Hurry Up and Wait

I hate that I am a product of our over-indulgent, instantaneous, self-gratifying culture. I don't want to wait for anything. Taking the time to cook a 20 minute meal feels like a small eternity, so I buy groceries that can be made in 10 minutes or less. Waiting for people who drive the speed limit is annoying. I avoid shopping on the weekends because the lines are horrendous.

Sad to say, this same attitude has creeped into my spiritual life. Perserverance? Yeah, right! I want God to meet me right now and it better be exactly the way that I want it to be. I tried to make a deal with God at the conference I attended in November. I said, "God, if you'll come and heal me, then I'll quit drinking from broken cisterns." I just want the quick fix. I don't want to wait...I want all of my problems solved now so that I can get on with my life. God's response? "I'm afraid it doesn't work that way." No matter how demanding I may be, God's ways are still higher than mine. He doesn't play by my rules. The truth of the matter is that God promises strength when we wait upon Him. Waiting usually means surrendering all notions that God works within our time table. I think that very few things with God are instantaneous. It's in the life-long process of waiting that God molds and shapes us into His image. John sent me a link the other day to Alan Creech's blog. This is what stuck out the most to me:

Letting Grace form and develop us takes a while. It is a lifelong process. Can we ever tell it's working? Sure we can. We will change - our desires, our attitudes, our emotions, our beliefs, and our actions. Notice which one I put last. Actions are the most exterior and temporary of the things about us to change. Yet, we focus on them more than anything. We are, by and large, ignorant. We DO have the capability to stop being that way - to get it and move forward. But again, it takes a while and we need to be patient with ourselves. We're pretty broken. And it's not simply a matter of waking up one day and thinking to ourselves, "I think I don't want to be broken any more" and then we just become "not broken." No, it doesn't work that way. And if it seems to for a time, it is that, only seeming to and it will fail. We need to get to the real thing - the deep and lasting thing - and forsake all this surface nonsense.
Let's move toward doing that. Grace be with us for this journey.

What is that saying...It's not the destination, but the journey that counts.

Romans 5:3-5
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.