Thursday, January 23, 2014

Wait Training




“Lord, give me patience and give it to me now”.  Does this sound familiar?  It seems to be the prayer of Christians in today’s fast paced society in this age of instance gratification.  My prayer requests were once frequently similar to this; I gave God my laundry list, and then politely suggested fast time frames and methods in which they should be answered.  I often found myself frustrated that my prayers were not answered immediately until it dawned on me that they were, but the answer was usually “Wait”. 

God’s timetable is much different than our own.  We live in the present moment while God is outside of time.  He can see the past, present and future with equal clarity and he knows the ramifications of answering prayers before the appropriate time.  Looking back, I am very thankful for some prayers that were not answered according to my timetable.

Just as muscle strength and endurance is gained by consistent weight training over a long time period; we gain spiritual strength and endurance by waiting on the Lord and remaining consistently “in him”.  There are those that take shortcuts to physical development and athletic accomplishments by artificial means; but let’s be real- those big muscles on the bodybuilders are not real; nor are the home runs, bike races won etc. that are produced by steroids or other artificial means.  Certainly a lot of hard work and training went into producing any world class accomplishment, but if shortcuts were taken, it’s not real.

We can pray earnestly but if we fail to wait on God, are we not trying to take shortcuts ourselves?  God calls us to “Be still and know that I am God”.  Pray- and then wait…… and trust.