Why Wait?
Theme of the Week: Impatience and What's Behind It
Ben Patterson
Friday, February 9, 2007
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Key Bible Verse: Those who wait on the Lord will find new strength. They will fly high on wings like eagles … run and not grow weary … walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:31). Bonus Reading: James 5:7-8, 10-11
A friend walked into the study of the great 19th-century preacher Phillips Brooks and found him pacing back and forth, terribly agitated.
"Dr. Brooks! What on earth is the matter?" he asked.
"I'm in a hurry," he said, "but God is not!"
Isn't that the way it often seems to be with God? You desperately want something apparently legitimate and worthwhile, and you're forced to wait. I've become convinced that at least as important as the things we wait for is the work God wants to do in us as we wait.
Waiting with grace requires humility. Our culture scorns humility. It values people who "take charge of their lives" and seize life by the throat rather than wait. You and I will receive no applause for waiting. Our humility comes from being clear that we exist for God's sake, not He for ours.
And hope is essential to waiting. There's a logic to the world's frenetic grasping for everything now. It has given up on a future that is anything more than an extension of the present. Since it has no great eternal hope to wait for, why wait for anything else? And many Christians live as though there were no tomorrow that shines with God's promises.
—Ben Patterson in Waiting
My Response: Could how I'm "going for it" betray a deficiency in my hope?
Thought to Apply: God is not in your appointment book; you're in His.—CHUCK SWINDOLL (pastor & educator)
Adapted from Waiting (InterVarsity, 1989) by permission.
Copyright © 2007 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine. Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity. 1 of 1
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Thank You, Lord, for Your infinite patience. Grant me a composure of spirit that reflects Your character.
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