What is it that is so hard about waiting? If you were in the service on Sunday you heard me say that I am not the best at waiting. I am learning to wait. I think our problem with waiting comes from the world in which we live. As technology progresses waiting is something we don’t have to do as much. Travel is faster, transfer of information is faster, answers to medical problems are faster. How we operate in life is much, much faster than it was when I was growing up. So what is bad about anything I just said? Nothing.
We benefit greatly from how readily we can access information and go about our lives. But there is a definite negative result that comes from the fast pace world in which we live. No one remembers how to wait on anything. We have become a much busier people and we move so quickly and have no patience to wait on anything. I make myself laugh sometimes when I catch how agitated I get waiting on a website to open on the internet. If it takes 10 seconds I’m totally thrown off. I remember not having a computer, much less the internet to retrieve information. If you didn’t have a set of encyclopedias at home you had to go to the library and sift through card files then get out of a chair to go find a book and then try to locate the pages where your information is located. Then if you didn’t want to take the time to check the book out you sat in the library for hours. Some of you reading this will remember this. And even when we first got access to the world wide web, it was dial up and that awful song the computer sang before you crept along was really bad. But you know what? We didn’t know the difference. It was the way it was, and we waited.
I say all that to say this; we have allowed this impatience to find its way into our relationship with God. We expect God to move at 60 Mbps or we lose it. Because we have forgotten how to wait, we question God’s love, His concern for us, and His ability to act on our behalf. Think about Father Abraham. God told him he would be the father of a great nation with descendants that would outnumber the stars in the sky, yet he had no son and his wife, Sarah, was unable to give him a son. Abraham had no choice but to wait. He waited 25 years for the son of promise. We can’t wait 25 minutes for anything. We get impatient and try to help just as Abraham and Sarah did and then make matters worse. Look at the Middle East today. That is the impatience of Abraham and Sarah in full display.
It comes down to trusting the God who created you to do what he says he will do. What did he say? He will meet your every NEED according to HIS riches in glory. All of this will be done for the glory of the Father in heaven, not ours.
Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him, and he will do it.” – Psalm 37:5
What a great verse. We are told to do a couple of things in this short verse. First commit your way to the Lord. That means our way has to become His way. How do we know what His way is? Seek a deeper relationship with him and walk in step with him and he will make clear his plan for you. Commit to him, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness…” Lay down your agenda and pick up his. Then, trust Him to accomplish what only He can accomplish in His perfect timing with His riches in glory. If we do these things what does this verse say? “…and He will do it.” Not rocket science.
Those of us who grew up pre-microwave, pre-computer, pre-mad rush world need to teach this younger generation the value of waiting for what is best not rushing to get second best.