Heaven Can Wait

Have you ever wondered how fast God is? It sounds like the kind of question a child might ask. But for many of us, the honest answer would probably be, “Not as fast as we would like Him to be.” Although 2 Peter 3:9 says that God is not slow, waiting is so much a feature of the redemption story that Revelation 6:11 tells us that even the souls in Heaven must wait.  

Nobody likes to wait. Because of this, our prayers can sound more like demands than requests. We are like the man in the crowd in Luke 12 who called out to Jesus and demanded, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me” (Luke 12:13). Instead of sympathizing with the man or listening to his case, Jesus cut him off with this unsympathetic rebuke: “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:14-15)).

There is something unsettling about Jesus’ answer. It doesn’t fit the picture we have of Him. Although we don’t know the specifics about this man’s situation, we can make a few educated guesses. It is obvious that the man believed he had been wronged. It also seems reasonable to assume that his brother was the first-born, who had a right to 2/3 of the estate. Perhaps his brother had decided to keep the entire estate for himself. What is more, it seems likely that, given the circumstances and the nature of the request, this older brother was in the crowd when his younger sibling made this demand of Jesus. Jesus, however, shows no interest in protecting the younger brother’s legal rights in this matter. There are two parts to Jesus’ surprising response. One is an assessment of this man’s false view of Jesus. The other is an implied evaluation of the man’s motive in making the request.

When the Answer Means More than God

Both responses provide an important reality check for us. The first remark is a reminder that Jesus is not at our beck and call. He is not some kind of heavenly civil servant whose primary function is to make sure we get what we want or even that we get our fair share. Jesus’ unsympathetic answer is a blunt reminder that God does not necessarily share our interests. Jesus’ second remark is uncomfortable evidence that we cannot always trust our motives, even when the law is on our side. Viewed from the perspective of the man who made the request, this was a question of justice and equity. Jesus, on the other hand, perceived that it was a symptom of his greed.

Jesus’ blunt refusal to consider this man’s demand uncovers a dark truth about our impatience toward God. It suggests that sometimes our prayers are marked by what might be described as a kind of atheism. Not a denial of God’s existence but dismissal of the personal dimension of prayer. We are no more interested in God than we might be in the clerk at the counter who hands us our merchandise. The important thing for us is the answer. Not the one who grants our request.

In his book Beginning to Pray, Anthony Bloom reminds us that the intensity of our praying is not necessarily evidence of devotion. He asks us to think of the warmth and depth of our prayer when it concerns someone we love or something that matters to our lives. “Does it mean that God matters to you?” Bloom asks. “No, it does not. It simply means that the subject matter of your prayer matters to you.”

I am not saying that our requests are trivial or even necessarily selfish. I suspect that for this man in the crowd, receiving his inheritance was not trivial at all. It was a very big thing. Perhaps he was depending on it. But sometimes the things we are waiting for from God grow so large in our estimation that they stand between us and God. They may even become more important to us than God Himself.

Unequal Treatment

Sometimes God’s responses to our prayers seem uneven. He does not treat everyone the same. It may seem to us that God bestows answers too quickly on those who have ignored Him. They are excited about getting an answer to their prayer. It is as if they have discovered a world that they did not know existed, and in a way, they have. We are excited with them, at first. But after a while, there is something about their praise reports that may irk us. We have been praying for many of the same things and are still waiting. Why do their answers seem to come so quickly? Surely, it cannot be that they have more faith than us?

God is not a vending machine.

It is possible, of course, that they do have more faith. In Christ’s day, it seemed that those who knew the most about Scripture also had the greatest trouble believing Jesus. Faith does not always correlate with knowledge of Scripture or with spiritual age. Some who know relatively little in comparison with us may outstrip us in faith. While those who have walked with Christ a long time are sometimes still weak in faith. But this is not the only, perhaps not even the primary, reason for the difference. God’s dealings with us are personal in the realm of prayer, just as they are in everything else. God is not a vending machine that thoughtlessly dispenses the blessings we want when we punch the button of prayer. Neither is He a kind of heavenly bureaucrat who doles out the same portions to those standing in the prayer line. God’s answers are suited to His purposes for us as much as they are to our needs.

A Symptom of our Fear

In an essay on the efficacy of prayer, C. S. Lewis describes a startling observation about prayer he once heard from an experienced Christian: “I have seen many striking answers to prayer and more than one that I thought miraculous,” this person said. “But they usually come at the beginning: before conversion, or soon after it. As the Christian life proceeds, they tend to be rarer. The refusals, too, are not only more frequent; they become more unmistakable, more emphatic.”

The impatience we feel while waiting for God to answer our prayers is really a symptom of fear. We worry that God may reject our request. What is more, this fear is not without a warrant. Jesus’ blunt rejection of the man in the crowd is one of many refusals recorded in Scripture. But even without these, our own experience is testimony enough to prove that God does not always give us what we want when we want it.

God will grant some requests merely because we ask, as long as our request is accompanied by faith. Scripture says that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in faith will be saved (Acts 10:21; Rom. 10:13; cf. Joel 2:32). Anyone who lacks wisdom is encouraged to ask for it (James 1:5–7). But the majority of our prayers fall into a category that we might describe as discretionary. The outcome is uncertain. God may grant them, or He might choose not to do so. Even if He does give us what we want, we do not control the timing. Another person may receive the answer in a moment, while we must wait for months and even years.

Waiting as an Act of Faith

Waiting for God is a fundamental discipline of faith. The closer we are to the end of the age, the more it will be required of us. “Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming,” James 5:7–8 urges. “See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.” The farming analogy in this passage does more than point to waiting as an inevitable fact of life. It is a reminder that a fundamental conviction about the goodness of God must accompany our waiting (2 Pet. 1:3). We are not merely waiting to see what will happen with our request. We are waiting for God to act on our behalf. He who hears our prayer is the one “who causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). Our waiting is energized further by the certainty that we will not have to wait long, at least by God’s standard of time. “The Lord’s coming is near,” James assures. 2 Peter 3:9 makes a similar promise when it says, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

An old hymn describes God as “unresting, unhasting, and silent as light.” But the Bible says that God is in a hurry. According to Scripture, God watches over His people the way a cook waits for a pot to boil, or the watchman on the wall eagerly looks for the coming of dawn (Isa. 60:22; Jer. 1:12–13). Despite what the hymn writer says, speed is a characteristic of all God’s saving acts. That’s because the speed of God is the speed of redemption.