Galatians 5:22-23 (NLT)
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
Patience. One more day. I want to touch on one more aspect of the Israelites’ waiting before we move on.
Do you remember when you were a kid on Christmas Eve? Do you remember the anxiety and the excitement? Santa was coming. You knew you’d been good. Good enough anyways... Santa had a great big bag of toys with your name on it. Hopefully, the one toy you’d been wanting was on its way to your house. That special toy. For this illustration, we’ll call it an aluminum bat (I know, I know… Just play along!). You want nothing more than a brand new aluminum bat. So here we are.You just watched the weather report on the news and saw that Santa was flying through Memphis so you jumped in the bed, eager to fall asleep so Santa would be sure to stop by.
Falling asleep... (we're always waiting for something!)
You knew that if you could just fall asleep, dawn would come quickly but no matter how hard you tried, you lied awake. Some years, it seemed like hours. As you waited, your expectations for Santa grew and grew. That aluminum bat was so close you could almost swing it. Finally, you’re sleeping.
You wake up. Wide awake in a matter of milliseconds. You get out of bed and peek into the den and there’s a bat. It looks like a bat anyway. So you run and wake up your parents. They shimmy out of bed and turn on the lights and you run like a little river into the den to grab your bat.
Wait. Santa brought me a wooden bat. Oh. I mean, thanks. I guess. Inside, your entire body is writhing with disappointment. You wanted an aluminum bat and you got a wooden bat. Wow, Santa really let you down this time.
Welcome to the Israelites’ predicament at the time of Jesus’ birth. As they waited on their savior, they formulated many ideas about how he would come. With these ideas, great expectations grew. The more their expectations grew, the more they longed for the day of his coming. A mighty king would fly down from Heaven, destroy their enemies, and deliver them!
But it didn’t quite happen like that.
Instead of a mighty king flying down from Heaven, they got a baby in a manger. Instead of a mighty warrior destroying their enemies, they got a carpenter. Perhaps the most disappointing thing was that instead of a way out, they got a narrow road. We could sum it up like this: Jesus was not at all what they were expecting. Because of this, they rejected Him. The rest, as they say, is history.
The point is this: As we wait on God and trust Him with certain situations in our lives, we must expect the unexpected. Don’t cook up and implement a solution to your problem and then expect God to play along. Trust God and take the advice Solomon gives us in his book of Proverbs:
Proverbs 3:5-6 (NLT)
Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.
Wait on the Lord.
Choose patience.
