How Can We Have Faith When God Seems Slow to Keep His Promises?

Does it ever frustrate you that so few things God promises His children come quickly? He promises to make us holy, including love, patience, kindness, faithfulness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). Yet rare is the Christian in whom these characteristics develop overnight. God promises provision and blessing to those who tithe (Malachi 3:10). Yet financial burdens don’t disappear as soon as we put our checks in the offering plate. And though Jesus promises peace and rest to those who follow Him (Matthew 11:28-30), it takes years of seeking Jesus before some learn how to find comfort in Him during seasons of heavy burden.
God’s delays can be disheartening—unless we turn to the Bible and discover that it’s normal for Him to work slowly by human standards. Consider Abraham. God promised him land, plentiful descendants, and that those descendants would bless all nations (Genesis 12:1-3; 15:1-21). Yet Abraham died with only a handful of descendants; hundreds of years later his family was enslaved in Egypt, still without land; and it took nearly 2,000 years for all nations to be blessed through his greatest descendant, Jesus. God did everything He promised, but not nearly as fast as Abraham would have liked.
He’s not an isolated example. Allowing time for construction of the ark and Noah’s preaching to his neighbors (2 Peter 2:5), years must have elapsed between God’s promise to send a great flood and its arrival. Israel waited more than a century between God’s promise to judge Babylon (Isaiah 13) and their great enemy’s destruction. The Lord promised Caleb land as a reward for his faith in spying out the Promised Land (Numbers 14:24), but it took 45 years before he could settle on that terrain (Joshua 14:6-15). Perhaps most notably, God told Eve that one of her descendants would destroy the serpent (Genesis 3:15). Only millennia later though did He fulfill that promise through Christ’s death and resurrection.
At times God’s delays produced more glory for Him and a greater miracle for us to witness, as when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead rather than healing his sickness (John 11:1-44). Sometimes God’s delays were merciful, giving people an opportunity to repent before judgment (2 Peter 3:3-13). Sometimes God’s delays strengthened the faith of His people while they waited. Other times the delays increased or tested their perseverance in following Him. Still other times the delays’ reasons remained a mystery. But God’s slowness to act never meant He wasn’t going to keep His promise. He always did. This is essential for us to remember when something God has promised seems like it’s never going to arrive.
A faithful minister may preach in the same small church for years without seeing visible results, all the while clinging to God’s promise that His Word will not return void (Isaiah 55:10-11). The wife of a cruel, sharp-tongued husband may long for the elusive “joy that is inexpressible” promised in 1 Peter 1:8. The examples could go on, but for all these, God’s delay is not tantamount to His unfaithfulness. Everything He has truly promised, He will fulfill—just as He did with saints in the Bible.
Of course, some promises are not fulfilled until we reach heaven. The evils and disappointments of a fallen world will remain as long as we live on this earth. There will be diseases that end only at death and broken relationships that are never mended. For the believer, Christ’s eternal presence is the great antidote to such enduring trials. Still, the Lord makes many promises that are fulfilled in this life. As we wait for Him to act on both His earthly and heavenly promises, we should heed the words of James, who tells us to “be patient” like a farmer who knows that his seeds must lie dormant beneath the ground for a time before God transforms them into a joyful harvest (James 5:7).