Practicing Patience When God Has You Waiting

Written by Barbara Erochina

Why won’t God answer my prayer?

Some days, it is a lot harder to be patient. When we’re bringing our concerns to the Lord again and again, we grow tired of waiting. It soon begins to feel like our prayers are falling on deaf ears. Often our desire is to take control and just “do the best we can”; it is our fleshly reaction to the silence. We know Galatians 5 lists patience as a fruit of the Holy Spirit so we confess our desire to rule our own lives. We ask the Spirit to fill us, empowering and directing us even as we continue to wait on the Lord.

This doesn’t mean our circumstances change.

Our only child remains sick in the hospital, the thread our marriage hangs on continues to splinter, and the hope we’ve held on to for years fades with increasing speed. Having prayed fervently about whatever issue you are facing too many times to count, it’s easy to feel your bank of patience depleting once again. On these days, let these reminders on the nature of patience be an encouragement to you as you continue to wait.
You are not alone in the waiting.

Avoid Big Failures

"This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness." (Ephesians 4:17-19)

There's a subtle strategy Satan uses to take control of our lives. The Bible calls it lasciviousness and it means "to have no restraint."

Lasciviousness has been preached as being extreme immorality, but it doesn't start out that way. It begins with just a few seemingly innocent thoughts. Then those thoughts grow and grow until they begin to produce serious sin.

One afternoon as a nine-year-old boy, for example, I just yielded to the desire to curse. I knew better, but I did it anyway. I had a relative who was so good at West Texas cussin' that I thought he invented it. I was intrigued and I wanted to try it.

When I let go of all restraint and began to say those curse words, something evil moved in on my thinking that seriously affected me for some 20 years. A law was set in motion. As a result, my flesh gradually became boss over my entire being.