Where Is God When You Have To Wait? Series

Where is God When You Have to Wait?

Part 2: Being God Centered

Introduction: As you can see… the title of today’s message is “Where is God when we have to wait?” Right off the bat, some of you, may have already tuned out… because waiting is not something that we love to do in the 21st century. In fact, most of us avoid waiting like the plague! Whether we are talking about waiting for traffic, or waiting in line at the grocery store, or waiting to see a show, or waiting to go see the doctor… as soon as we realize we have to wait… our annoyance level goes up!

• I don’t know about you… but one of the things that drive me crazy… is having to wait on the phone to talk to a real-life person rather than recording!

• Interestingly, Patience no longer seems to be a virtue… When is the last time you told your kids or heard someone say… “Good things come to those who wait”? My guess... long time ago!

• This shouldn't surprise us... Because According to a book “Faster The Acceleration Of About Everything” by James Gleick… what we most value today is speed! We pride ourselves on quickness, being fast, getting things done in the least amount of time as possible. That’s the reason everything today is in a rush!

• These two things… our hating to wait and our love for speed… believe it or not… has corrupted almost every area of lives.

• Think about it… we build fast cars, trains, planes… we are always looking to get to our destination faster! The Olympics will soon be upon us... and once again we will see many world records broken! And every time they do… we go crazy and celebrate!

• But it's not just sports we are interested in when it comes to speed. We are obsessed in seeing every aspect of life speed up... regardless of the cost!

• Did you know… in Salt Lake City... they are spent 1.6 billion dollars over four years to reconstruct I 15. And the result will be that drivers will approximately be able to drive one mile per hour faster! Wow!

• We are so consumed with speed… it wouldn’t surprise me to see something like this built in the near future!

• Now it’s not just speed concerning our physical movement we are obsessed with. Consider how we communicate these days. We don’t send letters in the mail anymore… that is much too slow. Now there’s email, instant messaging, FaceBooking so that we can get in contact within seconds.

• Everyone has cell phones these days... even our kids! Why? So that now we don’t have to wait for someone gets back home where they have a telephone so that we can call them. We can call them anytime, anywhere so that we can talk to them immediately. And we actually expect people to answer immediately regardless of what they might be doing... and I know this because people get irritated if they can't get hold of me right away!

• Something is wrong when I feel I have to apologize for not answering another person’s phone call right away because I was in the bathroom. You know what I’m talking about. Some of you actually have caved into this pressure by answering your phone when you are going to the bathroom. Be honest now! Just don’t let me know when you are doing this! 

• Add to that... Just having cell phone these days isn't enough. Consider the changes that have happen just in the last few years when it comes to dialing!

• Forget about the old rotary phones… who no one has those in a more. Kids today don’t even know what you are talking about when you mention it. Now we have speed buttons and re-dialing so that we can get those numbers quick. With My phone... you don't even have to dial... you just speak the name… and the phone dials it for you!

• Of course this emphasis spills over at our work place… where we have to figure out how to be more effective without taking more time… leading us to come up all kinds of creative ideas... some of them I am sure they will never fly.

• And of course we have to take this whole mentality home… and are constantly looking for ways to get our house hold chores done in the least amount of time possible… like washing dishes…

• or lawn care…

• All kidding aside... Think about the changes we are seeing in our fast food restaurants. Even fast food restaurants aren’t fast enough for us anymore! Now there is expressed lanes, and expressed menus, and to save even more time… we can drive up and drive-through.