Have you ever come to a crossroads in life and earnestly sought the voice of God—only to eventually give up on hearing from Him and take your best guess at which direction to go?
Take it from me: it’s not a great strategy. I’ve jumped into jobs, relationships, and commitments of all kinds when—had I bothered to be patient and wait for God—God might’ve had something else in mind. been calling me elsewhere. It’s caused pain for me and for others. I’ve gotten better at this, trying to become a more patient person. Now, it’s been said that when you pray for patience God doesn’t make you more patient, he just gives you more opportunities to be patient, but I think there’s more to it than simply patience.
My feeling is that patience is not just about waiting—it’s about trusting God in the waiting. But I also think that the root of the problem goes even deeper than simply patience. When I look back on my life, I realize that I’d jumped into jobs rather than waiting on the Lord because I’ve idolized work as a source of purpose and security. I’d jumped into relationships because I’d idolized people as a source of comfort and love. I’d made all sorts of decisions apart from God because I’ve idolized myself, believing I’m perfectly capable of running my own life.
Just like the Israelites, we make idols because we fail to trust in God. Notice I didn’t say that we lack faith in God, I said that we fail to trust in God. What’s the difference? Is there a difference? I think so and it boils down to this: faith is a belief system; trust is action. Faith is believing that God is who God says He is and that what God can do, only God can do. But trust takes things a step further. It is making the willful choice to trust that God will do what he has promised.
In Exodus 32, when Moses was slow to come back down from the mountain, the Israelites quickly lose faith and stop trusting in God. They believed that if Moses was absent, then God must be, too. What’s so tragic about this is they seemed to have entirely forgotten everything God had done for then to this point—not the least of which was freeing them from slavery in Egypt. God sent pillars of cloud and fire to lead them in the wilderness, and parted the Red Sea, so they could flee the Egyptian army. He’d provided manna from heaven and water from a rock. After all this—seeing that God could and did do what he’d promised to do—how could the Israelites’ so easily worship a golden calf? How indeed?
It’s easy to judge them for their lack of faith. But the Israelites’ story should lead us to examine our own hearts. Idols don’t always present themselves in the form of a golden calf. In truth, we can make an idol out of anything—even relatively innocent things. Most of us believe in the power of God thanks to our personal experiences and through reading the Bible. But putting these beliefs into action—fully trusting in God—can be a true challenge for most. How to do this is different for everyone, but trusting in God begins with choosing to do so and it is a choice and one that we must make wholeheartedly. It means reminding ourselves over and over—through worship, prayer, Scripture reading, whatever it takes—that God is with us and for us, no matter what.