The Wait Was Worth It

 Life is filled with a series of appointments. People have to be at certain places at certain times. They rush around trying to get to the appointed destination on time. How many times has that happened to you? Yet once you arrived, you were forced to wait. We hurry up to wait. 

Most people do not like waiting. We want instant everything. Coffee. Tea. Rice. Tax returns. Success. We do not like being delayed in our gratification. We are forced to wait. I am convinced that God builds waiting into our lives to teach us, grow us, and mature us. 

Waiting happens everywhere. Waiting at the doctor's office. Waiting at the bank. Waiting when buying a vehicle. Waiting at the check out line. Waiting on the telephone when put on hold. As I write this, I am in one of those situations. Forced to wait. It is a lesson in patience, which I admit I have not excelled in during the course of my life. By nature I am an impatient person. I do not enjoy waiting. I was informed my waiting will last two hours. UHHHHHHGGGG! Not in the drive through line. Not at the doctor's office. Not now. Not anywhere. 

There is nobody I have waited on more than God. Waited on His guidance. Waited on answered prayers. Waited on open doors. Waited on breakthroughs. Waited on inspiration for sermons. God has used all these circumstances to teach me patience. Along with patience I have learned lessons in perseverance. 

If we are not careful, we can live our lives impatiently with what I call destination disease. We want to hurry God in getting what we want. Hurry him to get grown. There are many valuable lessons to learn through childhood and adolescence. We want to hurry God to get out of school. The rigors of academia have a purpose in teaching us discipline. We want to hurry God to get married and many times those marriages do not work out because one or both parties were not ready and mature. People hurry to buy homes they cannot afford, to get to the top of the ladder at work, rather than working their way to the top. God has to develop character and give wisdom to match assignments at the top. People want to hurry and by pass that whole process. People want to hurry up and have everything others may have taken a life time to build and enjoy. 

I am banking on the fact that more than one of you reading this right now is waiting on God for something. Waiting on God to help, to answer, to heal, to guide, to provide, to open the door, to get to the top. My whole day is stuck in park waiting in my circumstances. There are lessons to be learn in the waiting like this blog. How ironic that I would write about waiting while being forced to wait. 

When I go on a trip, I am so focused on the end destination that I miss out on some of the hidden pleasures along the way. It is the same way when we have an end destination we want God to give us. We convince ourselves our lives would be happier, more fulfilled if we just got what we wanted. God knows better. He knows that there are valuable lessons to be learned while waiting. Joy can be found on the journey as well as getting to the end destination. 

One of the benefits of waiting, is you appreciate things more. I wanted a record player as a child. It consumed my thoughts. Wisely, my mother did not go out and just buy it for me. She made me work to earn it. I had to work for seven weekends before I had enough to buy it. Guess what? I appreciated that record player immensely more than I would if it had just been given to me. I can still picture it vividly in my mind. 

God had me wait on Brenda. I wanted to marry her while still in college, but God knew I was not ready to be her husband. We actually ended our relationship for a year. I grew closer to God during that heartbreak year than I had done previously. God forced me to wait, but the reward of her was worth it.  Thirty years later I treasure her more because I know how much prayer and patience went into forming our relationship. She is even more than I could have imagined as a wife. Beyond my dreams. I would marry her all over again in a second without any hesitation. 

I left Spring Creek Baptist Church as a youth minister in 1993. We served some wonderful churches after that and met people we still treasure in our hearts. When God brought us back to Spring Creek after a 30 year absence in 2019 I felt at home. Like I belonged. I waited a long time to get back to that church. I often dreamed about it, but doubted that it would ever really come to pass. Now that I have been there for two years, I do not take those people nor God's work among us for granted. The wait was worth the reward. Whether I am teaching a a couple of dozen or over a hundred, I truly treasure that flock and the blessing to get to serve among them. The wait has been worth it. A million times worth it. 

If we can experience that in all these temporal areas, what will it be like in eternity. One millisecond in Heaven will be worth all the waiting through trials, sorrows, and pain. 

Maybe you are waiting on God today. Maybe your long desired answer is a little further away. Maybe in this waiting period God is teaching and producing character in you. As you wait, learn to enjoy the journey. Learn to value the lessons learned along the way. When God answers and gives you what you have waited so long for, I am bet you will appreciate it more. You also just might discover that the wait was worth the reward.