Most of our culture has a very short time they are willing to wait. I remember when I was a kid and wanted something – I had to wait. Cartoons came on TV only on Saturday mornings mostly. If I wanted to hear my favorite song I had to wait for it to come on the radio. Now, I was born in 1980’s so I’m sure some of you will read this and recall even earlier times with no landline phones, indoor plumbing or air conditioned homes. I can only view things from what I’ve experienced.
The thing is, when I look at society as a whole, we don’t like to wait. Studies show that the average person loses patience after 2.5 minutes of waiting. Yes I said it – 2.5 minutes. That is shocking to me. Noah waited 40 days before sending the raven. Eventually, the dove brought back the olive leaf. Noah didn’t have cable to find a movie, apple music or social media to “mindlessly scroll” on Facebook. You know how people will text or message you and if you don’t respond in 1 nanosecond they go into panic mode? Noah would have had a hard time since mankind was having a permanent pool party. But he had to wait…….sad to say, “we”, including myself, don’t like to wait.
Isaiah 40:31 says, “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” We love to quote that one at church but soon after leaving service we get frustrated while having to wait 2 minutes for the red light to change so we can go eat. Psalm 62:5 says, “My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him.”
Even when I consider to watch a movie, I will look for “reviews”. I like doing this simply because my time is valuable and I feel like I’ve wasted it if I don’t enjoy the movie. When I do this, I am trusting someone else’s experience and assuming that it will be the same for me…..
BOOM! Are you ready for this….. we do this in our walk with GOD! We have devotionals, books and apps on our phones. These are “reviews” and we are trusting other people with our time so that it saves time to get our “time with God” done quicker so we don’t have to “wait” for the experience and get all of the other things done that we have to do. A lot of this is “negative confession” because I am like this – I don’t like to wait. Now, in church the Pastor is VERY important, especially ours. He takes what he teaches very seriously and I definitely trust his “review”. But on the other side of the coin, God works on each one of us totally different – the Holy Spirit convicts, shapes and molds us in many different ways. Church needs to be the introduction of our book not the whole story.
My children have it the worst – they don’t have to wait for anything. Mostly poor parenting on my part but if they want to watch, listen or read anything it’s delivered instantly. Amazon delivers to our door and groceries are delivered to our car. I will admit both of these services are kind of nice but it seems like we don’t have to “earn” things or put in the work to receive the
reward. We let the other guy do the heavy lifting. Do we do this in church? We let the Pastor do the heavy lifting most of the time. Like I said, it may just be me that feels this way. I hope it is because that means there is a little less work to be done for a very impatient society. Remember the old ketchup commercial? “Good things come to those who wait.”
Just remember…. waiting on the Lord has many more benefits than ketchup!
By Jason Thomas
