Dear Small Church Pastor
In the letters “Timing” and “Seasons,” I mentioned the concept of waiting on God. Allow me to expand on this concept.
Our natural self does not like to wait. The culture in which we exist prides itself on speed, all things immediate and following the quickest path to any destination on our GPS maps. Fast food restaurants abound with their drive-through windows, and we become anxious or, possibly, somewhat annoyed if we don’t have a response to the text we sent forty seconds ago. Essentially, we are addicted to not waiting.
However, our propensity to want things now, right now, is our undoing when it comes to the things of God. God’s timing and the seasons he brings into our lives do not go according to our addiction. God is not bound by time, space or anything else. We don’t have clocks and calendars for His sake. When God set the sun into motion and this planet revolving around it and spinning on its axis to create day and night and the seasons, I believe He did that for our sakes, not His. And no matter how much we would like to do it, we cannot speed up God’s created flow of time that influences our lives.
The idea that God is taking too much time to work out the answers to our prayers originates in our addiction. The urge to take control of a situation to see if we can influence how fast a resolution to a problem is discovered originates in our addiction.
Try as we will because of our addiction to quickness, we cannot alter for good any of God’s intended purposes that are being worked out in His timetable. I don’t mean to insult you, but neither of us is smart enough to take command of a situation and work it out faster and better than God can.
Here’s the rub in this matter of waiting—our natural self, our fleshly self, our sin-influenced self does not want to wait to get what it wants. That even applies when we are dealing with spiritual matters. The carnal self wants spiritual matters to yield to its desires, wants, whims and plans, and it wants them to yield NOW. Waiting is the absolute antithesis of our sinful self.
Because it is directly opposed to our “self” and its wants, waiting is an activity that must be enabled through something other than “self.” Waiting will have to come from a source that is greater than us. It must come from the only source of which I am aware that can overcome our addiction. That source is the Holy Spirit of God.
Those fruits of the Spirit described in Galatians 5 include longsuffering (patience) and temperance (self-control). It is only through the help of the Holy Spirit that you will be able to develop the self-control (being tempered) necessary to possess patience (being willing to wait) when it comes to your ministry. These two qualities are a couple of the evidences that the Holy Spirit is in control of your life.
If you are facing problems, needs, or anything else that causes you to seek God sincerely in your prayers, you will need to wait for God to answer your prayers. The best way to be able to wait for the answers is to seek God’s help in developing your patience and your self-control. Ask God to help you develop and demonstrate the fruits of longsuffering and temperance. Ask Him to fill you so full of His Spirit that these fruits become part of your daily life. Ask God to help you wait on His answers.
While waiting, resist the temptation to take back control of any situation you have given to God. While waiting, tell yourself regularly who the boss is and what He has called you to do. While waiting, quote aloud what you might call “waiting scriptures” like Genesis 8:1 & 12, Genesis 49:18, Psalm 5:3, Psalm 25:5, Psalm 27:14, Psalm 40:1 and the famous verse Isaiah 40:31. While waiting, write down every time God has answered a prayer at just the right time. While waiting, tell someone about how God has fulfilled His promises to you. While waiting, occupy yourself in ministry to others.
Above all, set your mind and will on waiting through the help of the Holy Spirit. You’ll have to choose to let Him, but God will help you wait.
Sincerely,
A Small Church Pastor