Waiting....Waiting....Waiting

I am so impatient.

From the littlest thing like hearing @ news (“tell me now”) to the more significant (“what will this 3rd baby of ours be…another girl?”), I am typically an unwilling, unhappy waiter.
When it comes to the more serious issues of life, and when this impatience crosses the line into character flaw & wisdom’s enemy, I plead for God’s power to face it head-on.
Impatience can be the arch-enemy of God’s purposes.
When it comes to prayer, when it comes to pleading before God’s throne for the accomplishment of His purposes in the world for His glory, I must patiently wait on His timing.
I am so quick to give up…in frustration, fading perseverance, or lack of faith.
Inevitably it will lead, then, to discouragement.
Yet….God hadn’t failed to answer; perhaps he just hadn’t answered yet.
Often God delays purposely, and the delay is just as much an answer to my prayer as the fulfillment when it comes.In my own heart as I trudge through periods of dryness and cry, “Oh, Lord, how long…”
In the lives of those for whom I pray, I plead, “Save their souls, open their eyes…”
In circumstances which seem to rip my soul apart, I bring my request, “Oh rescue me…”
In the pain I see in others’ lives which I, in human perspective, beg for their relief…
And even in the glory I sometimes glimpse, of God’s love, His holiness, His goodness, and groan in unrealized declaration by our dark world & yearn for all creation’s shout to this end—HE IS GLORIOUS—to be heard…..
I grow so impatient.
Yet….God hadn’t failed to answer; perhaps he just hadn’t answered yet.
Often God delays purposely, and the delay is just as much an answer to my prayer as the fulfillment when it comes.In the lives of Job, Joseph, Abraham, Mary, Saul of Tarsus, and even the human life of Jesus himself, there was a time when each could have looked on the present circumstance of darkness and cried, “Where is your Hand, O God? I do not see your promises.”
Yet, even in the darkness of Gethsemane and of the cross, the patience of God’s love persisted to see it to the end, to utter the cry at its completion, “It is finished”
Not impatient, but perservering in hope. And then the glory was revealed.
God hadn’t failed to answer; he just hadn’t answered yet.
Often God delays purposely, and the delay is just as much an answer to my prayer as the fulfillment when it comes.What is the ongoing challenge in your life? What is the repeated prayer of your lips that you continually bring before the Father’s throne? What is the longing of your heart for one you love that has long been brought in prayer to God?
Don’t give up.
Hold fast to the solid, unwavering promises of God that He does answer prayer to His glory for the accomplishment of His purposes.
In his timing and in the circumstances of His choosing.
May He grant us grace to never give up in our prayers toward that end.
Perhaps….God hasn’t failed to answer; he just hasn’t answered yet.