Sherwin Jaleel

Waiting for the Lord

The Skinner Box is a well-known psychological method; it works like this: A rat is placed in a box that has a lever which if pulled, will deliver a treat (food). The rat sniffs around the box and eventually will end up pushing the lever by chance. A treat is then delivered to it.  The rat will quickly figure out that pulling the lever means getting a delicious treat and will keep doing it. Over and over and over again. At some point, the rat stops getting the treat, and this upsets the rat. It will keep pulling the lever frenziedly trying to get the treat. The Skinner Box demonstrates something very fundamental:  The rat having been rewarded every time it pulls the lever begins to develop a growing sense of entitlement, believing it deserves a treat every time it pulls the lever. It upsets the rat when a treat is not delivered.

Life is full of Skinner Boxes. Our phone is a Skinner Box. Our television is a Skinner Box. In our modern world, we can achieve instant gratification and can often get what we want at the time that we decide we want it. The point is, we, too, are accustomed to little packets of pleasure delivered to us with a push of a button, the more packets of pleasure, the more our sense of entitlement to it grows.  In the hustle and bustle of our chaotic lives, we find it very difficult to wait for anything. We are complaining about things like the Deliveroo drivers arriving 2 minutes late. Our phone being too slow. The KFC order taking a whole 3 minutes. Our washing machine taking 30 seconds to open and even complaining about the toilet paper we ordered via Amazon Dash not arriving the same day.

Nothing can wait! We need results, NOW!

God too, has become the focus of our impatience

God too, has become the focus of our impatience. From our limited perspective, we think we have everything figured out, and we want God to work within our timeframe. Whenever His timing isn’t the same as ours, we pronounce Him late.  In the Bible we see something similar happening to Mary and Martha while they waited on Jesus to come and heal Lazarus. When Jesus eventually turns up, He is blamed of taking too long. We all, at times, feel that God is moving at the speed of a glacier! But is he?

When the set time had fully come

There is a remarkable verse in scripture “when the set time had fully come” (Galatians 4:4). The Creator of the universe had a timetable, it would take generations before the time had fully come, for Him to send His Son to redeem the world. When the set time had come, God even rearranged the biological limits of childbirth to fulfil His promise. Mary and Joseph were expecting a baby before they were married (Matthew 1:18). Zechariah and Elizabeth found themselves expecting when they were very, very old (Luke 1:7). In both cases, it seemed as if God’s timing was off. One baby seemed too early, another too late. But the truth is that God is never early, and He is never late. He is always right on time. It’s all about timing – God’s not yours.

Are you impatient with God? The book of Galatians lists patience as a fruit of the Holy Spirit (5:22). However, the culture that surrounds us does not value patience in the same way that God does. Like the unsuspecting animal in The Skinner Box we perhaps have developed a growing sense of entitlement, believing we deserve a treat every time we pull the lever and are upset when God doesn’t instantly grant our requests.

God always has perfect reasons for making us wait. Waiting is one of God’s tools for refining people. The Bible is full of incidents of people having to wait on God, such as Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joseph, Daniel, David, Jesus, Paul and countless others.

Take David, for instance. David was anointed as the future king of Israel by Samuel, the prophet when he was young (1 Samuel 16:1–13). Theologians estimate it took about 15 years from David’s anointing as king before he became king at the age of thirty. It is reasonable to assume that David questioned God’s timing during those fifteen years, but there were reason and purpose in God making David wait. David developed trust, faith, a strong relationship with God, and the character traits that he would need to rule God’s people during those years. Psalm 27:14 is a record of David’s advice based on his own personal experience.

Our ability to wait on the Lord largely depends on how much we trust Him. Some of the deepest friendships we have in our lives stem from incidents when a friend stood in the trenches with us during our toughest battles. In very much the same way waiting on God builds our relationship and dependency upon Him. When we trust in God with all of our heart, we set aside our own abilities and thoughts of sufficiency. We forgo reliance on our own erroneous understanding of circumstances and begin to rely upon God and His perfect timing.  

Wait on the LORD: be of good courage and learn to wait on the LORD.