Wait!!……. Do I Need To? Do You?

Aghhhhh, how I hated this word growing up and before I even knew what I wanted or even needed.
Have you ever been in a hurry to get to an appointment, secure a contract or even finish a long time project, only to be stopped in traffic by the street light saying “Stop or in another word Wait”?
How about coming home after a stressful day and your wife says ” Wait, honey the meal will be ready in five”
What about having a loved one in the emergency unit of a hospital, and you are itching to see him or her and the receptionist or nurse tells you “Wait, you can’t go in now.”
I can go on and on with various scenarios but the truth is it’s not usually easy obeying this word when we hear it. Adrenaline pumping, sweats running down your face and palm as a result of anxiety, speed level intensified only to be told “Wait“. Frustration, anger, tension takes over. Often times we loose ourselves in the process.

The question is how long do I have to wait? How long do you have to wait?

Over the years, I have discovered that one of the secrets of enjoying today and embracing today is learning to wait.
I don’t mean simply passing time or wasting time, I mean learning to wait and learning from it. There may be times in your life when you feel you are in a “waiting room”. You know you have an appointment with destiny, but it seems to be a long time coming. You wait and wait, but no one calls your name, you do not move to the next step or make any progress towards your dream. You just simply wait.

How you handle this time of waiting, even though it may be difficult, is very crucial to your current life and to your future. As a matter of fact, you will probably spend more of your time waiting on the fulfilment of the dreams God has given you for your life than you will receiving them, so developing the ability to wait patiently and expectantly is very important.
The attainment of the highest point of our dreams and goals can occur in a moment, but we often wait for them for years. The attitude with which we wait determines our level of enjoyment.

James 5:7,8 gives us valuable instructions about waiting; ” So be patient, brethren, as you wait till the coming of the Lord.”
See how a farmer waits expectantly for the precious harvest from the land. How he keeps up his patient over it until it receives the early and late rains. So we must also be patient. ” Just as a farmer has to wait for harvest after he plants a seed, you will also have times of waiting after God plants seeds of dreams or desires in your heart.

Oftentimes, the reason why we must wait are connected to our attitudes. If we tend to become jealous of others who already have what we are waiting for, if we have pity parties and focus excessively on ourselves and our lives, if we allow ourselves extreme emotional ups and downs, or if we complain about how long we have to wait, then we are not demonstrating godly attributes. These attitudes are the very things that must be dealt with and worked out of us before we can receive God’s promises and handle his blessings with maturity. Many of us are not matured enough to handle the blessings we are asking for from God and when he says “Wait”, he’s training us to be able to handle the blessings. God promises and handles his blessings with maturity and he expects us to do same.

I can boldly say that my attitude is more important to God than my getting what I want or need. He knows if I have a good attitude, I can be joyful no matter the circumstances. Can you?
When we are waiting for the fulfilment of a promise, there is a purifying work that must be done in our lives to equip us for what God has put in our hearts. We must be prepared, and preparation is a process that requires time. It just can’t happen any other way, or by the snap of our fingers.so we need to learn to wait.

If we understand that waiting is an important discipline and learn to wait with positive attitude, we can and will enjoy waiting period and stop seeing them as “Delays”. Learn the lessons we need to learn during the time of waiting.
The inability to wait is one of the major reasons people do not enjoy their everyday lives. They are so focused on where they are going that they don’t enjoy the journey that gets them there.
They allow themselves to become so consumed with tomorrow they completely miss out on today. As a result, they never see the fulfilment of their dreams and visions simply because they don’t understand the importance of waiting and enjoying the journey.

” Patience is power, patience is not the absence of action; rather it is timing. It waits on the right time to act, for the right principle and in the right way”- Fulton J Sheen”.