Waiting on God

By Gloria Favors Mitchell

Waiting on God does not mean doing nothing because God spoke now. He’s waiting on you and me. It’s not easy to wait on God and to follow him, but it’s very much worth the wait; and in the end, you will realize waiting is a good thing when you obtain God’s promises in your life. I waited not patiently most of the time; I always knew God told me to do this, and I will not give up. I am asking you not to give up on God, your dream, or yourself. God is faithful; stick with God, and he will blow your mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781647018948

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Waiting on God

Gloria Favors Mitchell

Copyright © 2020 Gloria Favors Mitchell

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2020

ISBN 978-1-64701-893-1 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-64701-894-8 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Double for Your Trouble

Waiting on God

Our Hearts

Believe God

Do Not Be Idle

Give

This book is dedicated to my mother, Mrs. Rosia Favors; my son, Laurentis S. Jackson; my granddaughter, Lauren Jackson; and to all who helped to make this book presentable. I say thank you all.

Chapter 1

Double for Your Trouble

For your shame ye shall have double: and for confusion they shall rejoice in their partition: therefore in their land they shall possess the double: everlasting joy shall be unto them (Isaiah 61:7).

God promises to give us double for the shame and humiliation that we receive by the hands of the devil. This was what happened to Job after he went through nine months of sickness and hardship. Satan thought he could break Job when he bombarded Job with attack after attack. He (Satan) started with the death of all Job’s children, and he did not stop there; he destroyed Job’s livestock and caused all of Job’s substance to be taken away until Job had nothing left. Or so Satan thought because Job still had God. When you have God on your side, the devil can do as he pleases, but his best will never be enough to defeat us. Job did the opposite of what the devil thought. The enemy wanted Job to curse God and die. He wanted Job to walk away from God, but Job praised and worshipped God instead. This part of the devil’s plan did not work, but he can be a pain in the butt. He doesn’t give up, so the second time came for the devil to talk with God about Job.

The Bible says, Again there was a day when the sons of God come to present themselves before the Lord and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord. The Lord said unto Satan, from whence comest thou? Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘From going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it.’ And the Lord said unto Satan, ‘Hast thou considered by servant Job, that there is none like him in the Earth, a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil? Still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.’ Satan answered the Lord, and said, ‘Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face.’ And the Lord said unto Satan, ‘Behold he is in thine hand: but save his life.’

The devil began doing things to Job that were painful and hurtful. He caused boils to appear upon Job, from the sole of his feet to the crown of his head, and these boils were painful, and Job probably got no relief from the burning painful sensation day or night; but he still refused to give in to Satan and walk away from God. Job was, in many ways, saying to the devil, I would rather be miserable and be in pain day and night than to walk away from God. Because this was exactly what Job did. He did not give in to the enemy; not even Job’s friends could provoke him enough that he would abandon the Lord. And after Job had suffered and suffered and Satan had lost, the Lord stepped in, and he gave Job double for his trouble and for all the shame the devil had caused in his life. Job was just as he was before.

The Bible says, Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his home: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and everyone an earring of gold. So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand camels and a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand she asses. He had also seven sons and three daughters (Job 42:11–13).

All that Job went through at the beginning of his life, he did not understand. Why? But he had enough faith and trust in God not to give up, and he did not quit. He told the devil, For I know that my redeemer liveth (Job 19:25). And he told the devil, Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him (Job 13:15). This was when Job put the enemy on notice.

You can do whatever you please to me. I am not moving away from God. Not today, not tomorrow, and not ever. And I will still behave accordingly to the way of the Lord. I will still obey him. I will still keep his commandments. I will still praise, worship, and honor him. And I believe that Satan noticed that Job had not been shaken by what was going on in his life. And you and I should be as Job and put Satan on notice that he can bombard us with attack on attack, but we are still not budging. I know my mind is made up to follow the Lord all the days of my life; and I will not quit and give up. I will not turn and walk away from God because my Savior will not walk away from me. He will deliver me. He will save me even if he has to save me from myself. God is good, and there is no way he will ever allow the devil to win any battle over his children. If Satan is victorious in our life, it’s because we allowed it to happen; we give him permission by walking away from God. When we walk contrary to God, we are no longer covered by him, and we become prey for the enemy, and he will immediately take advantage of this opportunity. But we trust in the Lord regardless of how much pressure we are under and the pain we feel; we still trust in God and believe that he will deliver us because he will.

Thus says the Lord, Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings (Jeremiah 17:5–10).

Don’t put your trust in man, woman, or other things because all these people will let you down; and don’t forget they will stop being your friend, plus one day they will die. Where will you be then? And things such as houses, clothes, and jewelry, they will all fade away. God is the only someone who will live forever and never leave you. We are blessed when we hope and trust in God. Trusting in anyone but God will lead to lack, and you will not see anything good, not even when it comes, because you don’t believe in God; therefore, you don’t believe he will do anything good for you. Your eyes will be shut tight so that you can’t see. But for the person who does trust in God will flourish. They will be prosperous, and they will be fruitful even in a land where there is poverty and plenty of things lacking. The man and woman who trusts in the Lord will always be well watered and have enough to live on, and their fruit will never stop multiplying. Because the Lord will always be with them, we can’t say this about man. And we always want a promise from God. We always want God to keep his promises after he makes them, and he always does, but what about the promise you and I make to God. He wants us to keep our promises to him; and because many of us do not keep our word to the Lord, our blessings are slow in coming. We hinder ourselves because we fail to keep our promise to God.

Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few. For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool’s voice is known by multitude of words. When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands? (Ecclesiastes 5:2–6).

Don’t promise God that you are going to do something for him then not do it. Because God hears our words and also knows exactly what he says; he also knows whether or not we will keep our words. Reneging on your word is never a good idea although we sometimes have to; when we do, we should always let the person know ahead of time, if possible, instead of just ignoring the promise altogether and leaving the person holding the bag, and when we make Jesus a promise, he’s also expecting you and me to keep our word to him just as we are expecting God to keep his promise (word) to us. Throughout the Bible, the Lord has made promises to his children, from the Old Testament to the New Testament, and each promise that he makes, he also brings these promises to pass in the lives he makes the promises to. God has proven his faithfulness, and now it’s time for you and me to prove our faithfulness to God. Can he trust you to go through the fiery furnace without you fainting in your mind? Can he trust you to put you in a hard season, where everything has stopped producing in your life and you are not hearing God’s voice? Can you still praise God and still believe in him? When the heat gets hotter and hotter and your situation has gotten so bad that it stinks, but God has not shown up in your life; as a matter of fact, it’s as if God has forsaken you. You feel like he’s using one of his clouds to block you from his view, but the heat is still becoming intense. Will you stay with God and stick with him? Or will you bail out on God and say the pressure is too much?

I know how it feels to be in the fiery furnace. And there was no escape for me. Like Job, I could not move to the left or right, and neither could I move forward or backward, and the pain was like no other pain I had ever felt before in my entire life. I wanted to die, but God did not listen to me; then I thought that I was going to lose my mind, but the Lord did not allow this to happen either. I stayed with God when I was in the fiery furnace, or shall I say, God stayed with me when I was in the fiery furnace. He was with me, and he was trying to comfort me, but because I had no idea what was happening, I was more frightened than anything. I did not understand. All I felt was pain and hurt and heartache; but although I was suffering, I still prayed to God, and I still praised him and attended church; I paid my tithe and continued being as nice as I possibly could to people ((smiling)), trying to cover up all the pain and turmoil that I was experiencing inside of my life, deep within my soul, the part that’s hidden from all eyes, but God. I believe I pulled it off, but the pain remained intense. This pain birth a relationship in me for God, and this pain also birthed care out of my soul, heart, and spirit for God that I did not know I had. In my fiery furnace, I felt real pain; at the same time, God used this opportunity