Impatiently waiting on Patience!

If patience is a virtue, then I’m not a very virtuous man. I like to think I’m patient, and compared to the idiot honking his horn the moment the light changes green I am. But I’m really not that patient. The other day I was trying to refurbish an old cabinet we picked up for free to place in our home office. I put wood filler in the nail holes and scratches so it will look good when we paint it. You’re supposed to let the wood filler dry “all the way” before you start sanding. Well, “all the way” is a relative term to an impatient man, so when the outer covering was hard I began sanding. It wasn’t long before I discovered I didn’t wait long enough and the wood filler really wasn’t dried “all the way.” So I get to do it again (doing something over is torture to an impatient man).

For a long time, God has been working with this issue in my life. He has a tendency to bring things up again and again until we get them right. Evidently, I’m not making a ton of progress on this issue because he brought it up again as I was reading my Bible the other night.

The Scenario:
Moses frees the Israelites from 400 some years of slavery in Egypt. After numerous plagues and signs to the Pharaoh to show God’s might, the Pharaoh finally lets the Israelites go. Now, God had promised to give the Israelites their own land, a land flowing with milk and honey, but they weren’t going to get all of it right away. Listen to what God says to the Israelites in Exodus 23:29:
“But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.”

I see patience as waiting weeks and months. God sees it in years. First of all, the Israelites had already waited 400 years to be free from the Egyptians. Now they are free, but they have to wait even longer to receive all of what God promised them. But I love what God said – “until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.” God knew his people had to grow to be able to handle what he was going to give them.

I think he does the same with us. In our ministries, in our relationships, in our futures we wait on God to do something. Sometimes that wait isn’t about God - it’s about us. God is growing us to be able to handle what he wants to give us next. He wants to make sure we’re dried “all the way” before he uses us.

So, there’s another lesson from God to a man who’s impatiently waiting on patience.