patience and trust

…so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. 

Hebrews 6:12

There is a temptation in my walk with God to be sluggish and slow… to drag my pace. As I think it over, here is why I can become spiritually sluggish:

• I am afraid of what is ahead of me. I don’t know for certain what is ahead and in a lack of trust start to imagine difficulties that I do not want to experience. So I try to stay where I am comfortable. I drag my feet, slow my pace, and stay back. That makes me sluggish.
• I am too content. I’ve perhaps embraced some life experience as too precious to me. God challenges me to let go of it and move on. He will let me continue to enjoy it, but not if it keeps me from Him. And my lazy self just wants to hang back.
• I just don’t understand. The place God wants to take me is so new to my experience that I hesitate to move toward it. In that case I need His encouragement to trust and pick up my pace.
• I am weary. Sometimes my faith is slow simply because I am tired. I may have made myself that way by busy activity that ignored sabbath rest. This is not good obedience. I need to rest and let God carry me at His pace then set me down to continue trusting, empowered to overcome my sluggishness.

The call here is to counteract the sluggishness and activate through obedience both faith and patience. Faith trusts God. Faith repents of fearful unbelief. Faith finds contentment in bold trust in what may seem unnerving at first. Faith seeks to believe promises it can barely grasp and has yet to know. Faith finds strength in trusting God even while weary from life.

And patience trusts God’s timetable. I am at that kind of juncture right now. A huge part of faith is waiting on God. It is always worth it. Notice that faith and patience both take us to a great outcome: “inherit the promise”. Patient faith in the gospel, following Jesus at HIS pace, trusting our God… all of it is really, really worth it!