I have a tendency to underestimate how much work something is going to take me. I’m also extremely impatient. Thankfully the Lord has grown me in the area of immediate gratification. I’ve made significant improvement in looking to others and earthly things before approaching God. However, I still want immediate gratification from God. I want growth now. I want less pain now. And currently, I want a summer job now. Midway through the second day of my Chicago job search, I wanted to break down and cry. I felt frustrated, worn down and defeated. As I sat down in Starbucks – when you’re job searching in Chicago, these become your best friends in 90-degree heat, I looked up wait in the concordance of my bible and immediately went to Isaiah 30:18. I read, “Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.” As I meditated on this for a little bit, a couple things stood out to me.

1. The Lord waits to be gracious to me. The NIV says, The Lord longs to be gracious. This is what my heart heard from God, “Caitlin, you are dearly loved by me, and I could snap my fingers and get you a job, but you need to be patient. There’s growth in this process that I desire you to have; be patient with me, I’ll be patient with you, and it will all be okay.” God is a god of justice; I know that He is faithful, and knows me better than anyone else, therefore I will trust that His timing is perfect.

2. Blessed are all those who wait for him. I hate waiting. I’m probably one of the most impatient people on the face of the earth.  I hate when meetings start five minutes late. However, in my walk with the Lord, there has been waiting. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the right time for confrontation, and waiting for the healing. The waiting isn’t easy, but in waiting for God’s timing, He will bless me.

3. One of my favorite verses is Romans 5:3-4, “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” I so easily jump in my mind from the suffering to the character and then to the hope. I forget that endurance is an important aspect of growth and hope in Christ.

Thursday I will hit the streets of Chicago following up on job applications I’ve filled out and filling out even more. My prayer is that instead of growing in frustration, I grow in faith. That I continue to place my hope in the Lord, where I will never be disappointed. I pray that I will be able to stay patient (or be patient) and set my eyes of Jesus through it all, no matter the outcome.