Do You Give Up When Your Victory Takes Too Long to Come?

Many times God places dreams in our hearts—longings, projects, and plans—not for the present moment, but for the distant future. God is never in a hurry. God creates patiently, organically, from the inside out, placing one piece on top of another with complete intentionality. He takes His time crafting a beautiful vision.

The writer of Ecclesiastes declares: “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven” (Eccl. 3:1). Habakkuk 2:3 introduces a very important element in the fulfillment of every personal vision: “For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but it hastens toward the end and will not lie; though it tarries, wait for it, because it will surely come; it will not delay.”

When God is at work in a life, nothing happens through inertia or by accident. Nothing is superfluous, and nothing is missing. With God, there is no excess. Everything He allows to play a part in shaping a vision is exactly what is needed, even though, in our haste to see it fulfilled, it may seem that victory is taking too long to arrive.

Never abandon a vision because it has taken too long to come true. God’s visions often require a long journey before they become reality. Like Abraham, who had to travel prophetically through the land his descendants would occupy only several centuries after his death, we will often have to travel great distances in time and space before our aspirations become reality. We will have to experience and endure many failures and hardships before entering the promised land that God has declared over our spirits. It may be a long time before we can cradle in our arms the Isaac God has promised us! Yet on that arduous but fruitful march, we will gather an immense store of resources and experiences needed to conquer the territory we have set out to claim—and, above all, to consolidate and hold on to it.

The apostle Paul warns us that to be crowned—in other words, to see our dreams fully realized—we must compete according to the rules (2 Tim. 2:5). “Competing according to the rules” means taking no shortcuts; it means going through the long and arduous process a vision requires, drinking to the dregs the cup of personal crucifixion that prepares and equips us for the triumph we so deeply desire.

The visions God plants in our hearts often require an arduous and detailed process of development. There are rules and principles that must be obeyed. Some things must die, debts must be paid, and character traits must be eliminated from us or established in us through suffering, struggle, or failure. Our inner being must be brought into alignment with the magnitude and complexity of the vision we have conceived.

We cannot rush God’s processes. We must not try to evade the crucifixions and seasons of waiting that will arise on the way to the summit. When we receive the prize, we must have run the race without cheating or taking shortcuts.

God is a God of processes, of interwoven stages that unfold in an orderly fashion, one after another in a coherent sequence. All this takes time! The beautiful symphony of a purposeful life does not come together overnight. It requires the ability to look far ahead, to wait patiently “until dawn breaks.” The psalmist says: I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined to me, and heard my cry. (Psalm 40:1)

Even if the vision takes longer than expected, we must wait patiently until God inclines toward us, extends His scepter to us, and grants us the triumph we long for. If the vision is genuine and comes from God, He will make sure that the time for its fulfillment arrives. In times of drought and waiting, when we are close to fainting and abandoning the vision, God whispers to us: “Even if it takes a long time, do not abandon it. It hastens toward the end and will not lie.”

Persistence is one of the great components of every successful and impactful life. God has called us to blessing and triumph, and He promises to support us as we ascend toward personal greatness. But we must be faithful. We must persist to the end. We must not give up simply because reaching the goal has taken a long time. I hope this meditation encourages you to live a life of persistence in pursuing your dreams. Let us persist in the vision until we see it fully realized. God bless you!