Welcome back to all of our listeners! I’m BJ Sipe, and you’re listening to the Set Your Mind Above podcast – where everyday ordinary events teach us extraordinary eternal truths. I’m so glad that you’ve tuned in today, I am excited to share my life and my faith with you, and I sure hope that you’ll do the same with me along the way.
I am currently sitting in my office here at the church in Danville enjoying a wonderful cup of coffee I just made using a Honduras roast called Reserva Guama Danta from Dry Stack Coffee Co. It is an excellent cup of coffee that was made even better because it was not brewed in a pot with standard drip. I use a pour over V60 station here in my office, which is one of my favorite ways to enjoy a single cup of coffee. As my friend Mark Roberts says, “nearly everything is made better by a good cup of coffee.” If you do not know Mark, I would encourage you greatly to follow his podcast called “Monday Morning Coffee with Mark” – where he delves into deep spiritual discussions all while nursing a delicious cup of joe. Unless you are a coffee snob like myself or Mark, you probably would have no interest in the ways that guys like us enjoy our coffee. We like making our coffee by Aeropress, chemex, or pour over methods more frequently than not – which are all hand brews that take a considerable amount more time. You grind the beans to a different level, have your water at a certain temperature, and have specific filters that are unique to each method. Sure it is a process and takes longer, but man does it turn out so much better! Most of you probably laugh at me as I discuss this, because for many of you you’re just as well happy with Folgers in your cup on a standard 10-12 cup drip coffee maker. I have a dear friend who I love very much, but I pray for him because there is one thing he does that I’m not sure should even be legal. He makes a pot of coffee once a week, and then every morning just takes that same pot that is days old and cold and microwaves it for his morning coffee. I know, it’s despicable, and yes I’m talking about you Kevin Davidson. Stop it. Get some help. Okay, all joking aside, I’m certain that if you tasted what I was drinking you would be able to tell the difference, but it probably wouldn’t make a difference for most of you because just using a coffee pot is so much easier and faster. We like easy and fast as Americans, don’t we? It’s all about instant gratification. We like our food fast or delivered, we pay extra to have no advertisements before our programs we stream instantly, we want 5g phones for lightning fast connection with no buffering, and we buy our cheese in a can for quick dispensing. I mean, and it hurts me to say this, we even have instant coffee. Have you tasted that stuff? Gag me. But people buy it, because they want everything right now! I am reminded of Charlie and the Chocolate factory (the original with Gene Wilder, sorry Johnny Depp) – and the song that is sung by the spoiled character Veruca Salt who demanded a golden goose along with 100 other things, and she didn’t want to wait. As it goes, “Don’t care how, I want it now. And if I don’t get what I’m after, I’m going to scream.” Patience may very well be a virtue, but it is not a quality that most people in the Western World possess.
While I’m not here to condemn the coffee pot or the microwave, I am concerned that perhaps in our pursuit for instant results and instant gratification that some of that has bled into our faith and the way that we approach our Creator. I wonder how many times I have approached God in prayer and sounded a little bit like Veruca Salt, “God, I don’t care how, but I want it now.” We want God to heal us now. We want God to fix our problems now. We want God to deliver us from financial struggles now. Certainly maybe we don’t use the words now, but that’s often how we mean it. We pray, then sit and wonder why God has not acted yet – as though he is some magic genie that comes running at our every beckoning call to instantly grant our desires. And yet, there is something that I find remarkable when I open up Scripture, especially the Psalms – and that is how many times we are told to wait on the Lord. 21 times the Psalms say to wait for the Lord, and I think it would do us good to remember who these words were penned by – most of them were from King David. The Shepherd boy who was anointed king, but had to wait years to take the throne. The boy who was betrothed to be married but had to wait to be with his wife. The boy who was separated for indefinite amounts of time from his best friend and simply had to wait. The anointed one who was given many promises from God, and yet not one of them was fulfilled immediately. Is it any wonder that David pens words like the following in Psalm 25:1-5, “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust; let me not be put to shame; let not my enemies exult over me. Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame; they shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous. Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long.” If there as any one quality that David learned in his life, it was patience. He learned that God’s ways were not his ways, and that he needed to learn to wait on the Lord. My friends, our walk of faith has little do with instant gratification. Like Hebrews 6:12, we must be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. We must learn to be patient and wait on the Lord, and let me give us one more reason why we must do so – because God is patient and waits for us. Consider 1 Timothy 1:16, followed then by 2 Peter 3:9, “But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.” And secondly, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” Aren’t we all glad that God does not act “now” to punish our sins instantly when we commit them? Aren’t we thankful that there is not an instant gratification of his wrath, but instead that he is patient towards us because he desires that none would perish? If God has been ever so patient with me in my life, who would I be then to not wait on the Lord? Teach us Lord to wait on you, and may we all the while serve you while we are waiting.
Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. Tune in, Tuesday-Fridays, as a new podcast episode will be uploaded each day. Also, be sure to follow the Facebook page for the Set Your Mind Above podcast for future announcements and video sessions. As you have the opportunity, share these thoughts with your friends and family, and share with me what important lessons you are learning from every day, ordinary events. Until next time know that I love you, that God loves you, and may we all each and every day set our minds above.