Waiting's Workout
Sounds like the beginning of an infomercial: Do you want to strengthen your resolve, tone your determination, and build your flabby virutes in to sleek hard packed values?
Use the Waiting Workout!
Already a very patient person, then try our advanced program: Waiting on God Workout. It makes the heart grow stronger!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
”Knowing this, that the trying of your faith works patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” (Holy Bible, James 1:3-4, NIV Translation).
Waiting exercises my patience. It’s often unpleasant exercise to me, because in many ways I see myself as the center of my world. I wonder why God doesn’t pave the way for me with rose petals and smooth trails.
I’ve read Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd . . . makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.”
Yet, I feel a persistent sense of anxiousness. If God is leading me beside quiet waters, doesn’t that mean He is guiding me to a place of calm and peace? If I don’t feel at peace, what does that mean? What are the green pastures? Doesn’t that mean that I’ll have plenty, and more to spare? What does it mean that he restores my soul? How long have I felt discouraged and defeated? Shouldn’t I be able to get some restoration just by asking? You know, “Uh, God, um. . . . reset my soul please.”
It would be like a video game. You know the kind where you’re firing at enemy ships or something. Every time they hit you, you loose health points, and if you go down to zero you die. Every so often a little flashing thing comes along that you touch and it gives you back some of your health points. Isn’t that what it should be like with the whole soul restoration business?
I’m missing a few things. The Lord is my shepherd and I am the sheep. Check this, the sheep are stupid, the shepherd is highly skilled and smart. The 23rd Psalm was written by a shepherd in the Palestinian region of the world. He would have had to lead the sheep through barren areas to get to from green pasture to green pasture. The shepherd knew where the best pastures where and the best way through the barren wastes to get to them. I guess I could stop right there for today, because that bit is rich with cool stuff.
Put yourself in the sheep’s place for a second. Your in a grassy area, but the lush tall grasses are running short. The shepherd urges you toward a small cleft in a rocky cliff that leads through a desert ravine. The shepherd calls, and you go. You follow the shepherd through arid places, through ravines, up embankments, and across difficult terrain. All around you there is nothing green. No water. Nothing to sustain life, but you follow anyway. Why? Because the sheep know the shepherd. The sheep know the shepherds voice, and it is natural for them to follow their shepherd. There is a natural trust.
In the Bible, Jesus called himself the good shepherd, and also said that his sheep know his voice when he calls. I’m a little different than a regular sheep in that I want to pick out my own path. Yet, I don’t have the wisdom and foresight of the shepherd to go it on my own. Just like regular sheep, when I go my own way, I go astray. So, here I am trudging through a desert complaining that God was supposed to provide a green pasture. I know better! This aint no green pasture it’s a desert. What I don’t understand nor can I foresee is that it is necessary to traverse the arid wastes in order to enter into the lush grass land oasis.
So this brings me back to waiting and patience. When circumstances or situations in life don’t make sense or I need help, I pray about it. I look to God to take me to the answer. Often I see no change in my circumstances or things may seem to get worse. I have a choice to work at continuing to trust God despite what I can see or to despair and lash out at God. It’s a daily decision or sometimes an hourly decision to say, “God, I don’t get what’s going on! I don’t like it, but I know that you keep your promises. I know that you are looking out for my best, and guiding me along. Please help me to trust you and follow your lead.” That moment-by-moment decision to trust even when God is making you wait is what builds patience and exercises your spiritual muscles.
Later,
Adam
http://www.sojournband.com/
Use the Waiting Workout!
Already a very patient person, then try our advanced program: Waiting on God Workout. It makes the heart grow stronger!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
”Knowing this, that the trying of your faith works patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” (Holy Bible, James 1:3-4, NIV Translation).
Waiting exercises my patience. It’s often unpleasant exercise to me, because in many ways I see myself as the center of my world. I wonder why God doesn’t pave the way for me with rose petals and smooth trails.
I’ve read Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd . . . makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.”
Yet, I feel a persistent sense of anxiousness. If God is leading me beside quiet waters, doesn’t that mean He is guiding me to a place of calm and peace? If I don’t feel at peace, what does that mean? What are the green pastures? Doesn’t that mean that I’ll have plenty, and more to spare? What does it mean that he restores my soul? How long have I felt discouraged and defeated? Shouldn’t I be able to get some restoration just by asking? You know, “Uh, God, um. . . . reset my soul please.”
It would be like a video game. You know the kind where you’re firing at enemy ships or something. Every time they hit you, you loose health points, and if you go down to zero you die. Every so often a little flashing thing comes along that you touch and it gives you back some of your health points. Isn’t that what it should be like with the whole soul restoration business?
I’m missing a few things. The Lord is my shepherd and I am the sheep. Check this, the sheep are stupid, the shepherd is highly skilled and smart. The 23rd Psalm was written by a shepherd in the Palestinian region of the world. He would have had to lead the sheep through barren areas to get to from green pasture to green pasture. The shepherd knew where the best pastures where and the best way through the barren wastes to get to them. I guess I could stop right there for today, because that bit is rich with cool stuff.
Put yourself in the sheep’s place for a second. Your in a grassy area, but the lush tall grasses are running short. The shepherd urges you toward a small cleft in a rocky cliff that leads through a desert ravine. The shepherd calls, and you go. You follow the shepherd through arid places, through ravines, up embankments, and across difficult terrain. All around you there is nothing green. No water. Nothing to sustain life, but you follow anyway. Why? Because the sheep know the shepherd. The sheep know the shepherds voice, and it is natural for them to follow their shepherd. There is a natural trust.
In the Bible, Jesus called himself the good shepherd, and also said that his sheep know his voice when he calls. I’m a little different than a regular sheep in that I want to pick out my own path. Yet, I don’t have the wisdom and foresight of the shepherd to go it on my own. Just like regular sheep, when I go my own way, I go astray. So, here I am trudging through a desert complaining that God was supposed to provide a green pasture. I know better! This aint no green pasture it’s a desert. What I don’t understand nor can I foresee is that it is necessary to traverse the arid wastes in order to enter into the lush grass land oasis.
So this brings me back to waiting and patience. When circumstances or situations in life don’t make sense or I need help, I pray about it. I look to God to take me to the answer. Often I see no change in my circumstances or things may seem to get worse. I have a choice to work at continuing to trust God despite what I can see or to despair and lash out at God. It’s a daily decision or sometimes an hourly decision to say, “God, I don’t get what’s going on! I don’t like it, but I know that you keep your promises. I know that you are looking out for my best, and guiding me along. Please help me to trust you and follow your lead.” That moment-by-moment decision to trust even when God is making you wait is what builds patience and exercises your spiritual muscles.
Later,
Adam
http://www.sojournband.com/
posted by Sojourn @ 4:32 PM
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