Impatient with God?

When I want an instant answer to prayer, I ask God to show me my sinfulness. Last night I started to read again “The Prayer Life” by Andrew Murphy. His first chapter is about the sin of prayerlessness. He says that being in the flesh rather than in the Spirit is the cause. So I asked God to show me what was keeping me from praying as I ought.

This morning, Charnock’s reading for today hit me with a short discussion on the patient wisdom of God. It says:

The most impotent persons are the most impatient when unforeseen emergencies arise; or at events expected by them when their feeble prudence was not a sufficient match to contest or prevent them. But the wiser anyone is, the more he bears with those things which seem to cross his intentions, because he knows he grasps the whole affair and is sure of attaining the end he proposes . . . yet, as a finite wisdom can have but a finite patience, so an infinite wisdom possesses an infinite patience.

Bingo. While I rely on God for patience with the important issues, I can get impatient over little things. While this does not seem connected to prayer, from reading this and thinking about it, I can see how my fleshy desire for instant results can keep me from talking to God. Without a quick answer, I tend to stop asking.

Today’s devotional reading was like putting salve on a sore spot. Here the focus is not on how foolish I am but on the wonder of what God has done about it. The author writes that to make me acceptable to God, my sin must be punished and His justice must be satisfied. Even the sin of not praying about everything deserves separation from Him forever. Yet the Gospel tells the good news: the only way God could both punish me for sin and save me from sin was by the “infinitely meritorious, voluntary and efficacious death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, my Substitute.” Jesus became sin for me, willingly assuming all responsibility for my neglect.

When Isaiah 53 says “He was despised and rejected” yet “pierced for our transgressions . . . crushed for our iniquities” — that includes all those times that I turn to my own way. Every iniquity was laid upon Him, not just the gross sins easily put at the top of the list but the things I do apart from His way without even noticing it, which seems worse than noticing it. He was oppressed, afflicted, yet patiently led like a lamb to slaughter and stricken for even the least of my transgressions. (Isaiah 53:1–8)

Impatience with little things does not seem so little as He shows me that I am actually impatient with Him. Even if I don’t move ahead and try to answer my own prayers, this shows up in not praying if the results take too long. And Hebrews 9 tells me that salvation is about “eagerly waiting for Him” not being impatient about it. (Hebrews 9:24–28)

PRAY: Jesus, I can see the connection between impatient with my impotence to do something about life’s challenges, and this foolish impatience with You when I bring those challenges to You. Who am I to think You should quickly do anything for me? And yet You have done all things that I need and are entirely patient with me. Forgive my attitude and actions and fill me with Your Spirit so I will always be eager to talk to You, even if in Your wisdom You decide this is not the best time for answers.