Sometimes the hardest thing for prophetic people to do is wait, simply to stand still.

We are so future oriented that we wonder why a prophetic word we have received about a situation didn’t happen already yesterday. Sometimes it’s literally 20 years away and we’re busy trying to figure out how we’re going to make it happen today!

I believe that we can’t appreciate “Go” or know when to “go” unless we understand and can obey God’s “Wait.”

God can tell us to wait when we want to go for a variety of reasons.

Timing is everything. Knowing when to go requires waiting when it’s not time to go.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Ecclesiastes 3:11

Timing requires wisdom and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. God’s ways are not our ways and His timing is not our timing. Submitting to His timing is not always easy, especially when it seems to make little logical sense.

Submitting to God’s “Wait!” cultivates humility. It requires us to acknowledge that His plan and timing for us is good, and oftentimes better than we could have hoped or imagined.

We don’t know a green light apart from a red light. In the same way we don’t know “Go” apart from “Wait.”

How many times have we not looked back at a situation and concluded that God’s timing was so much better than our own even though it was frustrating to wait? “Hindsight is 20/20,” they say.

Consider the times you have had to wait in the past but then could tell in hindsight that God had a better plan in the end. Apply that assurance to situations today where God is asking you to wait. It will help you to be more patient and make it easier to wait. When it’s time to “go,” you will know.

By Ralph Veenstra