“To Walk or Stay” Book Club :: Chapter 8 Discussion {Waiting in Belief}

Welcome to the “To Walk or Stay” Book Club! I’m so honored to be a part of the big things God is doing through Lara’s book. There has been some great conversations on the topics of control, thoughts, beauty, rights, divorce, and forgiveness throughout the “To Walk or Stay” book club discussions. Today we will be talking about Chapter 8: Waiting in Belief.

And though words of faith came out of my mouth, deep in my spirit I doubted whether full restoration would ever be our experience.

Waiting. That is a hard place to be. No one will ever tell you their favorite thing to do is to wait. Isn’t there a statistic about how we are waiting for a huge chunk of our lives? Waiting for what we do not know is especially hard. When you know what is to come, whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, at least you can somewhat prepare yourself. Are we like Zechariah, growing to expect more suffering? We have already heard about his miracles and we have seen His amazing power, and so we believe. But waiting…in belief? It’s not easy.

Image Source: alifetimeofwisdom.com

We live in a time of instant gratification. When our smartphones take an eighth of a second too long to refresh, we get frustrated. <–Or maybe that’s just me. o_o When the hostess tells us the wait will be ‘x’ minutes long, we leave for a restaurant with a shorter line. When we were young, we couldn’t wait to graduate, find a job, get married, start a family…whatever it was, we didn’t want to wait for it. When we are waiting on God, perhaps it is worth the wait.

Anytime I have looked back at the trials and challenges in my life, I see that God truly did work things out in His perfect timing…every. single. time. Whether it was in a time of joblessness or searching for a home or schooling our children, if I had chosen my own plans so I wouldn’t have to wait, I would have settled for less than what He has given me as a result of waiting in belief, trusting that He had something greater for me. And He did have something greater for me.

Check out Lara’s interview over at Bible Geek Gone Wild if you haven’t already done so. If you don’t have 18 minutes and 31 seconds right now to listen to the whole thing, fast forward to 7:40 where Lara talks about this chapter and about living in God’s timing. Author Talks – Episode 18 – Lara Williams

When God designed marriage, He designed it to reflect Him. It isn’t about us, we make it about us, but it’s about Him…If we could learn to pause and to press into God for wisdom and to seek his guidance instead of running to everything else in the planet for wisdom, the landscape for Christian marriage would be very different.

And this is how we can wait in belief. While not all things were designed to reflect God like marriage does, this could be true for many things in our lives. If we turn to Him in prayer, and seek Him in His Word, our actions and the outcome of we are waiting for would be different. As Lara has mentioned before, she would have completely missed a blessing if she chose to walk instead of waiting in belief to stay.

Discussion Questions:

1. Share a time in your life when your faith was greatly tested. How did God minister to you in that time?
2. Practically speaking, how can we remain steadfast-believing God’s promises-through the trials?
3. In the digging deeper section, we looked at Hebrews 11:1-12:2. The last question asked, “How does He want you to apply what you read?” How did you respond?

I would love for each of you to join in the conversation in the comments below by answering the questions. It would be awesome if you could respond to at least one other person’s comment, too! Keep the discussion going, and interact with fellow book club members. Pray for one another as we journey together.