Waiting is a foundational aspect of faith, hope, and love, and it is sometimes one of the hardest works of all. The life of Abraham has several poignant examples of waiting, beginning with his calling by God.
It is not immediately apparent from these verses, but Abraham did some waiting that was not "waiting on God." Verses 1-3 relate what God previously "had said," and verse 4 takes place sometime later. Genesis 11:31-32 shows Terah taking Abraham, Sarah, and Lot out of Ur and dwelling in Haran, where Terah died. However, Stephen's account in Acts 7:2 shows that Genesis 12:1-3 actually took place while Abraham was in Ur (Mesopotamia), but Abraham did not leave Haran and his father's house until after his father had died. This means there is a gap between what God told Abraham in verses 1-3 in Ur and his leaving Haran in verse 4. God told him to leave his family and his father's house, but he waited until his father died before he left. Here, at the beginning, God actually had to wait on him!
There is an important lesson here. Not all waiting is actually "waiting on God." It could be procrastination. It could be outright laziness. It could be dragging our feet because we are fearful, uncomfortable, or, like Jonah, we just flat out do not want to do what God wants us to do. We might convince ourselves that we are waiting on God when He is really waiting for us.
We might think Abraham and Jonah had it easy because God spoke to them directly. We can read the accounts, and it seems pretty clear to us what these men should have done and when they should have acted—right away! On the other hand, we have a whole book full of God's instructions, yet we also tend to want to wait until the circumstances are more to our liking before acting. So we wait of our own volition, not because God requires us to.
This shows that a distinction exists between God's promises and instructions. Generally, the time to wait on God is not when He gives instructions (including instructions written millennia ago). When that happens, He expects us to act on them.
Instead, the time to wait on God is when He promises to do something or states that something will happen. He may give us a glimpse of the future, but we must wait for Him to bring it to pass. That waiting is work because it takes discipline, restraint, patience, and focus. It is work to sit on our hands. The alternative is to go out and try to bring God's will to pass ourselves, and as we will see, that never ends well.
In Genesis 12:2, God tells Abraham that he will be a great nation, which implies he will have children. Later, when Abraham is in Canaan, God again appears to him, and he brings up his childlessness (Genesis 15:1-3). God tells him he will have an heir and makes a covenant with him (verses 4-20).
But we know how the story goes—Abraham and Sarah decided to cause this to happen themselves rather than waiting on God (Genesis 16:1-2). So, they came up with a "brilliant" plan that everybody agreed to—except God—and carried it out. Immediately, bad fruit began to be borne: strife and division. Nobody was happy with how things turned out—not Hagar, not Sarah; and if the womenfolk were not happy, we can be sure Abraham was not either. Abraham and Sarah took it upon themselves to "help" God fulfill His promise rather than doing the real work of waiting on Him.
