The enemy is a crafty foe. Sometimes, he will forgo an overt attack and use simple, everyday ways to keep us from progressing in the Spirit. Hurry and pressure are two devices. Many people get out of sync with God because they are hurrying. They are too busy to pray, too busy to worship, too busy to meditate, too busy to enjoy intimacy with God. Humans can become so hung up with the destination of where they want to go that they completely forget to enjoy the journey.
I do not see this pattern in Jesus’s life. If ever there was a man who was busy and had the right to rush, it was him. He was trying to change an entire religious system and free the world from bondage in three and a half short years. And yet Jesus was busy, but he never hurried. Sometimes, he probably had no time to even eat, with the number of people coming and going and the traveling he did. But he knew he could not go any faster than the Father, who was leading him.
These days people learn to read faster, talk faster, play faster, work faster. We have created generations of impatient people.
It takes patience to build the important, lasting things, but our human nature, our hurried nature, wants an instant download from heaven instead. We must learn that some things in God do not come quickly or in a big package. Sometimes they come in a series of small things to be enjoyed in the moment. Only when we look back at all of those small things will we realize the big thing God has done.
Patience is now completely countercultural. When the world may be more complicated than ever before, God has not lifted the spiritual quest for the fruit of patience from us. In fact, he wants us to focus on it more than ever before.
Take stock of your life right now. If a lack of patience is an issue for you, it should be very obvious. If God wants to grow your patience, you will face delays, traffic, slow up lines, slowed prophetic action and the rest. He tests us on these issues because he wants to refine our character.
Patience is a virtue we need to develop, especially when we are about to birth something new spiritually. It takes time to grow as we sort through all of the things that are thrown at us and discover what exactly God is calling us to do. We have to wade through everything and wait. My suggestion for people in a season of birth or upgrade is to write out a prayer for patience and pray it everyday. In the midst of crisis, it is difficult to pray spontaneously because our requests of God shift with the presence we feel in the heat of the moment. But if we have written out a prayer that asks God for a specific thing, we can be faithful to what God wants us to do.
In my greatest season of breakthrough, I have written out a patience prayer. I would pray that prayer several times a day. I found myself becoming more patient every time I did it. The Holy Spirit calls patience up in us when we ask for it.
Take a piece of paper and write a prayer of patience. Put it up somewhere you will see it several times a day and pray it whenever you notice it.