Waiting…easy or hard?

Exodus 32 Do you have trouble waiting–especially for God to act, to speak, or “fill in the blank?”

Do you become impatient? Do you want to wait, but circumstances take over, and you decide to take matters into your own hands? The Israelites had just said, ‘we will obey.’ Yet when a test came into their lives to wait, their commitment was shallow.  When the people “saw” that Moses still had not returned, they made a decision: Moses’ God wasn’t working on their time table. It won’t be the last time these Israelites have a problem with waiting. They became impatient with Samuel and said you are old and your sons don’t follow, so appoint us a king. King David’s prayer life reveals that he must have had trouble with waiting too, for he wrote three times for God to help him in ‘waiting.’ [Ps 17:14; 37:7, 62:5]

Why do we have a problem with waiting? We misperceive time. The drama of leaving Egypt was still fresh in their minds, and they were anxious to get to the Promised Land, yet God knew that they needed the skill of waiting because time had always been determined for them. Now they were being tested to see if their commitment was real. Sometimes as we wait, we yearn for routine, and we get bored. Without a routine, we get lazy, and we become discontented; we lack a commitment to the cause. Like the Israelites, we do not have perseverance. We think we have the plan all figured out, and we want God to do it ‘now.’ One author put it this way; Waiting reveals the best and the worst in us and also reveals our lack of understanding that God doesn’t work on our time table.

Are you having trouble waiting? Cultivate this skill through prayerful meditation and study.

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The Blah Days…How Do You Get Through Them?

There are days when it feels like you have experienced nothing but the blahs, nothing but problems, as if someone has used you for a punching bag. Do you turn to a self-pity party or do you turn to God? How does turning to God change your perspective? In all these three psalms (86-87-88) the authors find themselves in such straits and offer to us the prescription for those times.

What to do: Center your focus upon God through prayer…the psalmist cries out: God incline your ear to me, be gracious to me.

State the circumstance to God: I am needy, experiencing affliction, trouble, feeling forsaken by friend and foe, and even sometimes feeling alienated, abandoned, alone, rejected, hidden from God’s view.

Be honest: Sometimes even feeling angry at the circumstance, at friend/foe and even God.

Remind yourself of the character of God:  God you are good, forgiving, slow to anger (unlike “me”), abundant in lovingkindness (said 3 times which is a good reminder for all of us), great, comforter, deliverer, helper, merciful, gracious.

GOD YOU ALONE ARE GOD!

This is how you get through those times we all experience from time to time. So when you feel like you have experienced the “one-two-three punch” follow these steps and find peace, reconciliation, and a renewed view of the circumstance.