Waiting on the Lord is a call for patience. Patience is an absolute major requirement if we are going to accomplish anything significant with our life for God. Patience is a character trait that can’t function without wisdom because patience can quickly and easily turn to laziness and indecisiveness. There is a delicate balance between passion and patience. We are required to be patient because we are not sovereign, and in order to achieve our goals, many things over which we have no control need to fall into place. Impatience tempts us to try to control things we have no power to control, to create change we cannot create, and to move what we have no ability to move.

Over the 46 years of leading Jefferson Baptist Church as Pastor, I have made more bad choices because of impatience than for any other reason. Impatience has caused me to get irritated with people who slow me down or who create roadblocks. Impatience has caused me to get irritated at God because He isn’t fixing problems like I want Him to. It is interesting to me that I have struggled with impatience because farmers as a whole are more patient than most. After all, the weather is such a major part of success and almost every farmer knows he can’t make it rain.

I have come to believe that the reason God requires much prayer for Him to do much is because prayer for the same thing over and over for a long period of time develops patience in us with God. And we have no idea how much prayer is needed or how long we must persevere in prayer before God acts. Waiting on the Lord and praying to the Lord are basically synonymous in the Bible.

God’s main goal is to make us like Himself in character, and He knows that waiting is the main catalyst for growth, so because I have so much growing to do I am prepared to wait patiently for God to work and to persevere in prayer. Come on down to the “five days of prayer “ and wait with me, and you too can grow.