiting to realise how special the answer is. As with the example of a baby, where a pregnancy is usually around 40 weeks, the baby needs that time to grow and develop in order that it can survive in the world. Sometimes, we need time to grow and develop, to be able to deal with what we are waiting for.
For those of you old enough to remember when we needed a physical camera to take pictures, we couldn't just pull our phone out. The camera's that we used had to be loaded with film. When we'd taken our 24 or 36 pictures, we had to send the film away to be processed, not actually knowing what the picture would look like. The processors had to take the film into the darkroom, which is where the pictures were developed. But they didn't stay in the darkroom, they had to go through a period in the darkroom before they were ready to be printed and sent back to us.
Sometimes we may feel isolated and that we're not hearing from God, but it may actually be a period of God's incubation!
I was reminded of what happened to a good friend of ours a couple of summers ago. Nicola is from New Zealand, but had been working at Bethel Church in Redding, California for a number of years. She'd been involved in developing and writing a new arts course for the church. As some of you may know, visas to work in the States can be tough to get and even when you have one, they only last for a period of time and then you have to leave America to reapply for a new one. Nicola was at the end of her current visa, so she combined a trip back to New Zealand to see family and friends with an application for a new visa. Her application was rejected, even though her application had the full support of her employer,the church. She had friends and colleagues who were granted new visas, so she reapplied after a period of time and again it was rejected. Nicola was heartbroken, it appeared that she wasn't going to see all the promises that God had given her fulfilled, but her faith wouldn't let her give in. She could have said OK, it's not meant to be and taken a job back teaching in the school she'd worked in years before in New Zealand, but she said no, God has said that I should be working at Bethel, so reapplied and though it's unheard of, on the third attempt her visa was granted. In the waiting, she'd missed the start of the new course, but she can now look back and see God's hand in the delay. It was a tough period of months, but she kept coming back to the promises that God had given her.
We are living through a period of waiting at the moment, it's not easy and even know we can rely on the promises that God has given us to provide everything we need, it's still a period in our lives that is full of questions, doubts and uncertainties. We know that God has called us to leave NGM and set up Time2, in the silence of this period we are doing what we can to prepare ourselves and to have as much ready as possible i.e. set up our website etc but we're still waiting for the birth of the project. We need to have the patience to wait and as we do, to grow and develop in order that we are equipped to survive and thrive. The encouraging thing is we have a small, but growing group of people who are supporting us in prayer and sending messages through, including Nicola. It's a real joy to check your phone/emails and see a quick text or message of encouragement. Thank you for supporting us on this journey.
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