Fast service, fast cars, fast phones, fast friendships, fast conversations, fast fast fast.
We want to get a taste of everything in very little time. This can be dangerous, as some of us have experienced, and we run into some sticky situations. But in addition to wanting everything fast, our generation is also passionate. Once we find something that we are excited about, that we thrive in, and feel deeply about, then you better believe something beautiful will come of that passion.
I was reminded of all of this while reading my "Women in the Bible" devotional series this morning about Sarai, the wife of Abram. (http://shereadstruth.com/) Yesterdays devotional talked about Sarai and her "just say yes" attitude, when God asked Abram to take his family, all he owned and up and move to Canaan. It's kind of cool because my parents are pretty much Sarai and Abram. When my dad was called to be a pastor, we had to leave our two story, 6 bedroom/5 bath, freshly painted (by my mother) home and move to a three bedroom, one bath little apartment. My sisters and I changed schools, we completely uprooted ourselves so that our family could walk obediently in Gods plan for us. Its assumed that it was just my Dad being called, but it wasn't. It was my Dad, my mom, my sisters and myself.
Sarai and my mother both had a "just say yes" attitude, they were willing to leave everything to follow the plan God had laid before them. This is where us as passionate generation comes in, we hear God speak and we respond without any hesitation, we are all in, no questions asked.
In return for Abram and Sarais faithfulness, God promised to bless them with their first child (for my parents it wasn't their first but their last and only boy aw!). I believe that the work we do as servants of Christ is not in vain, he sees the fruits we produce and I honestly believe he loves to be able to reward us for it. But dont get me wrong, I also believe that God doesn't owe us anything, the fact that he rewards us at all is above and beyond a blessing because let's be real, ultimately we don't deserve it.
Anyway, the tricky part of the promise for us impatient humans, is that he doesn't tell us when these promises come. We just have to know and trust in him that they will come when he intends for them to come. So what does that mean for us? We have to ... wait. oh my!
The curse of being a generation who wants everything fast, is that we are constantly searching for what's next. Where do we go from here? What can I get my hands on now? All of this quickly turns into restlessness when we can't find the answers to any of these questions. In our restlessness, we get these crazy ideas that we actually know what we're doing, that the plans that we have are way more than important than Gods plan. We know he made a promise, but we thought it was going to come right after he promised it and it didn't...so of course that must mean he probably forgot but its fine, we can take care of it ourselves. ha!
God promised Sarai that she would give birth to a child of her own and basically she said, "Aint no body got time for this" and took matters in her own hands, letting her husband sleep with their maid because she wanted a child so badly. (Genesis 1-6) If you read the selected scripture you will see just how uhm... "well" that whole I-got-this situation turned out for her.
But man oh man I can't help but think about how many times do we find ourselves in Sarais position?
We say "Yes God! We will leave everything, step out of our comfort zones because Jeremiah 29:11 and you know what's best for me!" etc etc etc. But then shortly after we're all pumped and ready to obey, we get restless and impatient. We sit there wondering why the order that we just placed a few seconds ago isn't ready yet and then we just leave and make our own food and it ends up being gross, then you end up throwing it away and you're still hungry.
Okay that was a bit extreme but do you see what I'm saying?
I know... well at least I hope I'm not the only one who does this.
Right now, I can relate to Sarai because I believe I am in a stage where a lot of my friends are in relationships, or engaged and just months away from marriages. And then there's me, in the waiting period of whatever God has in store for me in that area and instead of taking matters into my own hands and just signing up for christianmingle.com, I will wait because I KNOW that I will end up screwing something up and it just wont be a very pretty ending.
After taking notes from my devotional this morning, I wrote in my journal that "Our patience needs to be just as passionate and genuine as our initial "yes." When we say "yes" to God, we are saying yes to what happens right now, yes to what may happen later, yes to the waiting, yes to the unpredictability, yes yes yes.
And I know, its one of those things that is so easy to say we're going to do it, but once it comes to actually doing it... well lets just say the struggle is real! But imagine what we could be capable of if we truly tried to instill a attitude of stillness constantly in our lives?
We can't be halfhearted in this, if we are all in that means we are all the way in, no toe dipping, full body submerge.
So here's the encouraging/motivational last sentence; let's put on our big girl/boy suits, let's dive in, and be still.
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