Richard Dawson, 8 November 2019

Wait

There’s nothing like having to wait for someone or something to test character. We imagine we are good people until out ambitions or expectation are limited by someone or something. Then the reality of what lies beneath the cultured façade of our public self is exposed not just to ourselves but for all to see and hear.
The impatience, the distain, the lack of empathy, the shear bad temper rises to the surface and we are faced with the truth about ourselves... our red-handed, raw and raging sinfulness still exists and must be dealt with daily, sometimes hourly.
What happened to being ‘dead to sin and alive to Christ?’
Don’t worry. The principle still holds true. We must still be ‘dead to sin’ but the dead thing isn’t sin, it’s us. Paul makes this distinction between who we are and sin a number of times in the NT. Sin is a power, a force, an evil which while it can find expression within us – is not who we are. Christ has given us the ability to ‘come out’ from sin and be separated from it by including ourselves in Christ’s death and resurrection and one of the key dynamics in this process is to learn to wait on God; to forego defensiveness and reactivity and just to wait. The more we give ourselves to the temptation to ‘lash out’ at either perceived or real rejection the more chance sin has to determine both our thoughts and our reaction. Wait on God. He is just. He will defend us. Richard D