Waiting on the God of grace, compassion and justice

The value in the process of waiting on God

Kathleen Maxwell-Rambie

February 2017

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One of my grand girls-Miss Ellis 

I have always been the type of person that operates from a list and likes to get things done yesterday. This has served me well in many areas of my life but also has been a challenge in situations where I have seen I needed to wait on God’s timing of things and for him to reveal truth.

I remember over 20 years ago, a visiting speaker came to our church. He made a statement to me, “you like things done today-TODAY-and God wants you to wait for his timing and his season.”  I knew God was speaking to me and wanted to change something in me. I began to pray for God to help me wait on Him. 

Since that day I have learned to surrender to God’s timing and have grown in waiting on God. I am not perfect at it, but I am much better than I was. I have learned the value of the process in the journey. In the process, we have the opportunity to become who God intends for us to be. The process makes you rich and we get the opportunity to grow in our faith and character.

I have encountered numerous situations since that time to practice waiting on God to fix situations where there had been an injustice, misunderstanding or for God to reveal the truth about something. 

Having fun with my husband

One of those situations included a colleague at work. I was doing some work in a different community and as I showed up to work, I knew something was just not right. My colleague was a nice lady and I liked a lot about her, but things were not adding up and were out of order in the business. I continued to pray for her, her family and the difficult situation I was in. I notified those above me in the chain of command of the concerns I had, however, I did not seem to be heard. God seemed to be showing me to love her, practice my kindness and extend grace.

As time went on, things got even more challenging and difficult and this person even accused me unjustly of some things.  All I could do was wait on God to reveal truth and redeem the situation.

Isaiah 30:18 became  promise I hung on to and it states, “Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait on him.” (NIV) Often times in the middle of a trial, we can wonder where God is, does he hear us and will he answer. God was very gracious to me, gave me the grace I needed to endure and taught me some things about being gracious to others. He was my comforter and I felt his compassion and love. 

Over a year went by and I had moved on to other projects. The rest of the story is that truth eventually came out and the woman is no longer with the business. God was faithful to me and others saw that the concerns I had stated previously were correct. He truly is a God of justice!

sometimes waiting on God can feel like the desert 

I learned much in that season and the process of waiting changed me. He loves you just as much as he loves me and I want to encourage you to trust that God has compassion for you, is gracious and will give you the grace you need and will redeem things in life. Keep looking to Him and asking what you can glean in the process of waiting and I pray you will come to know Him in a greater way.

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