Book Review: Waiting on God

We all hate waiting, especially if the waiting is out of our control. We wait in lines, we wait at lights, we wait on people….waiting is inevitable in our lives. But, what about waiting on God? In Wayne Stiles’ latest book, Waiting on God, he dives into the life of Joseph in order to answer the hardest question, what to do when God does nothing.

Through this dramatic retelling of the familiar story of Joseph, Stiles shows what waiting on God looked like in Joseph’s life, and provides practical application to our lives today. While not all of us have a dream from God that takes twenty-two years to fulfill like Joseph, we all have dreams we are waiting on. Whether it’s landing a dream job, traveling the world, or finding the perfect spouse, dreams are rooted deep in our souls. While we would like to orchestrate the plans of our lives to our liking, Stiles points out that sometimes God’s plans for our lives are much bigger than we can imagine.

Joseph had a dream about his brothers bowing down to him, which caused his brothers to dislike him more than they already did. That caused them to sell him into slavery in a foreign land, where he was soon overseer of a prominent household. Joseph was falsely accused and sent to jail, where he stayed for two years. While in jail, he interpreted dreams of servants from Pharaoh’s household. When Pharaoh later had a dream of his own, Joseph was called upon to interpret it. Joseph was then placed in charge of the food supply during the famine that Pharaoh’s dream predicted. Josephs’ brothers then came to him for food, unaware of who they were approaching. Joseph was able to supply his brothers will food for the famine, and ultimately be reconciled to his original family.

Had just one of those events not happened, the story would have ended differently. While Joseph’s brothers sold Joseph into slavery out of envy and hate, God used the series of events to save not only Joseph’s family from the famine, but the whole nation of Egypt.

Stiles wrote, “Although we may never comprehend God’s sovereignty, we can believe in it. We can’t understand all God knows, but we can understand that he understands it all. That’s called faith.” Like Joseph, we don’t understand why our dreams are delayed, or why we are betrayed by family and friends, or why we are forced to spend time in a place or job we don’t want…but if we have faith in God, his bigger picture will someday prevail. Whether our dreams are fulfilled while we are living, or we leave a legacy as Jacob did, the dreams God gave us will someday come to fruition in a magnificent way.