Upgrade Your Faith - Wait on God

One of the hardest things arguably in following Jesus and being on this spiritual journey is having patience to wait on God. I think one of the reasons that it is so hard is that we live in a culture that promotes a mindset of quick, fast and in a hurry. We rush in and out of fast food eateries, complaining if we have to wait longer than five minutes for our meals. We take our clothes to one-hour cleaners. We want faster Internet service. We grow restless in the grocery store, standing in the 15 items or less lane. Nearly everything about the American culture instills in us this sense of having what we want when we want it. It has created a nation of impatient people. When we find ourselves in prayer, waiting for God to take action on something, we sometimes grow tired, weary and frustrated waiting for things to change.

Who has the patience to sit around and wait to see what God is going to do in a situation when it’s just so much easier to leave the scene and do your own thing?

We do. Christians who are faith-filled and faithful should have the patience to do so. The Bible is filled with stories of people who waited on God. Abraham waited to have a son. Moses and the children of Israel waited to get to the Promised Land. Job waited for his life to be restored. Ruth waited with her mother-in-law Naomi for things to get better. In each instance, waiting brought the person closer to God and upgraded their faith, making them dependent on God.

That’s what patience can do for us. When we stop being impatient with God and learn to simply be still and know that God is working, that God has a plan and that God has our best interest at heart, we end up with a finished story like Ruth or the fulfillment of a blessing like Abraham. And our story becomes an inspiration and a testimony for others of the goodness of God. If we stop allowing our American culture to control and dictate our level of patience, steadily condensing our threshold for waiting on God, then we will emerge as more loving and kind people – the way that we were created to be – and God’s plan and purpose for all of us will become evident.

The opening verse in Ecclesiastes chapter 3 talks about everything in its season and everything in its time. Yet somehow this very concept seems to elude us today because our American culture has carved out this sense of entitlement of unearned right to have something when you want it. How would this have worked for the shepherd boy David? How would it have helped him to build strength and character, and more so reliance on God? When we become so set on self and our own needs and wants, we unknowingly are removing God from the equation.

What about the level of patience that Jesus exhibited? Don’t you know there could have been countless times when he could have been fed up with the doubting disciples and said enough? But Jesus’ impatience would not have advanced God’s plan for us. That’s right – for us. All of what Jesus did was God’s plan for us and thank God that Jesus had the patience to endure.

So what we can do. What steps can we take to restore the patience that God intends for us to have? First, we have to be willing to walk in God’s timing. Secondly, we have to understand that God is growing us through our waiting experience. And thirdly, we have to trust and thank God for what God is doing. God can and will create in you a clean heart – if you just ask Him. God can and will reveal plans for your future – if you trust Him. You might be saying “well I get tired in my waiting and it leaves me fidgety and impatient. Remember the words of Isaiah in chapter 40: they that wait shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles.”

See the Bible is not just about “them” it’s about us. It’s not just stories for us to read or listen to on a Sunday morning or Wednesday evening and then forget about and go on with our lives as if we’ve never heard them. These stories are for us to learn how to be patient and walk in God’s timing.

The other day I was taking my niece driving so she could practice parallel parking. How many of us with driver’s license remember learning how to parallel parking. She’s 17, recently graduated from high school and is a college freshman at a four-year university. She said to me, “I’ll be glad when I get my license because right now all I have is my driver’s permit.” She went on to tell me that when it came time to take her driver’s test, she passed the written part, and all of the driving part, EXCEPT when it came to parallel parking. Now don’t get me wrong – she is a good driver. She can handle the car pretty well, but driving, as my mother always says, is more than just getting in the car and hurdling along and putting gas in it.

For my niece, until she learns how to parallel park, she won’t be able to get her driver’s license. She’s getting anxious and impatient. I told her this: “you won’t always be going places that require you to just pull ahead, turn or back up; sometimes you’ll find yourself in a situation where the only parking space is one that requires you to parallel park. And if the department of motor vehicles went on and gave you your license today, they’d be doing a disservice to you and a disservice to the people whose cars are either in front of or behind that parking space that you need. You just have to be patient.”

That’s the same way it is with us. There are some things down the road in life that we cannot see with the temporal eye where we’ll have to pull up, zig zag in and back our way out of, but if we don’t have the patience to wait for God to prepare us for those situations then we’ll be doing a disservice to ourselves by trying to go on ahead of God.

If you don’t have the patience to wait on God you never get to know God for who God is. Without patience you’ll never know God as Jehovah Rophe, my healer or Jehovah Jireh, my provider. Instead you’ll hear other people talk about God in these terms and have no idea what they mean because you didn’t have the patience to wait through these experiences.

While you are learning to be patient, use that time to pray. Prayer changes things. As you are praying about your situation, God is increasing your level of patience. And in the end, you learn how to walk in God’s timing and to stop being impatient with God.