Patiently Waiting

After a lot of thought, I came to the conclusion that patience is not one of my best qualities. It is something that I have definitely been trying to improve on, but am making slow progress with. One of the things that comes from my lack of patience is frustration. I become easily frustrated if things are not done as quickly as I want them to, or if something that I want to happen just isn't happening. Another area that I notice frustration is when I am expecting something to happen or I am planning something that is supposed to happen, and then all of a sudden things change quickly. I do not practice patience by any means in those areas. The past couple of weeks has taught me that I need to be working in this area. I have been around others who have shown me what it means to be patient, but then I have also been around others who have annoyed me because I felt as if they were being impatient of the dumbest things. This has taught me two different things. The first being that there is a lot of room for me to grow in the area of patience. The second being that I need to work on the frustrations. Just because someone else is being impatient with something that I feel is unimportant does not mean that it is not something that is of importance to them. Rather than becoming frustrated and lacking patience, I can step back and evaluate the situation instead.

The Heart

In a few words, I would describe my day as extremely long. I felt as if it was never going to end. Last night, I was able to have a long conversation with someone. Although there were things in the conversation that made me feel uncomfortable, I realize that they were things that I needed to hear. I am not even sure if this person knew that this was something that I needed to hear. As I went through my day today, I realized that there were so many times where I had means thoughts about someone else, or my intentions were not the greatest. I began to become annoyed with myself, because I couldn't stand that I was doing these things. One thing that I wanted to examine was the state of my heart. I wasn't ready to accept that I had allowed my heart to harden to certain things. I was so set on blaming other people and the things around me rather than blaming myself. I came upon Jeremiah 17:9 tonight, which not only verified my thoughts, but also spoke truth into my life. So, basically, rather than acting or thinking based off of the things that I feel, I know that I have a God that I can turn to. I know that my heart and my feelings are not going to be the most accurate or pure reasons.

Suffering

Well, there probably isn't anything more depressing than seeing a blog post entitled suffering. In my mind, it wasn't supposed to sound depressing, so don't worry. This morning in church one of the passages that was read talked about the sufferings of generations to come because of the sins of the previous generation. I of course began to think negatively. Why is God portrayed as a forgiving and merciful God, yet He still punishes people for sins that their ancestors committed? As I sat there and thought about the different ways that I have seen suffering and personally suffered, I noticed that I was becoming angry with God. How was any of this fair? After a while, I realized that if I were going to use the same thinking as I was this morning, I could say that it isn't fair that I am living in a sinful world because Adam and Eve decided to go against God. As I began to think about this, I started to laugh. Not because this scenario is humorous, but because I actually thought that if I were in Eve's situation that I would do something different. How can I blame the sins of others for my suffering, when I know that my own sin has caused other people to suffer? Rather than seeing my suffering as someone elses fault and blaming God, I can show mercy and grace towards other people and remember how my sin has caused suffering in other people's lives.

He Answers

There have been many times in my life where I have wondered whether or not God truly hears my prayers or not. I had someone once tell me that God answers prayers the way that He wants to and within His will, not necessarily the way that I want things to work out. After hearing that, I then assumed that nothing I wanted or planned was within God's will. I carried this out to every plan that I made. I had these desires to do certain things, but I believed that God didn't want me to do those things. Lately, I have relied a lot on prayer. I am not saying that I never prayed before, but there have been times recently where I have felt as if prayer was all that I had. I am slowly learning that it is not necessarily that God doesn't want me doing any of the things that I would like to do, its just that it is all in His timing. Just because I want something to happen right away or I want it to happen at the exact moment that I would like it to doesn't mean that God is going to it allow it to happen. I am slowly learning that within His timing, He will answer prayers. God does listen, and He does answer in His own way and His own time. Simple truth that many of us have probably heard many times, but one that can be hard to consider.