When I Want to Do God's Job for Him

In case you haven’t noticed, time flies. Looking back, this has been one of those years full of big decisions. Over the last twelve months I’ve had one major life transition after another. And with each change, I wrestle with doing it God’s way, or my way.

Perhaps you’ve gone through similar seasons of uncertainty, where you wish God would just hurry up and get you to your desired destination with expedience. Problem is, God’s pace is rarely expedient by my definition.

As I write, I’m realizing how hypocritically inconsistent this is—I want God to solve all my problems now, but I also want Him to be patient with me as I do life and occasionally give-in to sin.

In Jonah 4:2, Jonah admits the reason he fled to Tarshish—he knew that if he preached to Nineveh, and they repented, God would extend grace. If Jonah had been able to make God’s decision for Him, he wouldn’t give Nineveh any grace! Really, Jonah wanted to do God’s job. Have you ever been there?

Unlike Jonah, the urge to do God’s job for Him isn’t usually because we think we know better than God. It’s often due to a lack of patience. One thing I’ve learned this year is that while I’ll pray for God’s guidance when I don’t know what to do, I’ll end with “amen” and try to force a situation as I see fit. But in grabbing life by the horns and forcing a situation I might be missing out on God’s way to handle it. Trust is a lesson learned through patience. And if there’s one thing our culture is not good at, it’s patience.

We live in a world that operates at the speed of now. Rather than standing in line at a fast-food restaurant to order, skip the line by scanning the QR code at the table and they’ll bring it right to you. Need something from the store? Pull up the app, and it can be delivered this afternoon. No time to watch the news? Listen to the news podcast in traffic when you can’t avoid Woodruff Road.

So much stuff in life happens when I want / expect it to. Why doesn’t God get on-board with the schedule? It’s easy to let all the noise and “right now-ness” of life compete for God’s place in your life. I know it does in mine. What should we do?

Let’s consider Jesus.

Jesus lived an intentionally slow, unhurried life. Jesus took his time. Jesus prioritized the person standing in front of Him regardless of the noise vying for his attention. Remember the woman with the issue of bleeding (Mark 5)? Jesus was in the middle of doing something when he stops to have this close, intimate moment with her.

Jairus, a synagogue leader, had a daughter who was actively dying, and was leading Jesus to his house to heal her. Then Jesus stops for a time-out. Valuable seconds slip by as Jesus “wastes” it with this woman. Then news comes that the little girl died. Can you imagine what Jairus was feeling? Rather than sprinting to save his daughter, Jesus stops for a conversation with this random woman, knowing the risk involved for the little girl. Couldn’t this woman wait!? Even just a few minutes? Why couldn’t she just follow the crowd and have her moment with Jesus after Jairus’ daughter was healed??? Rather than do it Jairus’ way, Jesus made Jairus wait so that He could do something even bigger than Jairus expected.

Patience. Is. Hard. And I think I’m getting worse at it as I get older. Thankfully, resisting the urge to do God’s job for Him is a lesson we can learn from the Bible rather than first-hand. And it’s not just Jairus or Jonah! How about when Abraham tried to fulfill the covenant promise of a child with Hagar, rather than wait? Rather than wait for Moses to come down from the mountain with words from God, Aaron and the Israelites forged the golden calf. Remember when Saul offered an unlawful sacrifice to God in 1 Samuel 13, rather than wait? Major consequences resulted in each of these scenarios. The principle we learn? Doing God’s part for Him in our haste results in consequences. In comparison, waiting on God always results in something beyond explanation—something that always leads to knowing God more and God getting the credit (crossing the Red Sea, David’s deliverance from King Saul, the three days between the cross and the resurrection).

Getting our agenda completed now has always been the natural inclination of our hearts—our technology today just speeds it up. Let’s take a cue from scripture and wait on the Lord. It’s never easy—nothing worth doing ever is—but it’s always worth it.