Have you ever waited on something so long that you started to feel like a fool?
If you’re a woman, maybe you’re waiting on your future marriage.
You were so sure that God promised you a Kingdom husband and yet as the minutes turn to days, the days to months, the months to years, you begin to doubt if you truly heard God at all.
You bubbled with excitement when you told your close family & friends what you were believing God for. Now you hate yourself for mentioning anything when they ask you if you’re still single for the 1,000th time and you have no prospects in sight.
You’ve waited so long for your Kingdom marriage to come to pass that you try to protect what little hope you have left by acting as if it never mattered to you anyway.
You push down the desire and focus on other things. You pretend as if you’re okay with never getting married even though you know deep down, that’s not true.
If you’ve ever wrestled through the shame & fear of waiting, you’re not the only one.
The Israelites in the Bible struggled with waiting as well.
As they were waiting in the wilderness in Exodus 32, they were so gripped by shame & fear that when they thought Moses wouldn’t return from the mountain, they fashioned an idol, a golden calf, and made it their god instead.
In verse 1, the Hebrew word for delay is “bus” which means to feel shame, to be disconcerted, and to be disappointed.
The word disconcerted means to be unsettled or confused.
They abandoned Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, because in that moment of perceived delay, they couldn’t fathom how they would survive the wilderness, let alone make it to the Promised Land.
The shame, the disappointment, and the confusion was just a bit too much.
So they did what we’ve all done when forced to wait longer than we would like. They caved to the temptation of shame & fear and focused their attention on something else instead. Something they made with their own hands and through their own strength. Something that felt like a “controllable variable”.
Like all of us, they soon learned that trying to take matters in their own hands only leads to disaster.
The only way to overcome the shame & fear of waiting on marriage is to lean into God and be patient in your heart posture.
When you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, you will receive the strength from the Lord necessary to wait well for your Kingdom marriage.
I’ll break down the practicals of overcoming the shame & fear of waiting in Pt. 2!
P.S. If you want to learn how to posture your heart in patience in preparation for marriage, listen to my husband J.T. & I discuss God’s timing for marriage on our podcast episode for future wives now.