DO YOU GET IMPATIENT WITH GOD?
What are some of your go-to excuses to use when your patience runs out?
God knows I’m tired. I’ve been dealing with this for long enough. I already have too much on my plate as it is! Can something just be easy for once.
LORD COULD YOU PLEASEEE!
We want everything to happen immediately. Microwave quick. Ding, and it’s done.
Impatience is the child of Unbelief and Pride. It’s about being in control.
We want it now God, not later, or in the by and by, but now!
And when we’re not in control of how things are going, we become impatient.
Impatient with the situation, impatient with the people in our lives, and impatient with God.
We’ve gotten used to making a lot of decisions in our lifetime, and when we don’t get to make them all, we get angry about it.
Truth is, we don’t get to decide when we get sick. We don’t get to decide when we need to learn a lesson. We don’t get to decide when someone dies.
One thing that we can control is our emotions. So, we choose to get angry about it.
We get angry with God because he is the one who seems to be in control of everything.
The more we show our anger, the more we show that we lack growth and maturity.
Our lack of control is what has interrupted our plans, or so we say.
If I had things my way then ____!
When we grow impatient, we overestimate our ability for good judgement.
The quickest way to get rid of impatience is to humble ourselves.
Just admit that we don’t know everything there is to know. There are purposes beyond what we can understand, see, and know.
The humble are patient toward God. Humility breeds love.
Humility takes growth and strength.
Peter was a very prideful apostle of Jesus. One of the most arrogant ones in the whole bunch in fact.
Yet, here is the lesson that he wishes to share with us.
“Clothe yourselves in humility, self-reflecting and towards one another also. Because God opposes those who are proud, but he gives more grace to those who are humble” 1 Peter 5
Humility admits that we know very little about how things should transpire.
Imagine how farmers must feel. They have to wait for months without knowing if their labor will produce a good harvest. It’s what I call the Wait of the Harvest.
Can I have my harvest now Oh Lord? Haven’t I waited long enough?
He wants to ensure that we can handle the WEIGHT of the Harvest, so he makes us WAIT on the Harvest.
Consider a tomato on a vine. If the vine dresser doesn’t take time and set the stakes correctly/set the boundaries, the tomato will grow too big too quick, and weigh down its vine.
The tomato will get growth cracks. We’ve likely all seen it, maybe we just didn’t recognize it. This beautiful red vibrant fruit now has a long brown crack running through it.
Like the tomato, we can also get growth cracks, when we do too much.
Worry is evidence of a growth crack when we get what we want too fast.
Frustration, fear, anxiousness, self-reliance, arrogance, are all growth cracks we get when we grow too fast.
We got impatient and bought that car, then we lost our job. Growth Crack.
We got mad, quit the old job, went to a new job, and got laid off. Growth Crack.
We moved too quickly in that relationship, and now they’re gone. They have our money, heart, and dignity. Growth crack.
This is not at all what God wants for us.
God tests us to grow us slowly in patience, so we don’t get growth cracks.
Unlike that tomato that hit the ground, God will allow us to bend but not break.
He knows things are coming our way, so he teaches us to bend and not break.
Bend when the car won’t start. Bend when the loan didn’t go through. Bend when that relationship ended. Bend when you are told someone has cancer.
So you won’t break when the car gets reposed. So, you won’t break when you get evicted. So, you won’t break when someone dies.
We shall put our Trust in the Lord.
God knows what challenges we will face ahead, so he prepares us with patience.
We must learn to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God.
Patience really is a Virtue. Let’s embrace it!
This is a Thompson Truth
