Impatient or Patient?

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us.

Exodus 32:4

I recently read a humorous Prayer of the modern man: Dear God, I pray for patience, And I want it right now!" 

Impatience is a form of unbelief. It’s what we begin to feel when we start to doubt the wisdom of God’s timing or the goodness of his guidance. It springs up in our hearts when the road to success gets muddy, or strewn with boulders, or blocked by some fallen tree. The battle with impatience can be a long wait in a checkout lane. Or, it can be a major battle over a handicap, or disease, or circumstance that knocks out half our dreams.

One of the biggest problems that afflicts God’s people is Impatience. We want instant results. This is certainly true in our “microwave era”, although we see here that it was manifest in Moses’ day too. The people of Israel couldn’t wait for Moses to come down from the mountain. They couldn’t wait for God to finish what He was doing.

But aren’t we just the same way today? We are not willing to wait for God to work:

— We are impatient with His work in ourselves. Why aren’t we making progress spiritually?

— We are impatient with what He is doing in others. We give up on them way too quickly.

— We are impatient with His work in His church. We don’t allow time for God’s Spirit to use His word to grow people and His church.

Impatience is no small thing in the eyes of our God. In Psalm 130:5 the Psalmist records this relationship between the promises of God and the patience of the believer. How the Psalmist battles it out is recorded in verse 5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, And in his word I hope.

“Waiting for the Lord” is an Old Testament way of describing the opposite of impatience. Waiting for the Lord is the opposite of running ahead of the Lord and it’s the opposite of bailing out on the Lord. It’s staying at your appointed place, while he says Stay, or it’s going at his appointed pace, while he says Go. It’s not impetuous, and it’s not despairing.

Impatience reveals we suffer from spiritual amnesia. Impatient people have forgotten we live in the constant presence of the God who is working all things out in our lives for His glory and our good. The Israelites weren't sure that God loved them. They wanted a sign of God's love, or at the very least their leader Moses telling them that God loved them. Lacking these assurances the people decided to create something that was a tangible symbol of God's love. They chose a golden bull.

Our shaky faith attracts us to other gods--things we in which we place our hope and trust. Doubting the love of God and of others we become selfish and self-centered. Unconvinced that God will demonstrate God's love for us by providing for us we take for ourselves rather than give to others.

All of this takes time. Just like a crop, spiritual maturity and growth doesn’t just “spring up” all at once. Don’t give up yourself, your church, or others, and go off in the search for the next “spiritual quick fix.” You’ll be tempted with a lot of them these days, because many other impatient people are offering a lot of “shortcuts” to “success” in personal and church growth.

Dear Friends like Israel, we often let impatience get the better of us. We do this when we date the wrong person because we’re tired of waiting for the right one, or when we take on debt because we’re tired of waiting for our income to catch up with our taste. Giving into impatience often leads to sin, and sin always has consequences.

This Lenten Season let us not give in to carnal impatience by Stayin on the course. Planting our seeds, watering, and waiting for God’s harvest. Let us be willing to wait. Even when, with like Moses on the mountain, God seems to delay. Remember, Hebrews 6:12 says it is “through faith and patience we inherit the promises.”

God Bless You.