Tuesday, July 01, 2008

I KEEP THINKING ABOUT YOU

Surely you've noted I write once and sometimes twice a day. Do you know why? I keep thinking about you. Addicted to writing? No. Addicted to pulling for you? Obvious. When I'm at coffee sometimes I wonder about what you face. Tonight I just wrapped up watching Life Behind Bars where Larry King interviewed women in a Maryland prison. Life...all parts of it...often cause me to wonder or consider or root for you.

At this writing I encourage you to be patient. Patience was not a part of my old nature. It is my new. One doesn't work to become patient; but rather one learns to yield to patience. Patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. We learn to back off from taking control so He can produce from within us the fresh fruit of effectiveness: the ability to wait on God.

I think too many wonderful elements of life are aborted due to impatience. Preachers struggle with elders and the feeling is often reciprocated in some congregations. Husbands and wives have aborted their children through unnecessary, impatient divorce: quitting. Instead of growing old together in church or family, we have noted a trend of growing cold apart. We are simply giving up too soon. The straw which broke the camel's back is too often not actually the blamed act but, in reality, the lack of patience.

Yes, I love ambition and live an enthusiastic path. But one thing I've learned from the Holy Spirit is to believe God will work when there are no signs....yet. Sometimes it takes years to see dreams develop. Other times it takes decades. But work He does....and oh how mighty are His ways! We simply must keep waiting for breakthrough.

God's major characters were given great promises and on the heels of each was immediate information causing strong doubt. Some never entered the promised land. Really, only two originals out of two million made it. I think it was Max Lucado who wrote that such a ratio is one in a million.

You.....you need to break the code. Stop the insanity of giving up. Stop it. Learn to lead out by waiting. There is so much kingdom terrain to discover and we simply cannot afford to toss it to the winds of indifference because we are tired of waiting. Isaiah 40:28-31....is always true!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for thinking of me.

Anonymous said...

I was sure when I read this yesterday you had gotten into my head. I can't comment on blogs at work, but I thought of this post alot during the day.

I concluded that some of my perceived impatience is not that...it is a desire to move beyond the quicksand traditions that are still pulling people down and trying to take me with them. Sometimes hanging on to a limb is not enough. Sometimes you have to leave the woods to escape the quicksand.

But I needed the thoughts and appreciate you challenging my thinking.