My brother-in-law is an amazing physics teacher. Students who have had him as their lecturer have testified that he helped them to understand things that they could never ever seem to grasp. However, what makes him such an exceptional teacher is the very same thing that causes many of his students to get frustrated with him.
“Why can’t you just answer my question?!” Yep, he hears that all the time. While quick solutions, short cuts, and formula memorization may produce excellent exam results, at the end of the day, perfect scores are achieved in vain if students still do not understand the concepts and real life applications behind the physics.
“But my exams are in two weeks! I need answers and I need them fast!” Tough luck, pal. He would rather sit with you for hours, painstakingly explaining the concept over and over again until you understand the basics and actually comprehend the science than to give you a straight answer.
The process is long and tedious. It’s exasperating and slow. But it is worth all the crying and the snot because in the long run, “I hate physics. It doesn’t make any sense!” would become, “I love physics. It’s fascinating!”
The key to the learning process is patience. I realized that in my walk with God, I’m often like my brother-in-law’s students. I want answers and I want them now. “Faster, God, faster! You say you want my attention, right? Well you got it! So what is it you want to teach me?”
Sometimes, it’s not that we are not teachable. It’s not that we are unwilling to learn, or even stubborn to change. Many of us are genuine when we ask God to show us His ways and to lead and guide us, but the problem is that we are so so impatient.
The Bible repeatedly talks about waiting on the Lord. Psalm 27:14 says, “Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.” Isaiah 40:31 says, “But 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.”
And so, we claim these promises. We take God at His word, and we wait for Him, expecting Him to reveal something extraordinary within a short time. But when God takes a longer time than we expected, we begin to feel discouraged, distant, and disillusioned.
What happened to getting renewed strength? What about the wings, and the eagles? Why do I still feel as awful as I did yesterday and the day before and the day before that? This is because we forget about the “patient” part.
In the New Living Translation, Psalm 27:14 says, “Wait patiently for the LORD. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the LORD.”
When God tells us to wait on Him, it’s not just about allocating several hours of a specific day that we spend waiting for something to happen. Sometimes He answers quickly, but at other times, it could take weeks, months, or even years. No matter how long it takes, the waiting and the patience must continue, and they must go hand in hand.
God looks at us and He sees what we need to learn. He understands our frustrations, our worries, and our struggles. He recognizes the problems that need fixing and the lessons we need to learn, and He will give them to us—bit by little bit at a time.
Like confused physics students, we often want God to just quickly solve all our problems and give us all the answers so that we can bounce back from our misery. But like a good physics teacher, God sees the deeper issue at hand and He will take all the time it takes for us to see the profound lesson He has for us.
By trying to rush God for quick fixes, we often prolong the learning process beyond what He even had in mind at first, because instead of recognizing what He is telling us at that moment, we are too busy asking for the end result.
So hit those brakes and take it easy! God wants us to enjoy the time we spend with Him. He wants us to bask in His love and sometimes we just need to stop asking God to show us, teach us, guide us, lead us, instruct us, command us, and just let Him love us.
When we no longer see seeking God and waiting on Him as an urgent task that needs to be fulfilled so that we can hurry on to the next urgent task, He will teach us what we need to learn. Slowly, but surely. Because in His time, He makes all things beautiful.
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Esperanza Ng
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