Don't Hurry God
06/01/09 07:37 Filed in: Devotions
Today I read Genesis 15-17 and Luke 6. I love reading about the biblical characters in the Old Testament and seeing how they lived their lives in the face of all the challenges they faced and with God interacting with them directly. Watching how Abraham responds to God’s covenant and telling Abraham that he will be the father of many nations and that he will have children who will produce a nation at his advanced age is fascinating. I wonder how I might have responded if God told me that kind of news. The thing that really struck me this morning was his wife Sarah’s reaction. She thought she would help the process along by having Abraham marry and sleep with her servant Hagar. It is always easy to play arm chair quarterback and judge how poor a decision she made by not waiting on God and believing that he could and would do what he promised. But I know in my own life there are plenty of times I have tried to speed up God’s plan in the name of ministry or doing what I think is God’s will. I have this problem of not liking to wait. I want to take on a project or task and get it done right away. I am the type of person who needs to keep moving to feel like I am being productive and to keep myself focused and in the game. Because of this, I have the tendency to want to speed up the process and not spend a lot of time waiting. After all if it makes logical sense why not give it a try?
Yet what I have learned over and over again is that God’s timing is perfect. If He truly is in control and believe he is God, then he really doesn’t need my help to make it happen. He sees the whole picture while I only see a small part. It is usually when I try to speed things up or get ahead of God that things don’t go well. I know this and have experienced this yet old habits die hard and I find that I still get impatient or worked up if things don’t proceed on my timetable. As a result I will make mistakes or cause stress to other people I am serving with or dump my frustration on them which then colors their perception of how things are going. I so wish I could be more content and less restless on things like this. I am learning but I know I have a long way to go.
Lord, help me to develop the discipline of waiting on you more. I want to make sure I act when you want me to act and wait when you want me to wait. I want my faith to extend beyond my salvation into the very details of life. Help me to be ok with waiting on you. Amen.
Yet what I have learned over and over again is that God’s timing is perfect. If He truly is in control and believe he is God, then he really doesn’t need my help to make it happen. He sees the whole picture while I only see a small part. It is usually when I try to speed things up or get ahead of God that things don’t go well. I know this and have experienced this yet old habits die hard and I find that I still get impatient or worked up if things don’t proceed on my timetable. As a result I will make mistakes or cause stress to other people I am serving with or dump my frustration on them which then colors their perception of how things are going. I so wish I could be more content and less restless on things like this. I am learning but I know I have a long way to go.
Lord, help me to develop the discipline of waiting on you more. I want to make sure I act when you want me to act and wait when you want me to wait. I want my faith to extend beyond my salvation into the very details of life. Help me to be ok with waiting on you. Amen.
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