I touched on this point yesterday, but I think it needs further examination. Along with our pragmatism, we suffer from a lack of patience. An unwillingness to wait on the Lord. Whereas the oft-repeated biblical cry is “How long?”, I fear that the modern church tends to say, “That’s too long… we’ll take care of it ourselves.”

Throughout the Bible, God acted on His timetable, not man’s. Even godly men like Abraham got impatient and tried to take things into their own hands, but their continued faith in the face of a time of waiting is a big part of what makes them great.

Four centuries in slavery in Egypt. That’s a long time.

When God would punish his people through foreign occupation, this would often be for decades at a time.

When bad kings ruled over God’s people, they sometimes did so for very long periods of time. One of the worst kings was Manasseh, and he ruled for 55-years!

We could go on and on, looking at the length of the captivity in Babylon, the time before the coming of the Messiah, even the amount of time that Jesus waited before beginning his ministry. It starts in Genesis and goes all the way through Revelation.

Revelation promises God’s victory over Rome as a consolation to the persecuted church; that victory came centuries later. Christians suffered. Christians died. Bad people ruled, good people were oppressed. Horrors were inflicted on entire nations. And God waited hundreds of years to act.

I don’t know that we’re willing to wait that long. Especially those of us who live in young countries. When your nation has only existed for 200 years or so, waiting 40-50 years for God to act seems like a lot to ask. Frankly, waiting years or even months seems like too much.

And so we say, “It’s not practical. It just won’t work.” What we should be saying is, “I’m don’t trust enough in God to wait.”