God's Timing

God often takes longer than we expect. Judging by the way some of us pray, you’d think God was a cosmic bellhop just waiting for us to ring our bell so he could grab our bags and show us our room. We are so disappointed when we ring and he doesn’t show up.
Abraham and Sarah experienced long waits, as did Moses, and Hannah, and most of the prophets. God often takes the long walk. For Him a thousand years are as a day and a day is as a thou­sand years. As one author put it: “With God, timing is more important than time.”
And yet we have the prayer of the persistent widow in Luke 18. The passage begins with these words, “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” Now I’m thinking that is not really good news. What I read in a statement like that is, “God may take a really long time in answering your prayer, so I need to teach you not to give up”. Why, you might ask, do we need to be taught not to give up? Because you are going to feel like giving up.
In Luke 11 the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray and he tells them a story about a friend who needs bread at midnight because someone has shown up and they’ve go nothing to feed them. The moral of the story is “Ask and keep asking and you’ll finally get what you’re asking for.” Eventually.  
What all these stories have in common is relationship—at least if we are persistent in our prayers, we are still talking to God. And that seems to be what he is most interested in.
-Pastor Dino Griffin