“Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him…” ~PSALM 37:7

Patience. For many, especially in the age of ‘hustle and grind,’ has become a foul word and even more a foreign concept to those who have a heart that beats to the tune of ‘do and achieve.’

Patience itself seems to be the very antithesis of progress and success itself, almost as if it is a waste of time. And waiting on the Lord, well, that seems to be a difficulty all its own.

But oh is it so very worth it!

First, let’s gain the understanding and the truth that more than you or I want to succeed, the Lord wants us to succeed even more. The glory and beauty of His desire and plans for us is that He is the one who planted those desires in us in the first place. He is the one who has written each of our stories from beginning to end, and He knows exactly what it is going to take to get us for beginning to glorious end!

He knows that in order for all that He desires to do for us and through us to come to pass, there must be a process and that process requires patience from us.

THE  SO-CALLED UGLY TWINS

“Patience and Process are fraternal twins that no one likes…But God changes their names to Abundance and Overflow.” ~Candice Coates & Regina Hernandez

Very few people like the words patience or process, and even fewer seem to get excited when they see the two coming together. But in order for us to be all and achieve all that Christ has in store for us, we must learn to walk hand in hand with both.

James 1:4 says, “But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”

When we submit ourselves to patience and allow the process to take place (whatever our process at the time may be) then we are positioning ourselves to be made perfect and lack nothing i.e reap abundance and overflow!

WHAT COMES IN THE WAITING

Psalm 37 encourages us with further truth about what happens when we rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him to excel us and not try to do so ourselves.

• WE FIND OUR DELIGHT IN HIM: As we wait patiently in the process of our ‘becoming,’ we are made to set our focus and our minds on Christ and thus we are able to see more of His beauty and goodness. We see Him in ways we never have before and are blessed to fall more deeply in love with Him.
• WE FIND OUR REST IN HIM: As we bask in His beauty and holiness, we shed the weight of our worries and ambition in the wait for His movement on our behalf. We learn to trust Him more, and we begin to see His faithfulness manifest in mighty ways, ways we could not have produced on our own strength.
• HE GIVES US THE DESIRE OF OUR HEART: Psalm 37 tells us over and over how He will give us the desire of our heart, how He blesses us to inherit the ‘land,’ how He establishes us and keeps us from destruction even as He blesses us with peace. The most amazing thing about this, however, is that by the time we do inherit, Christ has become our greatest desire and everything else the bonus!

THE POINT OF THE PROCESS

Through patience, we learn the beauty of abiding. We learn the posture of rest and reigning, we learn that none of our end goals are really the end goals but that Christ is truly our all and all.

This is why He requires patience from us, for in the process of patience we grow deeper in and closer to Him, and when we are established in Him, we are able to withstand any odds.

~Dream. Imagine. Believe. Do. CONQUER!

 

Candice Coates is an author, blogger, and contributor to Ambo TV.  This article originally appeared on her website www.icameforthesoup.com.