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Wait for it...

23rd January 2009

Why is waiting so hard?? I am sitting here at the airport (again) and thinking to myself about how frustrating waiting can be. I spoke to a friend of mine recently who travels a lot and asked him about whether he enjoys travelling. He responded with a fairly typical response saying... I enjoy arriving but not the sitting at the airports etc. As I sit here as patiently as possible I can honestly understand why he said that. It's so frustrating knowing where you want to go but having to wait to get there.

As I thought more about this I started to reflect back to the many times in my ministry that I desperately wanted something, and I wanted it now but for whatever reason it didn't come straight away.

Sometimes I wonder to myself why God would allow us to go through so much pain, I mean why not just give us what we want straight away? Doesn't he know we are ready when we ask for it?!!! As absurd as it sounds if we are honest this can sometimes be what we think. I remember standing in a park one time trying to lay an ultimatum before God saying ‘God if you don't give me what I want then I will walk away from you I can't handle this anymore!' As bad as that sounds I felt like God had abandoned me because I had to wait so long for what I wanted. I remember sitting there thinking to myself ‘God if you could wait for me for years while I did my own thing surely I can wait for you.'

Well now writing this blog years later you would think I would have learnt my lesson with this, but I still go through the same emotions when I desperately want something from God and it seems as though it is taking too long. Do you ever have that experience? You know when you really want God to come through on something, maybe you are wanting to be a youth leader, maybe you are really wanting to overcome a problem or maybe you are wanting success in the business world whatever it is I am sure most of you can relate to the experience of waiting.

In Acts chapter 1 Jesus tells his followers that they will need to wait for a gift he is going to send them. He goes on to tell them that the gift is the Holy Spirit, the ultimate enabler. The disciples where like yeah sure no worries we will wait. Little did they know what they were in for.

So some people gathered together waiting patiently for something (they were not even really sure what they were waiting for but they were waiting) I can picture some of them in the room saying ok we are ready now! And....Nothing! ok NOW!!! Nothing....OK THIS IS NOT FUNNY GOD ok try again Now!!! It honestly makes me laugh to think about it. I can imagine some people saying maybe if we worship harder, but still nothing, maybe if we pray harder, still nothing they must have tried to DO everything. So one by one the numbers dropped cause people could wait no longer. Then for no logical reason and out of nothing they did the Holy spirit falls on them. Almost as though God was trying to send a message to his people saying it is not dependent on what you do or do not do, it relies on nothing more than MY timing.

Think about how many times you have said if I just read my bible more than...or if I just pray more than... but what if the point God is trying to make by having this story in the bible is ‘It is not dependent on you. It will happen trust me! Just be patient and be ready'?

I mean if that is true and it has nothing to do with us it actually takes a heap of pressure of us when we just realise God is teaching us to just chill cause it will happen. Maybe he is trying to teach us to stop trying to earn it and be patient. Even though this is so difficult to do I wonder what it would look like if when we where waiting we just trusted God, we didn't question his timing but just trusted and loved him. I wonder how it would play out if instead of trying to convince God that we we're ready we just waited? I know it is a huge challenge but I wonder if we can do it?