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Don't Be An Impatient Procrastinator
by Steve Countryman We live in a microwave world. We want things now and hate waiting in line for them. In fact we hate waiting period! Most of us treat God the same way. The sad fact is that we pay a price for our impatience. Impatience with God in prayer will cause you to miss out on God's blessings for you. Impatience will cause you to compromise and settle for less by receiving the "good for now" instead of God's best for you. Every time that happens we show our lack of faith and trust in our God and His abilities. We show a lack of knowledge and time spent with God to know Him and His promises better. We show a lack of intimacy with our Heavenly Father. All of which shows an unwillingness to do the required praying, believing, trusting and receiving the answers we seek God for. An unwillingness to "wait upon the Lord". Impatience causes rebellion, anger, lack of faith and justifies staying in our sinfulness. It causes lack of accountability and responsibility for our own mistakes and leads us to blame God for our problems and troubles. Most of the time the delayed answers to our prayers are our own fault. Impatience to a fault. Not only do we not "wait upon the Lord" for the answers to our prayers but we also miss God's answers of our prayers. Because God didn't answer our prayers our way and in our time frame we think that God didn't answer our prayers at all. How arrogant to think that the God of the universe and the Creator of all things should need our instructions and time table to complete His work in our lives as He answers our prayers. Impatience will cause you to lean on the wisdom of man with your trust for your answers instead of God's wisdom and Word. That is like the pharmaceutical commercials on TV that claim to remedy your sickness with their magic pill. At the end of the commercial they give a list of possible side effects that can happen. Often the side effects are worst than your sickness. I equate that to drinking poison to remedy a headache. That sums up man's wisdom compared to God's wisdom! God's timing is perfect. Every time God answers prayers you can rest assure that it is the very best possible answer for you. It may not be the answer that you were expecting. It may not happen the way you expected. It may not come the way you thought it should. It may not be the size and shape that fits your preconceived notions of the answer to your prayer. It may require something from you or for you to do or you have to give up something. For God is not a partial God or a God who "kind of answers prayer" or partially answers prayers. God is not a god of convenience. God is God and perfect in ALL ways and perfect in ALL things. ALL of God's answers of ALL prayers are considered a blessing. All blessings come through someone else, be it through strangers, through God's Word written by a man or through a group of believers. It is how God works and how He answers prayer. One single answer to prayer can be a multitude of blessings to several people along the way to you. You might never know how many people were touched and blessed by God through His answering of your prayer. Mankind is great at procrastinating. We are impatient while waiting for God to answer our prayers but too often we drag our feet when we are asked to do something by God. Especially if it is something that we don't want to do, hate to do or we don't want to address. We try to reason and apply our logic to His request. We will ignore it by thinking it wasn't God who asked. By ignoring it we hope that it will go away, we hope that it will fix itself or we hope that someone else will do it for us. Impatient procrastinators make a mockery of God and His Word. How can we call ourselves Christian or be Christ like if we are impatient with God and procrastinate that which He calls us to do? Forgive us O Lord! Your faith is not your own. God has given everyone a measure of faith. But just like soap, it only works when it is applied. Declaring your faith by declaring God's will for your life right from the scriptures He wrote for you. Quote scriptures out loud when you pray and make them part of your prayers. God loves to hear you quote His Word back to Him. It will build your faith and trust in Him as you quote His promises over your problems. "Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength." To wait on the Lord doesn't mean that you pace the floor waiting for an answer. It doesn't mean that you put everything on hold until you receive your answer. A good definition of waiting on the Lord is to wait as to serve someone like a servant, waiter/waitress or hostess. It means that you continue to pray and praise the Lord daily as He sends the answer your way however long it may take. Just as the disciples waited on the Lord in the upper room until the Holy Spirit came. Of all of the ones who were told by Jesus to go and wait some of them got impatient and left. They missed out on the powerful in-filling of the Holy Spirit. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you the patience and wisdom to wait on the Lord and not to procrastinate those things of God. It is time to grow, it is time to mature in the Lord and it is time to stand! Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |