We are an impatient people who want everything done in a hurry. But God refuses to be rushed. In the words of author James W. Moore: We love instant results. We want everything done in a hurry these days. We don’t want to wait for anything. We are so different from the earlier generations who ordered things from the Sears catalog and waited with great anticipation for weeks or even months for the items to arrive. We want to pay a little down now (even if we can’t really afford it) and get it today. We are impatient people looking for immediate action and instant gratification, so much so that God’s patient ways sometimes confuse, perplex, and bother us. We are impatient, but God is deliberate, steady, and long-suffering. We look for the speedy way, the shortcut, the instant answer, the immediate solution. But God takes the long way ’round. God refuses to be rushed. The way to become a spiritually mature Christian is to spend so much time with Christ that we begin to think and act like him, to spend so much time with him that we take on what the apostle Paul called “the mind of Christ.” It just takes time and effort and commitment. There are no easy, instant solutions. What we need to remember is that the things that matter most take time, effort, commitment, discipline, lots of practice, lots of hard work . . . and lots of patience. Working chapter titles include, “Lord, Give Me Patience, and Give it to Me Right Now”; “Lord, Give Me Perseverance”; “ Lord, Give Me Faith”; “Lord, Give Me Forgiveness”; “Lord, Give Me Love”; “Lord, Give Me Childlikeness”; “Lord, Give Me Life”; “Lord, Give Me Grace”; and others. This book includes twelve chapters and a discussion guide.
