Crock-Pot-Waiting our Way to Character

So it seems that there are times in our lives when God wants us to wait. I hate waiting. Never been any good at it.

But when it comes to forming character, few things seem to do the trick as well as learning how to wait. It's perseverance without the clear obstacle. It's battling without an enemy. It's overcoming our own impulses to want to grab for control. It's waiting and trusting that something good is coming on the other side.

God calls us to wait because he's more interested in who we're becoming than what we're doing. He wants us to be people of character.

Many of us would like character--at least in theory. We'd just rather find a quicker way to get there.

But character is not formed in the microwave. Character is formed in the crock-pot.

And so we must learn how to wait. We must learn to embrace the waiting as part and parcel of the gift that is on the way, not just as a necessary evil to speed quickly through on the way to getting that gift.