change, NOW please!

I was reading yesterday and came upon this phrase The slow and inefficientwork of God and what I heard in my spirit was the affirmation that often change doesn’t come in a moment. More often it comes through years, through decades, through lifetimes and it is slow and seemingly inefficient and irritating!

 Deep change sometimes happens in an instant—in a moment of joy or terror-and our circumstances change and our heart and soul change to. These moments can define us and nothing will ever be the same again. Some of us come to faith in Christ that way, or at least we think we do, that moment in which everything changes; if you look back before that moment, often in hindsight you’ll see a gradual drawing towards change.
And I began to think and I’m going to share my wild questions and thoughts with you!

God made the world in 6 days and rested on the 7^th but what did he do on the 8^th day? And how long was it, how many days were there between that 7^th day and the day that Eve ate that fruit and convinced Adam to go along with it. Days where nothing big or miraculous or amazing happened—except Adam and Eve WALKED with GOD in the garden!?! And then there were just several hundreds of years between Adam and Noah where all the Bible records is births and ages…not much movement on God’s part. And Noah spends 100 years building a boat…Abraham takes a couple of decades to make it to Canaan…Israel stays in slavery for 400 years and wanders for 40…there were hundreds of years of silence between the prophecies of the Old Testament and the fulfillment in the new…and 2000 years later we are still waiting for the 2^nd coming of Christ…children continue to die everyday in this country because of poverty and after hundreds of years of development and missionaries and scientific discovery they are still waiting for something to change…and me most days I feel like I’m still stuck in the same places and the same fears and the same issues as 10 or 20 years ago; the circumstances may be different but the inside, the patterns and choices are often the same…and GOD moves slow.

And I would say He can be a bit inefficient too…couldn’t HE have made the world in 1 day if HE wanted to? Why take six? Did Noah have to build that boat by hand…couldn’t God have just made one appear? Did the Israelites need 400 years of slavery? Couldn’t God have knocked down the walls of Jericho the first time or the first day they marched? One sweeping move and Sierra Leone could be a country with plenty of food and resources to share? And me, wouldn’t it be better for everyone if God just changed me now?!? Is it just me or is that a bit irritating?

BUT He is always moving, always working, always present, and always refining us. There is a shifting, a restoration, a building, and a changing that is always moving the world towards the promise of HIS KINGDOM now and coming. Often it is like water flowing—the waves of the ocean or a river’s current—the single wave’s impact is usually not felt. The waves come and go all day long on the beach just down the hill from here and no one notices. But over time the sharp edges of rock and stone are worn away and what is left is smooth and new. Go to sandgrains.com under a microscope and you’ll see the beauty that the waves create over time.

Sometimes the waves are big and destructive; the change is massive and quick. Mostly the waves of change are gentle, graceful, and slow. I want God to change things NOW; to make me and the circumstances around me new and complete NOW and He gently says, “No, child, it might be slow, it will seem inefficient and irritating, it will be painful at times; but I am the author and perfector and only I know what the result will be and when and how the promise will be fulfilled.” And the waves of grace and change come over me and slowly, inefficiently, daily, and sometimes irritatingly I become...