What Are You Waiting For?

I have to confess that before I started this journey, I just wanted to have lipo or a tummy tuck (or in my case a stomach removal)  or lap-band or something.  I wanted something that I thought would be a "quick-fix", something that wouldn't take much effort on my part. ( Now, I don't need any ugly comments about what I just said.  That's what I thought in my fat-trapped warped mind.  I know that each of those things have their own set of difficulties and hardships.)  I wanted the easy way out.

Isn't that so where we have gotten today.  Always wanting the easy road?  Whatever takes the least amount of effort?  I am pretty sure that the Word gives us some advice about this...

Here is a passage out of the Message from Matthew 7 that I love.

13-14"Don't look for shortcuts to God. The market is flooded with surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time. Don't fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires total attention.

God never said the best would be easy.  In fact, He repeatedly tells us that it isn't.

I also had hoped that this would be a short journey.  I wanted the weight to just...well, kinda...fall off, I guess.  I don't know.  I guess I had a dream that I would just wake up one morning and all of a sudden I would be thin.  Well, you know what Frank always says?  "It's nice to have a dream"  Whatever...

Then in my Bible study, I kinda discovered why I think for me this process must take a while.  Why the wait must be so long.  See, the really mature woman(okay person) in Christ knows how to wait on the Lord.  To wait with integrity.  You really have to trust God to wait.  I have to trust God that I will make it to the finish line and make it to my goal.  I have to trust God that through the holidays and birthday parties and football games that I (we) can make good choices.  And when I don't feel like I can, I turn to Him instead of my old ways of looking to myself and my emotions.  Waiting requires so much maturity that I understand why most of us just give up.  The wait sometimes just seems way too long.  To wait on the Lord means choosing a higher road that I have not always been willing to take in the past.

But when we change the way we look at our wait...that in that period of waiting, God wants to show me and teach me and grow me,  my whole attitude takes a new form.  See instead of just kinda standing around with my arms crossed and tapping my toes and aimlessly looking around while I wait (and might I add a few huffs and puffs cause I think I have waited long enough) now I can wait with purpose.  I can spend my waiting entrusting this particular area of my life to God.  That He really does care enough about it...it IS important to Him.  And I can trust Him to see me through it.  And I can spend this waiting season committing this area to prayer.  Instead of just sitting around...

What I have come to realize is that is not really about the length of time that you wait...but how you waited that matters most.  

What are you waiting for?