God’s Timing: The Lesson of Ishmael

Bible stories are instructive on a lot of levels. They reach across time and culture, telling us what happened in the past on the one hand and teaching us lessons we can apply to our own lives on the other. This week, the Lord brought the lesson of Ishmael to life in my very own house. He addressed the issue of waiting on God’s timing.

The Story of Ishmael

Ishmael’s birth was the result of impatience, willfulness, and self-justification.

It all started in Genesis 12:2 when the Lord told Abram that He would make him a great nation. At the time, he was 75 years old, and his wife Sarai was 65. The Lord doubled down on it in Genesis 15:4-5 when He clarified that the “great nation” would indeed come out the man’s own body. Abram would be a father. 

Fast forward 11 years. Abram was 86, and Sarai was 76 and still without a child. The Lord had promised that Abram would be a father, but time was ticking, and it was starting to look physically impossible for Sarai to be a mother. Maybe what God MEANT was that someone else would be a surrogate for her? That had to be it. So, in Genesis 16:2, Sarai told Abram to lie with her maid Hagar who immediately conceived Ishmael. That was when the two ladies stopped getting along.

And Then Came Isaac

Thirteen years later (24 years after the first conversation), God returned to Abram in Genesis 17 to make a covenant with him. He changed Abram’s name to Abraham (Genesis 17:5) and Sarai’s name to Sarah (Genesis 17:15). He did that by adding the Hebrew letter “hei,” pronounced “hey,” to both names. Like the sound of the breath of God, the letter is physically shaped like a hand (the hand of God). It also represents the number five, a symbol of grace. The new names seemed to indicate a change of identity for the couple similar to making them born again.  

God then reminded Abraham of His promise to make him the father of many nations, but this time confirmed that his wife Sarah was to be the mother. Genesis 17:25 says, “But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year.” At 99 and 89, the couple had just months to prepare to be parents, and shortly after that, Sarah told Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away. Isaac would not be sharing his inheritance (Genesis 21:10, Genesis 21:12).

Hurt Feelings, Torn Families

If Abraham and Sarah had waited on God’s timing, they could have saved a lot of pain and heartache for everyone. Instead, after 11 years of waiting, Sarah was ready for action. Using human reasoning, she decided that what God SAID couldn’t possibly have been what He MEANT. She put Hagar and Abraham together and then was hurt by Hagar’s reaction to the very pregnancy that Sarah herself had orchestrated. Later, when Sarah bore Isaac and weaned him, she was done with the whole thing. She sent Hagar and Ishmael away, hurting Hagar, Ishmael, and Abraham as well. Of course, God is gracious and still took very good care of Ishmael, making him a great nation (Genesis 21:18), but imagine if they had just waited and trusted in God’s timing?

My Very Own Ishmael

My “Ishmael” was a clothes iron. It was the same story of impatience, willfulness, and self-justification, and even though the actual situation may seem insignificant (it’s just an iron!), I see clearly that the Lord was making a much bigger point.

It all started when my iron was getting in my way on my dresser. I put it somewhere for storage, but then I couldn’t remember where. I looked everywhere it could logically be, searching every closet, cupboard, and drawer upstairs in my house. My memory was not helping, and neither were my prayers. “God,” I said again and again. “I know that You are not the God of the lost but the God of the found. You know exactly where my iron is, so please show me.” Finally, after almost a week of looking, with the stress building each day, I asked a couple of friends to help me pray. Where was that blasted iron?

Okay, I thought. If I don’t find this thing by tomorrow, I will assume that God wants me to have two irons. Maybe I will need one to give away at some point and then He will show me the other one. But I couldn’t even wait until the next day. I had to do something to move that annoying situation forward. Before I knew it, I was on Amazon and found a steal of a deal that would arrive in the next couple of days.

A Narrowly Avoided Ishmael

The next morning, though, I woke up thinking about it. Wasn’t spending God’s money on an extra iron kind of irresponsible? What kind of steward was I, anyway?  After all, the thing was somewhere in my house and three saints of God were praying about it. Surely I would find it in God’s timing. I went back to my account on Amazon and canceled the order.

When I got downstairs to fix my coffee, my husband asked me to put something in the spare refrigerator. As I was doing it, I was talking to God the whole time. “Lord, You have NEVER let me down when I asked You to help me find something. I have lost my keys, my phone, papers at school – You help me every single time. I know this time it’s probably a lesson that I’m supposed to be learn-” There it was. I was looking right at the very iron I was fussing about. It was sitting on top of the fridge in one of the least logical places that I could think of for it to be. Not only that, but God had answered my prayers the moment I gave the situation to Him and trusted in His timing.

The Bigger Picture

God is faithful, but His timing is not always our own. When “logic” and “circumstance” scream that waiting makes no sense, we can’t take matters into our own hands, justifying our actions as what God must have “meant” to happen. While it might feel like accomplishing something in the moment, the results are never what we want and can lead to harm for ourselves and others. God was gracious to Sarah and Abraham (and me!), but we can’t always count on Him to bless the messes we make when we take control.

What are you waiting for God to accomplish in your life? Is it a healing, deliverance, loved one’s salvation, or provision that has been long in coming? Has the enemy or your own flesh offered counterfeits and quick fixes that involve acting instead of waiting? The lesson of Ishmael is that God’s timing and solutions are always best. When we try to go around God, it never fixes the situation and often causes complications that lead to pain and loss.

Waiting is hard, but living with the consequences of our own willful impatience is harder. That's the lesson of Ishmael. Share on X

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