Our culture has trained us to be impatient. You and I expect to have things now.
Remember when the internet first started to become a thing?
There was the process of connecting through the phone line. Then websites and content took their sweet time to load. Streaming videos would not have been possible since the constant stopping and buffering would have been unbearable.
Now, we expect our internet experience to be instantaneous and smooth.
Our expectations have changed to the point that if images and videos don't load lighting quick we are moving on to something else.
Impatience isn't isolated to our online experience. It colors everything that we do.
It is one of the reasons why consumer debt is unbelievably high in the United States. We want what we want right now. We don't want to wait and save for it. With easy credit all we have to care about is, "What is the monthly payment?"
While impatience affects our lives in many different ways, one of the most impactful ways is in the area of discipleship.
"Millions of people in our culture make decisions for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate. Many claim to have been born again, but the evidence for mature Christian discipleship is slim...There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness."
Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, p.16
We can be manipulated into have some sort of "religious experience" that makes us feel good. This is why feelings and emotional experiences are a poor foundation to build faith on. Once the feeling leaves and the experience fads into the past, it is easy to doubt God and wonder if any of it was really real in the first place.
True discipleship is a slow process.
It requires patience and a commitment to endure the ups and downs life throws our way.
The goal of discipleship is not an experience, feeling, or even acquiring all the right knowledge.
The goal is becoming holy.
I know holiness sounds rather dull and boring. Our pictures of holiness have to do with a life of strict discipline and quiet solitary life.
Let's face it. Satan has done a great job of turning what should be our greatest desire into something that we want to avoid.
I want to encourage you to think about holiness in this way: holiness is to live the life of Jesus.
Imagine living life with the compassion, mercy, wisdom, confidence, strength, and love of Jesus.
Through discipleship we seek to be conformed to the image of Jesus. That takes time as we learn to be guided by the Spirit rather than the flesh and how to love God and people the way they need to be loved.
Discipleship doesn't happen over night and it takes faith, commitment, and work, but it does lead to a life of no regrets.
A life worth living is found on the road of discipleship.
Be patient and stay committed and you will discover the life God created you to live.
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