Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Wait For God

David was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned forty years. In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and in Jerusalem he reigned over all Israel and Judah thirty-three years. -- 2 Samuel 5:4-5

The dictionary defines patience as the calm endurance of hardship or annoyance or inconvenience or delay. Patience also means perseverance, according to the same dictionary. The Bible lists patience as a Fruit of the Spirit. I list patience as something I crave but have never really tasted.

Samuel secretly anointed David king over all Israel when David was just a boy. God led His prophet to Jesse and his sons. God rejected them all -- until the youngest boy was brought in from tending the sheep. God chose David to lead His people and Samuel anointed David.

But David didn’t get a crown and great power that day. Or the next. Or the next. Years passed before David realized God’s promise to him. Those years tested David in ways he could never have imagined as King Saul tried again and again to kill David. Yet David refused to take matters into his own hands and end Saul’s reign. David trusted God. I want to have that kind of trust.

I’m one of those people who want it now. What about you? I’m not good at waiting. I know this about myself and I do work on it -- every single day. I do okay when I’ve got a roadmap of sorts. If I know the steps I must take, then I can handle it. Not easily but I can do it.

Many years ago I went through a season of troubles. It seemed that every time one thing got sorted out, another knocked me down. Despair was about to overwhelm me when one night I had a dream. The dream outlined everything I still had to go through but also promised that an end was in sight. Everything that I dreamed came to pass but as I sat in my broken down car on the side of the freeway, I felt peace rather than anguish. I’ve thanked God many times for sending me a roadmap and, thus, giving me hope.

So often we get impatient on life’s road. We want to see results and if God isn’t acting as quickly as we’d like, then we tend to just take care of matters on our own. That’s a big mistake. Think about Abraham and all the trouble Sara caused because she didn’t believe God would bless her with a child in her old age.

God’s timing is perfect but it frequently doesn’t seem that way to us. We live in a world of instant gratification. Patience is hard. Trusting God to take care of us, to provide for us, to bless us, in His own time and place is difficult. But, oh, the blessings that we’ll receive if we just take a deep breath and wait for God.