God is waiting …(written by a male)

When one is alone, it is natural to desire a partner – a husband or wife to share your life with. The good news is that God wants this for us, even more than we do, because He loves us. He has made us in such a way that we all have a desire to be united with another, and it is logical to conclude that since He has put the desire in us for a partner, that it is His will to fulfil that desire.

Is 30:18 says “The LORD is waiting to be merciful to you. He is ready to take pity on you because he always does what is right. Happy are those who put their trust in the LORD. “

The question is, Why is the Lord waiting? What is He waiting for? Why can’t He just be merciful to us and bless us with the desires of our hearts, especially when we as Christians take our desires to Him? Why is it sometimes so difficult for His children to find someone to be united with, while the Lord said Himself in Gen 2:18 "It is not good for the man to live alone, I will make a suitable companion to help him."?

Our verse says He is ready to take pity on us, yet it says He is waiting. God is eager to bless us, but we are not always ready to receive His blessings. The fact that the verse says the Lord is waiting, means He wants something specific to happen before the blessings can flow. A clue to what that “Something” is, is found in the last part of the verse: “Happy are those who put their trust in the Lord.” What does it mean to truly put our trust in Him? God wants us to turn to Him like a sunflower to the sun, meaning we should focus on Him and experience Him as our fulfilment in life. He wants us to absorb His rays of warmth and love, like a sunflower absorbs the rays of the sun. God knows we will never be truly happy if we only get what we want when we want it without Him being our deepest fulfilment. He wants us to search His face and not only His hand, meaning we must not only go to God to ask Him for things, but we must go to Him to enjoy Him for who He is. When we are able to focus on Him for Himself, and love being in His presence, we will also experience that a true expectation of genuine faith starts to grow in us. We will then know with certainty that He has something great up His sleeve for us. That expectation (genuine trust) only comes as a result of being close to Him, and hearing His heart.

Ps 37:4 says “Seek your happiness in the LORD, and he will give you your heart's desire.” This is the key. As long as we seek our happiness in another human being, and believe having someone special is the ultimate happiness, we are not yet ready for God to show up and do what both He and us desires, namely to be merciful to us, and bless us with partners.

It can be hard to just wait on God, and look up to Him, and enjoy Him, when there is a burning desire inside for a partner. What should we do when we realize we are not making God our first priority, and we don’t experience Him as our ultimate fulfilment? Should we despair because we are not where we should be to receive His blessings? NO! When we realize this, we must simply go to God and acknowledge this fact. We should tell Him we love Him, but our heart’s desires overwhelm us and makes it difficult to put Him first. When we do that, Ps 84:11 says “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory; no good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” When we admit we are not fully focussed on Him, we are actually being sincere (walking uprightly), and then we can expect grace like the first part of the verse says. Sometimes we need grace (Gods unmerited favour or help) to get to the place where God wants us to be, in order for Him to be able to bless us. We cannot make it on our own to be perfect Christians. God does not expect perfection, but a sincere heart. We should just be honest when we realize our focus is not fully on Him, and He will release His grace and pull us closer to Him, and then we will find that He will not withhold good things from us.

Written by Hennie Viljoen