Love Focused Living
Strengthening ourFaith ~ Growing in Love
©2012 Bob and Judy Hughes, Love Focused Ministries, All Rights Reserved
God’s Solution For Impatience
By Bob Hughes
Very simply, impatience is the result of being delayed from having the world be the way we think it needs to be, right now. If I need to get the family to church on time, I’ll become impatient with my kids when they don’t get dressed quick enough and cause our departure to be delayed. If I need to get in and out of the bank quickly and the teller chats with all the customers ahead of me, I’ll get impatient. It’s the delay that causes the impatience. If there is one thing I think all people universally hate, it’s having to wait.
By Bob Hughes
Very simply, impatience is the result of being delayed from having the world be the way we think it needs to be, right now. If I need to get the family to church on time, I’ll become impatient with my kids when they don’t get dressed quick enough and cause our departure to be delayed. If I need to get in and out of the bank quickly and the teller chats with all the customers ahead of me, I’ll get impatient. It’s the delay that causes the impatience. If there is one thing I think all people universally hate, it’s having to wait.
The more important it is to have things be a certain way right now, the more impatient I will become if I get delayed. If I’m delayed at a railroad crossing by a train when I’m out for a Sunday drive, I probably won’t become too impatient. But if I’m racing to the hospital with my wife in the car and she’s about to give birth to our child, any delay at a railroad crossing will understandably produce impatience. The intensity of our impatience tells us how much we think we need to achieve our agenda right now and how much we are not trusting God’s timing for our life.
Some mornings on my way to the office I pull into a gas station to get gas. Sometimes I have to wait in line. Although it may be a little inconvenient, the wait doesn’t usually bother me all that much. But just this morning I got impatient when I was delayed by traffic for over thirty minutes. My impatience exposed my belief that I needed to get to my office on time before my first client arrived.
When I became impatient this morning, I was not choosing to believe God was in control and that His plan and timing were best. I was not choosing to trust God’s promise to cause “all things to work together for good” (Rom. 8:28 NASB). As a result, the delay in getting what I thought I needed caused me to become impatient.
When I became impatient this morning, I was not choosing to believe God was in control and that His plan and timing were best. I was not choosing to trust God’s promise to cause “all things to work together for good” (Rom. 8:28 NASB). As a result, the delay in getting what I thought I needed caused me to become impatient.
It may help us to remember that we are all “trying to get back into the Garden of Eden.” We all want to experience heaven now, where we are always happy and never experience pain or sadness. When our goal is “everything goes my way,” being forced to wait can feel like torture. Think of waiting in line to get into Disneyland. We know all that fun is just inside the gate, but we’re stuck in line waiting for everyone ahead of us to buy their tickets.
The solution to impatience is learning to trust God for how things turn out in our world. More specifically, we need to trust that God’s timing and purpose for things is good, even when our plans are delayed. Instead of trying to control people and things to accomplish our goals according to our schedule, we need to “fight the good fight of faith” and choose to trust God’s outcome, no matter what it is and how long it takes.
When we choose to believe God is good and that His love and grace are enough, over time, with His help, we will find ourselves becoming more patient. And the more patient we are, the freer we become to follow God’s plan, which is to love God and love others.
When we choose to believe God is good and that His love and grace are enough, over time, with His help, we will find ourselves becoming more patient. And the more patient we are, the freer we become to follow God’s plan, which is to love God and love others.