Sometimes life happens, and supper as planned is not happening. Or it is going to be a really busy week. Or the refrigerator decided to die…goodbye food. Whatever the case may be, sometimes it is great to be able to drive in to a fast food place, and order what you want, and be on your way in minutes. Why, because it is fast and easy.

God on the other hand is not like fast food! Do you ever wonder why God won’t just take away what is troubling you? Or why God seems to be so slow to answer a prayer, or bring about the change needed in your life or someone else’s? I need this God…right now please.

Why in the world can’t God be like fast food? You know…fast?

We live in a culture where everything is fast, at least a lot of us do. I am guilty of this fast paced life quite often. The microwave is not fast enough, the traffic light takes to long, and for sure my computer is too slow! I work with computers and the Internet for a living, so I always want the customer’s computer to work faster. The point here is that we tend to want everything to be fast, right now…what do you mean I have to wait? Young people today are especially bad this way, not all but many, (remember I pointed the finger at myself first)

God does not work fast, not normally anyway. I wish God would make many things happen faster, but God works in His time, not mine. God’s ways are not my ways, thankfully.

Lets look at some reasons why God does not do “insta-fix”,

1. Patience, God wants us to learn this. God’s Word tells us that lack of patience is a sin. Things done in haste without proper planning and thought often don’t work well.
2. Appreciation, if things are just handed to us for free, we don’t tend to appreciate them. If however we have to put some effort into things, then we appreciate them.
3. Learning our lessons, if life’s troubles are all fixed for us, (like the parent who mistakenly steps in to “fix” everything for their child) we don’t learn anything. God gives us the tools, shows us how to use them, and then we need to put in the work, this way we learn and the lesson sticks with us.
4. Character building, the fastest way I know of to build character is to go through some trials in life and come out on top having learned some valuable lessons.
5. Teaching moments, how can we teach and model what we have not experienced?
6. God’s Glory, if we have suffered through adversity in our lives of any kind, and have through the experience become better Disciples of Christ, this glorifies God.
7. God’s love for us, as His children, God wants the best for us in everything. God says we must be patient, therefore He is not going to do “insta-fix”. He is not going to just step in and take care of it, we need to fall down and hurt ourselves on occasion and then call out to our Father for help. We do the same for our kids, why would we think God would do any different? Just where do you think wise parenting started anyway?
8. Our love for God, as we go through life and experience all manner of things, especially the negative events in our lives…we move closer to God. After all…if life was always good, would you call out to God as much or need Him…honestly?
9. Choice, we have two options in our trials, embrace God and do what He tells us to in order to bring about healing, or we can go our own way and hope things work out. Choosing God’s way is always best, make no mistake…God is watching how we choose. God wants those that choose Him and His ways and put aside the world’s ways.
10. Obedience, God desires our obedience…if everything in life was given to us without cost on our part, or our mistakes were all nullified with no effort on our part…why be obedient? After all, Daddy would just fix everything, so go ahead and do whatever you want. There are no consequences, so why worry? If however there are consequences for our actions, we learn to obey God, and therefore avoid those unpleasant negative consequences.
11. Our wills, God gave us a will. So…we want to be in charge, it’s only human. Problem…God wants our wills to be in submission to His. Read the above reasons why God does not do “insta-fix”…they are how we learn to submit our wills to His. God’s will is always better than ours!
12. Allegiance, God wants our total and complete allegiance to Himself, no other. Total commitment to our God. If you have lived life with Christ for any length of time, then you have hopefully learned that Christ is the answer to the problem; any problem, at any time, in any place, in any circumstance. God wants us to choose Him by our own free will, not because He made us do so. Willing allegiance to God is powerful, forced allegiance would be no allegiance at all.
13.  Dependence, God desires that we be dependent on Him, not ourselves. Why? Because we as human beings have only limited vision, our vision is not all inclusive like God’s is…so we need to depend on Him even when things make no sense at all, especially when things make no sense. When your human brain and heart can make no sense of what is happening in your world…God can make perfect sense out of it, trust Him!
14. Growth, if we are to grow in any meaningful, substantial way…it takes time and life lessons. We don’t come to Christ as mature believers, we come as babes and progress through teaching, life experience, mistakes, and often yes…lessons learned the hard way.
15. Wisdom, God desires us to obtain wisdom and not be foolish. Only through life experience combined with our learning of God’s ways do we attain wisdom. Very few are wise at a young age, although they think they are. (I was guilty of this!)

God is much more like that meal that takes all day to make! Actually, we are that meal, and God is the Chef. Let God prepare you properly, so that when you step into eternity, you will hear, “well done good and faithful servant”.

gth                                                                                                                                                                                                                             2/22/12