Gospel Gab: Learning to wait in an eager world

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Genevieve Guenther

Ava Hicks, Staff Writer

When considering the prospect of God working in your life the thought that usually comes to mind is an image of miraculous happenings and profound epiphanies. However, spiritual changes come in all magnitudes and levels of clarity.

More often than not, the times when you are experiencing the most spiritual growth is when you feel as if you are the most stagnant. It is so easy to feel like God is absent simply because you are in a dormant season of life.

As humans we desire immediate gratification, therefore not being able to constantly reap the benefits of growing in our faith can be extremely frustrating. Our society has conditioned us to rely on instant results through the use of online databases and state-of-the-art technology. This is in great contrast to how God works in our lives through a schedule of his own unique design.

Due to this season of waiting is so difficult to endure, Christians often elect to take things into their own hands and attempt to create their own path, regardless of what God is telling them. They truly believe that they know better than what the Lord has in store.

Not only will this plan utterly fail, but it throws a dangerous wrench in our relationship with the Lord. We are called to fully depend and trust in His will and by directly ignoring this statute, we significantly hinder our reliance on the Lord and bring nothing but pain and disappointment.

Even if we resist the temptation to take matters into our own hands, it can be so incredibly easy to make an idol out of our desires. Whether we are longing for spiritual growth, a relationship or some sort of earthly promotion, the very concept of achieving our desire can become an unhealthy fixation. This can eventually lead to resentment and anguish against God for making us wait for something that we so greatly desire.

It is so crucial to remember how beneficial a season of waiting is to our souls—even if we feel like nothing is happening and that no growth is occurring, the very act of waiting is building our patience and trust in His will. He has so many wonderful things in store, sometimes He just needs to work on us in other, more subtle ways before those things come to fruition.

Isaiah 30:18 says, “Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.”

If we truly desire to increase our faith and relationship with the Lord, we must pray for Him to give us the strength to accept His plan and delight in whatever He has in store. We must trust in His goodness and omneity and use each period of waiting to better ourselves as Christians and as individuals.