Waiting on God: Overcoming Frustration with Faith

I love this picture.

I love this picture because it communicates a frustration I used to have in my daily life.

Waiting on the train.

Now that was an exercise in patience! Delay after delay, and when it finally turned up there were no seats left, people would all rush and push to get in so desperate to get to a job, that I'm willing to speculate most of them didn't even like! Let me go further, I was rushing and pushing to go to a job that I didn't even like!

I should add, at that time I thought that was an exercise in patience.

Yet that was no exercise in patience....no no. That was child's play.

Patience when you have an electronic board updating you minute by minute with the progress of the train, is no exercise in patience at all, managing frustration? Perhaps, but patience certainly not. And some of you may be ready to fervently disagree, but this I tell you, that was the patience of my flesh - this kind of patience will fail you it is totally inadequate when it comes to waiting on God. (the Bible is so full of these examples I cannot even begin to quote them!).

Now I find myself waiting on a promise from God, one where I do not know the minute nor the hour nor even the day. One where there is no update, there is no person to consult on alternative methods of travel. There is but One who controls the timing. On this journey I am on, I realise this is a test. This is about Godly patience, a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22).

I wrote a post on how much faith do you have where I articulated that its easy to say you believe in God within the realm of your understanding, dealing in the physical and what you can see, but would you still be able to believe in Him when your circumstances defied your understanding?

I have been waiting on God on a promise for a while now, (8 weeks or so without work or pay...yikes!) and previously when I spoke about this, I spoke about how frustrating it can be. Though I have grown since then the recognition of everything I have written about in this post, doesn't mean I don't suffer moments of frustration.

This then is my test. God is asking me a question. What do you believe in more? Me or your circumstances? It is written "not by might nor by power, but by the Spirit of God" (Zachariah 4:6) but do you believe this? Do you actually believe there is nothing outside of the scope of My power?

In essence God is asking me how much faith do you have?

Praise God for He is worthy of praise! Because He has built me up to this point that I may learn this lesson, for my own good. For how do I grow in relationship with God without Him increasing my faith? How do I get to a stage where I can say "I walk by faith not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7) unless He puts me in these situations?

So here is what I have learned. Give in to faith.

The Spirit and the flesh are contrary to one another (Galatians 5:17), so ultimately God is telling me to make a choice. He has said I have told you to "be still and know I am God", I have given you the gift of the Holy Spirit for believing in my Son. I have taken you on a journey and taught you along the way, now choose. Will you believe in me or what your eyes have seen, which can never see me?

My answer?

I choose believing in God.
I choose His word, and His Word, to give me the peace that I need to wait on Him.
I choose to be thankful to God even when I don't understand.
I choose to wait patiently not knowing the minute, hour or day because its a privilege to wait.
I choose to cast down every argument and high thing that exalts itself above the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:5) including what I think.

Because peace is so much better than anxiety:
I choose my faith over my frustration.

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