Last week at the college’s student-led chapel one of the songs was “You Are Relentless” by Jesus Culture. This song describes what I felt was God’s attitude towards me during my season of cancer in 2004. He was being relentless in shaping my heart to what He wanted it to be. Some would look at the cancer and say God’s attitude seemed to be more unloving than relentless. Couldn’t He have healed the cancer in the first place? Couldn’t He have healed the side effects of the radiation such as the blisters in my mouth, the raw throat, and the burnt skin around my neck? Couldn’t He have strengthened my body from the weakening side effects of the chemotherapy? Yes, He could have done all those things. But He wanted to heal something more important than my physical ailments. He needed to heal my heart and He allowed cancer to invade into my body to accomplish this.
This slow process of healing my body allowed for a slow process of healing my heart. He could have easily healed my body quickly but I would not have learned the important accompanying heart lessons that would be necessary for years to come. We could read the Gospel accounts of Jesus healing a blind man or Peter’s mother-in-law and believe God always heals that quickly. Or we could read in one sitting the account of Joseph going from the prison to Prime Minister but miss that he was in prison for at least two years. Or within a few minutes we could read the account of Moses leaving Egypt then encountering the burning bush but not realize that time encompassed forty years.
Part of the reason we like to think God acts quickly is because we read the Bible quickly. You can read the entire Bible over 365 days by going over three to four chapters a day, not realizing you are reading 2,000 years of history within one year. We can flip the page between the Old and New Testament without thought but that one page represents 400 years. No wonder we sometimes think God acts quickly.
God is a master of taking His time so that something beautiful emerges. It’s similar to what happens when you compare a microwave oven to a crock pot. Have you ever tried to make kalua pig in a microwave oven? No one would attempt this because it would come out rubbery and tasteless. But something delicious emerges when you have a crock pot and you add the pork butt, Hawaiian salt, and liquid smoke and you cook it over eight hours. During that time the pork breaks down, the juices from the fat melts, and the pork mixes with the Hawaiian salt and liquid smoke. When you walk into the kitchen, the smell permeates your senses and you want to peel a piece off and pop it into your mouth. But then I can hear my wife say, “Don’t touch that lid!” Why? Because it’s not finished cooking and I can’t disturb the cooking process.
The same thing happens with God. Sometimes He is doing a slow work and we dare not disturb the process. But we don’t like to wait. We live in a culture where everything happens quickly. A car can get its oil changed in 15 minutes. A church service is done in 90 minutes. A movie is finished in less than two hours. We can get from Honolulu to Los Angeles in five hours. We’ve grown up in a culture where everything happens fast and we want God to act fast as well.
During this time God was teaching me three things. First, God was teaching me to wait. The healing of my cancer would come but it would come slowly. Therefore I had to wait on God’s timing to heal me. I had to trust His sovereignty. Second, God was teaching me how to slow down. Up until my season of cancer, I was going Warp 10 (in Star Trek lore, this is considered an unsafe velocity). But God needed me to slow down and put me in spacedock so repairs could be made. There was no ministry and no work. Basically, no activity.
Third, God was teaching me how to enjoy His presence. This isn’t something that could have happened if I was going Mach 10. God needed to slow me down so I could have intimacy with Him. Thus my times of pain, suffering, and difficulty became sacred times. It became a holy time. I would close my eyes and go deep with God.
As I look back at that season nine years ago, I can say it was a pivotal moment in my shift from DOING to BEING. I was learning how to be still and know He was God.
Sometimes we don’t have good leaders who last because they can’t wait when God does something slow.
Questions to Think About:
Do you find yourself having difficulty waiting on the Lord’s timing?
What would happen if you waited on God’s timing more than your timing…even if God’s timing took longer than your timing?
© Gary Lau 2013
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