Faith enables believers to endure trials and delays in answered prayer. Trusting God’s timing and God’s purposes enables us to wait patiently while remaining steadfast, knowing that God is working all things for good. This endurance shapes our character and strengthens our witness to others.
In Romans 5:3-4, Paul explains the implications of such faith. We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. It is faith that enables a believer to agree with God’s Word when Paul says he knows suffering produces endurance. Faith acknowledges the blessings of endurance, and faith confesses that patience with God and with one another is good and righteous. Faith transforms endurance of suffering into Christlike character that hopes in God more than when life is easy and comfortable.
Psalm 130:5-6 reads, I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning… Faith provides the strength to wait for the Lord. Waiting is more than an intellectual or emotional idea; it is a spiritual operation of God the Holy Spirit within the child of God. Instead of allowing impatience to grow into ingratitude or rebellion, faith looks to God’s Word in hope of God fulfilling His Word in His time and for His purposes. Faith also energises the believer to wait upon the Lord with expectation of Him fulfilling His Word in our lives. This spiritual expectation inspires trusting endurance with thankful worship because Yahweh is a God worthy of our trusting hope.
It’s as the apostle Paul wrote, by faith we are convinced that in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:37-39). So, we wait patiently, knowing that God is working in our lives for His glory and our good. We wait, knowing that our circumstances can never separate us from God’s love. And while we wait, we worship by speaking well of Jesus Christ, we serve others, we disciple others, and we look for the soon return of Jesus Christ to rescue us from this sinful world.
Faith while waiting for the Lord calls for intentional humility, and humility grows out of trusting God’s grace. Jesus’ half-brother James wrote about this in James 4:6-8. But He (God) gives more grace… “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Faith surrenders our pride and stubborn attitudes to God, asking Him to graciously change us. We do this by submitting to God, and in submitting to God in all things the devil is resisted by us. God comes first for the Christian, and the Christian always moves closer to God when life becomes more difficult. Faith feeds off God’s grace, and grace becomes the power of God feeding our faith more and more as we wait upon the Lord.
