Impatient with the Journey

Do you ever become impatient with God and His plan for your life?
           
If you answered no, you have another problem...you aren’t telling the truth!
 
All of us, including Steve Roll, from time to time, are plagued with impatience with our Christian journey. Patience with the process of walking with the Lord is not the strong suit of most believers. Honestly, you and I want everything our way, on our timetable while we walk with God..
 
Israel had an impatience problem.
 
The Bible tells us in Numbers 21:4 “And the people became impatient because of the journey.” Numbers 21:4
 
On the way to the Promised Land (a promised, prosperous land from God who keeps promises!), God’s chosen people lost their patience. In the context of our verse for this week, Israel spoke against God and their leader Moses (verse 5). Their impatience with the journey caused them to question the Lord and His servant.
 
Time and time again, as you follow their journey, Israel’s impatience caused problems for Moses and reaped negative consequences for the people. Ultimately, their lack of faith, fear of the future and impatience caused them to wander in the wilderness for forty years until the unbelieving, impatient generation died off. (See Numbers 13-14).
 
The Israelis paid a horrific price for impatience.  
 
Before you and I judge Israel, it is a fact that you and I, like Israel, have an uncanny ability to torpedo God’s very best for us through the spirit of impatience.  
 
Too often we fail to persevere through the process that matures our faith and makes us like Christ. We wimp out when we should hang in there with the Lord’s perfect plan for our life. The perfecting (making whole, complete, mature, lacking nothing) of our faith is a process that requires patience and endurance. No patience…. No perfection.
 
You and I can become impatient with pursuing a college degree, impatient with the dating, engagement and marrying process, impatient with receiving a promotion, impatient with servers in restaurants,  impatient with rush hour traffic on the highway, impatient with word processers (like the one I am writing on now!), impatient with healing, restoration, provision or direction etc.
 
We are tempted to become impatient when we experience setbacks, when progress crawls at a snail’s pace, when another Christian’s journey appears to be progressing faster than ours, when the harvest of our labor is less than expected, or when other people wonder why our life isn’t showing more fruitfulness and success. 
           
The fact you and I must face with faith is this: Our times are in God’s hands, not ours (Psalm 31:15).   
 
Meditate upon, chew on this thought for a moment: Who are you and I to be impatient with God’s plan for our lives? How dare we suggest that our Lord doesn’t know what He is doing because we become impatient with the process? God, and God alone, knows the beginning from the end and the end from the beginning. So who am I to dictate the direction and duration of my faith walk with Him? He, not me, planned everyday of my life before even the first day existed (Psalm 139:16). This type of erroneous thinking that I know better than God sounds arrogant and presumptuous doesn’t it?
 
Being patient with our journey requires faith. II Corinthians 5:17 declares “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” Our faith walk is a walk of faith.
 
Walking by sight instead of faith always creates impatience. Why? Because we don’t see what the eye of faith trusts God for. Impatience with our Christian journey says something about the maturity of our faith. Immaturity breeds impatience. Maturity cultivates a consistent patience with God and His plan for our life.
 
Good news! You and I can be patient (yes patient!) with our Christian journey because our Heavenly Father knows where He is leading us and knows how to get us there.
 
Questions We Need To Answer
 

• Do you trust God with your journey? 100% trust His plan?
• Do you believe God is at work when it doesn’t look like it?
• Do you trust God’s timing? Do you believe His timing is perfect?
• Do you believe you can grow through a slow growth season? Slow growth is not no growth. Slow growth is solid growth.
• Do you believe that God has a way of working all things together for your good?
• Do others say you are patient with your faith?
• Do you rejoice and enjoy the life in Christ journey you are on?

                       
The Christian life is a faith walk with God that spans a lifetime.
 
So how is your journey going? Are you plagued with destination disease…or are you enjoying each step of your walk with Christ?  Be patient, yes patient, very patient, with God’s process of perfecting your faith and enriching your journey with Jesus.
 
Patience with God’s plan always pays temporal and eternal dividends!   
 
“In your patience (endurance) possess your souls.” Luke 21:19 (KJV)
 
A Word For Your Week: Be patient with your faith journey in Christ.