Do we need only 90 minutes of patience for God to work in our lives?  Some people think that if you are going through troubled waters and pray to God, He will just take away the trial and life will be rosey.  A lot of movies are like that. A lot of Christian movies are like that.  Even some very popular and GOOD Christian movies depict that.  In the hour and a half it takes the movie to end, the characters go from devastation to restoration.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t usually work out that well in real life.  I’ve never had a crisis end in 90 minutes.  In fact, I’ve never had a crisis end in less than several weeks. But the movie industry has instilled in us (the microwave society) that all crises end in 90 minutes, that they all resolve themselves completely, and with no residual effects.  That is just not life and it’s also not biblical. Furthermore, this thinking makes life difficult when crises happen.  We tend to lose a bit of our faith because we aren’t resilient enough to wait it out…wait on God.

Some Christians tell me I must be in sin for God not to heal me in all these years. Job wasn’t in sin and he suffered.  He was a man after God’s own heart.  Paul suffered an affliction and we don’t say he was in sin…and he was NEVER healed.  Telling someone with chronic illness that they are not healed because they are in sin is harsh and can stumble them.  Sometimes our troubles are a result of our sin or choices, but other times they are just a result of living in a fallen world.

Either way, when we pray, sometimes God says yes. Sometimes He says no. And most of the time, in my experience, He says wait.  Waiting is hard, especially if you are not a patient woman.  <raises both hands high in the air> So when you are waiting and praying and praying and waiting, it can seem an inordinately LOOOOOOOOOOONG time to wait.  I’ve been waiting over a year and a half for God to restore our income after my husband lost his job.  I’ve been waiting almost 30 years of marriage to reach financial independence so we are not reliant upon the whim of a man with the power to say our family no longer has an income.  I’ve been waiting over 35 years for God to heal me of all manner of health issues.

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If there is one thing I’d like to convey to you about prayer and waiting and patience, it’s this. Just beware it may take waaaaaaaaay longer than you think it should.  You may think you will only wait a few weeks or a few months. You may begin to get antsy when months turn into years.  The Bible tells us that God is always with us, but it doesn’t say God will always do what we want.  So, since we may need to wait a much longer time than we want or are comfortable with, remember two things:

1. Find the joy and the blessings in the trials.  You might as well have fun while you’re down there.
2. God is in charge.  I cant tell you how many times I was upset that God didn’t act at a particular time or fix things, but instead just helped a bit.  But in the end, what happened was better than what I had envisioned in the first place.  It’s like that meme you may have seen on social media.  It shows Jesus and a little girl. She’s holding a small teddy bear and doesn’t want Jesus to take it away because she loves it so much.  But Jesus is holding a HUGE teddy bear he wants to give her instead and He knows she’ll love it even more and need it in more ways than she can see.

Life is not easy and it is often full of crises both big and small.  If we expect there should be none or that they should resolve themselves completely and in a matter of minutes, days or even years, we are not being realistic and we are limiting our strength and faith in the process.