Waiting

Growing up, I always looked forward to the day when I would have a wife of my own. I longed for the nights we’d spend watching corny movies together while snickering till we snorted. I hankered for the beautiful dates we’d go on and the times we’d spend together cooking and washing dishes. This desire stuck throughout my life in college, and was even increased by the high rate of relationship forming I witnessed among my friends.

My social life in college was awfully bland. I never liked going out, so I spent most of my free time playing computer games and swimming. I however always wished to meet that girl who I knew was destined to sweep me of my feet, but the few female friends I managed to make in college eventually got repelled by my odd interests. And I wouldn’t blame them either. I was the socially awkward twenty year old guy with a terrible fashion sense who never spoke to anyone. I’m quite sure I graduated college with a number of my classmates even thinking I was mute. When I did speak, it was mostly about uninteresting topics. I mean, who wants to talk about absurdism and the Napoleonic wars? It didn’t help either that I liked cartoons, Christian rock and metal music, or that I was miserably shy. I however still yearned for a relationship.

I was recently reading the story of Jacob and Esau in the book of Genesis, when I felt God placing in my heart something to do with waiting on Him.

The story goes that Esau, one day came back from one of his hunting trips famished, and found his brother Jacob preparing some stew. He asked his brother to serve him some of the stew, but Jacob said that he would only trade it for his brother’s birthright. Being hungry, Esau figured that the birthright wasn’t that big a deal compared to the immediate feeling of quenching his hunger. He traded his place as his father’s first born son for a plate of soup.

Most of us young people have this desire that God has placed in our hearts. The desire to have and enjoy family life. The desire to be intimate with another human being. It however becomes a bit hard to keep on trusting that the God who placed the desire in our hearts has an intention of actually fulfilling them. We therefore become impatient and get ourselves into positions that God would ideally not want us to be in. The number of young believers experiencing hurt from failed relationships is quite alarming, and most of it can be attributed to us giving up on the promise that God intends to fulfill the relationship desires He planted in our lives.

For most of us young men and women, the relationships we involve ourselves in have pushed us into engaging in things that have left us scarred, with sexual purity among us as young believers being seriously threatened. Like Esau, our hunger pushes us into trading the beautiful gifts God has in store for us for fleeting feelings of pleasure.

Firstborn children throughout history have always enjoyed some sort of privilege, and it is not any different in the bible:

***Deuteronomy 21:17***

Rather, he must acknowledge the son of the less loved wife as firstborn and give him the double portion of all he has, for that son is the beginning of his father's procreative power - to him should go the right of the firstborn.

Being a firstborn comes with its perks. As believers, the bible says that we have been glorified in Christ, who God repeatedly refers to as His firstborn:

***Colossians 1:15***

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

Being saved in Christ, we qualify to partake of firstborn privileges.

***Romans 8:29***

Because those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

Whenever we lose focus and falter, we give up this birthright. In this light, losing sight and going for quick fixes threatens our inheritances as God’s children. The wife or husband God has in store for us probably hasn’t come yet because you still have a number of things to learn so that you will complement each other as you’ll be glorifying God together. God in his word says He is not a debtor of anyone, and therefore intends to fulfill all the promises He made to us, even those concerning our relationship desires as young people.

The beautiful thing is that Christ’s grace still abounds for those of us who have tripped. The bible says that while we have all sinned, Christ’s death redeemed and justified us before The Father.

***Romans 3:24, 25***

But they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God publicly displayed him at his death as the mercy seat accessible through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because God in his forbearance had passed over the sins previously committed.

We, through Christ, have been made rightful heirs to all the beautiful things God has in store.

***Galatians 4:7***

So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if you are a son, then you are also an heir through God.

Despite all these pulls and trials coming our way, I would like to encourage us to remain steadfast in our hope and keep on praying and waiting on God regarding our emotional longings, as He still has in His hands the blueprints of our lives.

***Hebrews 6:20***

In the same way God wanted to demonstrate more clearly to the heirs of the promise that his purpose was unchangeable, and so he intervened with an oath, so that we who have found refuge in him may find strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us through two unchangeable things, since it is impossible for God to lie. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, sure and steadfast, which reaches inside behind the curtain, where Jesus our forerunner entered on our behalf, since he became a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.

“…there is hope for me yet,

Because God won’t forget,

All the plans He’s made for me,

I have to wait and see,

He’s not finished with me yet…”

-Brandon Heath, Wait and See.