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.

Justice or mercy — or both?

Loving parents fall into a quandary when they make a rule that requires strict obedience, their child breaks that rule, and the parent feels terrible about inflicting punishment. If there is none, rules will be meaningless. If inflicted, the relationship will likely suffer.

Think of God in Eden. “Do not eat that fruit” and when it happened, the justice of God pleads for punishment, but the mercy of God pleas for pardoning. What is a loving God to do? How does the all-wise God deal with this situation?

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Jesus died to take our punishment — “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” And the love of God sent Him to satisfy the demands of both justice and mercy. Justice is served by the shedding of His blood without one drop of our own.

As Charnock writes, the riches of grace are twisted with the terrors of wrath and the depth of God’s mercy is wound about the flaming sword of justice and that sword of justice protects and secures the depth of mercy. Because of what Jesus did, justice cannot complain for want of punishment, nor mercy for want of compassion. This infinite sacrifice satisfies justice and delights mercy and shouts out to us the wisdom of God.

How amazing that God is righteous without being cruel, and merciful without being unjust. His mercy shines in the midst of all that sin deserves. Yes, all have sinned and fall short, but we…

…are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. (Romans 3:24–25)

As Charnock points out in his section on the wisdom of God, both justice and mercy would be unknown if one of them been sacrificed for the other. Had we been solely fostered by mercy, justice would have forever been secluded. Had we being guilty and been absolved, mercy might have rejoiced, and justice might have complained; but had we been solely punished, justice would have triumphed, and mercy grieved.

Because of God’s wisdom, justice and mercy are both satisfied. The death of His sinless Son is a horror, but if God went one way or the other, we would face “either an unrighteous mercy, or a merciless justice.” Instead, His love gave us a righteous mercy, and a merciful justice.”

Not only that the wisdom of God comes in a great variety of ways, all mysterious and every example fillsl me with wonder. This list describes His redemption plan and how it brought the glory of God with the salvation of man, the defeat of the apostate angels, the discovery of the blessed Trinity in God’s nature, and all He does in combined and distinct acts and expressions of goodness. Salvation reveals the conjunction of three natures, infinitely distinct from one another; the union of eternity and time, mortality and immortality, and death is made the way to life, with shame becoming the path to glory.

Not only that, the weakness of the cross is the reparation of man, and the creature is made wise by the foolishness of preaching. Fallen man grows rich by the poverty of the Redeemer, and we are filled by the emptiness of God. The heir of hell is made a child of God by God taking upon Himself the “form of a servant” and children of men advanced to the highest degree of honor by the Son of God becoming of “no reputation.”

For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. (Hebrews 2:10)

And Jesus in the garden praying with drops of blood and saying: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” (Luke 22:42) Was there no other way? Had the sinless Jesus something else in mind? Likely not, but even if He did, He yielded to death that we might live.

PRAY: I cannot fathom Your wisdom, Lord God, nor question it. You choose the only way to punish sin yet save sinners. My heart rejoices at the great decision You made so I could be set free to love and serve You. Not my will but Yours be done.