Don’t lose your patience with God
Are you getting bored and frustrated, waiting for God's plans to unfold?
I struggle with patience. It’s so painful.
If a video takes longer than 5 seconds to load, I’m out. If you can’t tell me how your day was in a tweet, I’m zonin’. If the light is red and no one is coming… I'm tempted to risk my life and run the red.
In my spiritual life, this lack of patience leads me to idolatry.
The truth is that God chills. Don’t believe me? What did he do on the 7th day? That's right - he rested.
Have you ever thought of how frustrating that must have been for Adam that first week?
There wasn’t a whole lot going on and God was the only one who spoke his language. And it was Saturday! Time to BBQ! But they didn’t eat meat back then. Anyway…
I often wonder if that wasn’t the day that Adam and Eve ate the apple. I bet that was the perfect day for Satan to come along and mess with them, because the truth is when we get bored almost anything goes. That’s when we replace God.
Impatience leads to idolatory
Exodus 32 is probably the best passage on idolatry in the Bible. When the people saw that Moses delayed coming down the mountain they panicked and started searching for someone to replace God.
The Israelites went to Aaron and told them to come up with something new for them to worship. He asked for their gold earrings, and forged a small calf.
A calf! An overpriced statue of a baby female cow. Man it’s weird what we choose to worship over God…
Immediately they started praising and worshiping the calf for delivering them out of the hand of the Egyptians!
We look at them and think they’re crazy, but we’re doing the same exact thing with our jobs, ministries, friends and twitter accounts. We get bored. We replace God.
And here’s why that is even MORE ridiculous
Don't get bored with God
Their impatience was totally misguided. God was working in their lives the entire time!
It may not have been in their timing, but he was with Moses writing a law for them to establish them as his distinct people on the earth.
When it comes to idolatry here’s what you need to remember all the time: Just because we aren’t having an emotional experience does not mean God isn’t doing something for us.
So don’t ditch God, don’t put him in 2nd place, don’t turn away from him emotionally!
He IS doing something for you! He IS at work in your life! Be patient!
For me, I am always looking to feel like something deep and great is happening in my life. If I don’t feel like God is throwing down something epic for me, I get bored with God and I start to look towards people or things to give me comfort and purpose. That’s idolatry and it stems from impatience.
We must resolve to keep God first, no matter how “slow” we feel he’s moving.
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