I hate waiting

 Michael Sprague

Hate Waiting? Impatient with your journey?

Waiting on a promotion…. a healing…. a prodigal to return home…a house to sell…a girlfriend… a breakthrough with your bravest prayer request? You wait and wait and wait yet many times God takes us on His roundabout ways. From your vantage point, the direct route seems to make so much more sense. God often has a different destination in mind.

Consider this…the shortest route for the nation of Israel to go from Egypt to the Promised Land would have been a straight line of 200 miles…sort of like Mandeville to Destin on I12 East. God choose the roundabout way. If the goal was a destination only, God makes for a lousy travel agent. The four-week journey ultimately zig-zagged into 40 years. Sort of like Mandeville to Florida by way of Detroit.

The lesson is—God is not in a hurry. God knows where His people are going is not as important as what His people are becoming on the way. Besides possessing a Promised Land without character can be downright dangerous. Along the roundabout way one learns patience and how to love God for God’s sake and not just for the milk and honey. Hearts change and trust in God grows. 

Think of an Oyster. Oysters have an amazing capacity to expel sand that gets inside their shell. However, occasionally, a piece of sand gets stuck inside the shell. How irritating! Frustrating! It drives the oyster crazy. Hence, the oyster secretes a white fluid to coat the sand over and over. Over a long period of time a pearl is formed. Ladies, if you wear pearls... do you realize you are wearing someone’s bad day. The point...No frustration, No PEARLS.

The same with us, without the roundabout ways, the zigzags, the irritations we will never become the PEARLS God wants us to become. Frustrated? Hang in there. God is at work and your Promise Land will come.