Seed Thoughts

//Lynette Hagin

We live in what I call the microwave age. Everyone wants things to happen in an instant. In fact I even find myself putting a potato in the microwave and becoming impatient if it does not cook thoroughly in five minutes. It used to take an hour to cook a potato, yet I can become impatient with the five minutes.

Just as we can get impatient in the natural, we can bring that same attitude into our relationship with God. We send our requests to God and expect to be accommodated in the next few minutes. I think all of us will agree that life is passing way too fast these days. However, it seems we have adjusted to that mode of living, and that is not exactly the kind of timetable God keeps. Quick and fast-paced is not what God desires in our relationship with Him.

Isaiah 40:31 says, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” Many times we ask the Lord to renew our strength or help us in some other way in our endeavors, and sometimes we wonder why it does not seem that He is answering our requests.

The key to it all is “they that wait upon the Lord.” Wait is not a word we like to hear. We want answers immediately. We want instant gratification. We want immediate financial success. But these things do not come immediately. God is willing and able to help us in every area of our lives, but we need to learn to spend time with Him and listen carefully to His instructions.

In the natural I have seen people criticize those who were successful. They would ask, “Why is that person a success and I am such a failure?” I wanted to say to them, “You were not willing to pay the price.” Someone once said, “I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and a devotion to the things you want to see happen.”

Just as success in the natural takes the ingredients of dedication, hard work, and devotion, so does success in the spiritual area of our lives. God is able to bless us exceedingly abundantly, above all we can ask or think (Eph. 3:20). But in order to receive those benefits, we must spend time with Him. We must commune with Him and allow Him to give us wisdom and direction for our lives.

My father-in-law, Kenneth E. Hagin, was a prime example of someone who had learned to wait upon the Lord. When my husband and I came to work for Kenneth Hagin Ministries, I was not used to waiting on anything. I was used to a plan being decided upon and my assignment being to make that plan happen. But when we began to work with my father-in-law, he would talk about a plan and then say, “I’m not exactly clear about how this plan needs to go. I’ll need to do a little more praying.” So I would
wait and wait.

Knowing that it would be my responsibility to execute the plan once it was decided upon, I would quite frequently ask my father-in-law, “Dad, are you ready to move on the plan?” Oftentimes he would say, “No, I don’t have clarity yet. I’ve got to wait upon the Lord a little more.” To be quite honest, at the beginning I would get a little frustrated and think, Why does it take so long to hear from God? But over time I learned the value of that lesson.

I realized that God does not always give us the answer immediately. I learned to sit back, relax, and know that when God spoke, He certainly knew the timetable. And He would give me the strength, ability, and wisdom to carry out His plan. I also learned that had the plan been carried out prematurely, it would have been headed in the wrong direction—and we would have had to spend extensive time reorganizing the situation.

Now as I give directives to our staff and say to them, “I don’t have clarity yet—you’ll have to wait a bit,” sometimes I see that disparaging look I gave my father-in-law. I know they are thinking, But don’t we have a deadline to meet? I answer them before they ask with, “God knows our deadlines. He is never late. He will be on time.” Remember to “wait on the Lord” and you will come out successfully in every endeavor.