Patience

March 10th, 2008

Rich’s talk last week on giving was brilliant. He mentioned the sowing and reaping principle. Waiting for seeds to germinate can be difficult. We are all familiar with wanting things done immediately. We demand strawberries out of season; we find being third in the Tesco’s queue totally annoying.

What an example of the faithfulness of God and man’s impatience is the story of Abraham! God’s time scale is usually not ours. Waiting is so very difficult, seemingly unproductive.

This week I looked back at prophecies given over this Church. One that we all knew at the time was significant was from Duane White in May 2002. Here are a few extracts from what he said: ‘ You’re going to make a sound that attracts heaven … radical obedience, radical giving, extreme living, radical words, radical praise, radical actions. This building is not big enough…this is just a transitional place…there is going to be a large hall. God is calling this church to a church of a thousand.

I don’t just see a building; I see a campus, a university of the Spirit. I see a Christian Primary School…a home for drug addicts…young women who are about to sneak off and have abortions coming here. Some of the buildings that God is going to give you will have had some connection with the Body Shop because as Anita Roddick was a seed that God brought as a first fruit out of Littlehampton, so God wants to do in this church…. In the next ten years I see ten millionaires coming out of this church, and it is people who have very little at the moment, so that we can finance the Gospel. God wants to raise your influence…… You can only receive this by faith.

Scripture says that prophecy is only partial; it never gives the full picture. However, I believe some of Duane’s words have already come to pass, and reading them again, coupled with other words that have been spoken over us, I am encouraged. We may have to wait years for what God has said to come about, and it may not even be in our lifetime, but in the meantime, we press on, but living radically, not settling.

Maybe God is asking you to be patient.                                                                 David Thatcher

Filed under: Thought of the Week