God's Unplanned Growth Moments: The Discipline of Waiting

Gary Thomas, in a very insightful book titled Authentic Faith (which I highly recommend) writes: "All of us are born as selfish, arrogant, egocentric beings. Out of this beginning, we are asked to cooperate with God's Spirit to forge lives of selflessness, compassion and love."

To state it another way, Martin Luther, the great Protestant Reformer, said that the essence of sin is "people curved in on themselves."

Christian growth is all about being transformed, not at the surface-so that you say, "Praise the Lord" instead of "*&$#*-@#*!" when you hit your thumb with a hammer. Christian growth means radical change at the root of our beings-living a Christ-centered and other-centered life as opposed to a "me first" life.

How does radical transformation from self-centeredness to God-centeredness take place? The most popular idea in Christian circles regarding how Christians grow to become more Christ-like concerns things we control: a Christian grows through fellowship, prayer, Bible study, etc. Biblically, however, it is quite clear that the bulk of our spiritual growth is rooted in things that we don't control; things such as waiting, pain, and persecution.

Let's look at one of these things that we don't control very briefly, the discipline of unplanned waiting. Americans are terrible "waiters." We drum our fingers as we wait for our computer to download a massive file thinking, "Come on, why is it taking 10 seconds? I need a new computer." We stare in frustration at the microwave because we have to hit the reheat button "again." We spend decades pounding sinful habits into our lives, and then we are frustrated with God for not delivering us from the desire for these things-even though we've prayed about it for weeks. We form utterly destructive patterns of relating to our mates for 20 years, but we give up counseling after four sessions saying, "Counseling didn't work for us!" We run up tens of thousands of dollars of debt and the complain that "we don't know why God isn't helping us dig out of our financial hole, even though we are really trying!"

God in the Bible often makes his children wait. Abraham waited 25 years for God to fulfill his promise of a son-a promise that Abraham received at age 75! Moses waited 40 years in the desert and then waited through 10 plagues and then another 40 years before Israel was ready to enter the Promised Land. A couple recently told me that the wife prayed for her Jewish husband's salvation for 45 years. He just received Christ at age 73.

Why does God make us wait for healing, for a loved one's salvation, for freedom from addictive craving, for fruitfulness in ministry, for a mate, especially when God could give us all that we are seeking this moment?

Waiting challenges the illusion that life is subject to our control. Waiting forces us to live according to God's schedule, not our own. Waiting confronts us with a clear choice-will we continue to trust God, love God, obey God, and hope in God even though we don't yet have what we desperately desire? Most importantly, waiting loosens the death grip we have on this world and causes our souls to cry out for the coming of God's Kingdom.

The next time life forces you to wait-in line, in answer to your prayers, for healing, for changes in a relationship-why not say along with the Psalmist: "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his Word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning" (Psalm 130:5-6). And say to yourself when you are waiting: "It is good for me to wait. This is an unplanned growth moment sent by God to me. And because God knows not only what I need, but when I need it, in Him I will rejoice!"