In this video, Rev. Ken Jones explores how believers can wait on God without turning their desires into idols.
How can someone wait without making the good thing or the thing, whatever it is that they want into an idol? I think that’s a difficult question and here’s why that’s difficult. Because I do think that sometimes what we wait for—because assuming when we say wait, we’re talking about those things which we have prayed for, those things that we desire—and sometimes waiting proves that we don’t want or we don’t need what we’re waiting for. Sometimes what we’re waiting for is our expectation rather than what God has Himself promised.
As an example of this, the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians, he had experienced this great spiritual experience, exalted, almost out of body experience. And then he says he was visited, he was buffeted about by a messenger of Satan, and he called it a thorn in the flesh and he prayed three times that that thorn would be removed. So, by saying he prayed three times, that doesn’t mean he repeated it three times in a single prayer. What it means is that he prayed and he waited and the thorn wasn’t removed. He prayed again and he waited and the thorn wasn’t removed. And then finally after the third time, he says, the Lord revealed to him that His grace is magnified through human weakness and His strength is magnified to us. And I use that example because sometimes what we wait for is a change of circumstance and a change of situation, whether it’s removing something that is in the way or adding something that we feel we need. That’s where it can, whether it’s the peace that we think we need if the thorn is removed, that can be an idol. And so, I think by understanding God’s overarching will towards us, the sufficiency of our present grace should be enough to teach us to trust Him for more. And in spite of, doesn’t have to be that He will remove the situation.
And I think that there is a tendency, even especially among contemporary Christians, to idolize certain things. And I don’t mean in the terms of an image that we bow down to but—whether it’s perfect health, whether it’s perfect children, whether it’s the perfect home—we raise these things because we assume that that’s what God wants for us. And when it doesn’t happen the way that we think it should, then we become impatient. And sometimes God shows us through that waiting period that: A) What you thought you needed, you don’t need it to the degree that you think. B) What you have in Me is sufficient even if you don’t have that change of circumstance, even if you don’t have that thing added, even if I don’t remove that obstacle from you. So we are strengthened by His grace for whatever circumstance He calls us to and that’s what enables us to hold everything that He grants to us in proper perspective without making too much of it or making too little of it.