Waiting

I don't like to wait. Let me rephrase that. I HATE to wait. And yet I do so much of it.

I wait at red lights
I wait in line at stores and restaurants
I wait for the preacher to finish his message so I can go home and eat
I wait for lunch and supper to be ready
I wait for someone at work to relieve me so I can take my lunch break

   And I work in an emergency waiting room, and it is obvious that I am not alone in hating to wait. People will often ask me how busy we are before they even sign in (one sign it is NOT an emergency, if they can put it off til another day). As soon as people sign in, they ask how many people are ahead of them. If we are busy and have a full waiting room, people come up and ask how much longer it will be. Hello! It is a WAITING room!

   And we have all sorts of things to help us not wait, or at least not wait so long:

Microwave ovens to cook or heat our food gaster
Fast food restaurants, so we can get our food faster
Drive through windows to get serviced faster
Minute rice, so we can have rice faster.....
Self-checkout lanes so don't have to wait in long lines

   I firmly believe the majority of Christians today, myself included, do not have the spiritual depth and maturity of Christians in the past. I believe there are multiple reasons. We have watered down the Gospel, we create our own Gospel and reason around the Bible and make it fit our lifestyles, instead of using it as a guidebook on how we live. We are too busy, too wrapped up in entertainment. The list could go on and on, but I think a big one to add is we don't want to wait on God Himself. We are so into this not waiting, that we can't wait for the very God of the universe.

  Psalm 37:7 is just one of several verses that talks about waiting on God:
Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him;
Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way,
Because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.(NKJV)

   I have a hard time waiting on God. When I am praying, I do too much of the talking, and it is hard for me to shut up and wait for Him to speak to me. I am too geared for not waiting, so I keep talking and God waits for me to be silent. And I rarely am.

 And it doesn't stop there. I have prayed and prayed for things to happen, and it doesn't take me long to give up on the answer. I, and many others, want a drive through God. Just pull up to the window, order one answered prayer to go, and be on our way. But it rarely works that way. Most of the time it doesn't. That answer to prayer might take weeks, months, years...... even a lifetime.

  So many of us walk away muttering "I knew He wouldn't answer it", or "He just doesn't care about my problems." But He does. His timing is rarely our timing, and maybe He just wants us to do that dreaded word: wait. Maybe some of our unanswered prayers are just cases of us not being willing to wait, and we gave up on the answer. Maybe.

  Not everyone who comes into the hospital waiting room minds waiting. Some people sit there very patiently, waiting to be seen. And some sit there and wait on their relative who is being seen. And some of them decline to go back to the patient's room, and just sit there, and wait. 

  Life today is fast-paced. We are busy, and that plays a large part into why we don't want to wait. That, and we are impatient. But God doesn't change to fit our fast paced lives. Just as countless Christians down through the centuries have waited on Him, He expects the same from us. And really, if we are honest, if we can't wait on Him, we are telling Him we don't have time for Him.

  Waiting isn't fun, but often it is followed by something good and worth waiting for:

Wait until marriage for sex, and have a more fulfilled marriage and sex life.
Wait for supper, and enjoy a wonderful meal.
Wait until you have money for that item you want so badly, and enjoy it without credit card bills and interest

Wait on God, and the possibilities are endless.