As a guy there is one thing that I know men don’t have to do very often.  We don’t have to wait in line for the bathroom and when we do have to wait we only have to wait for a minute.  It’s great.  Girls you are missing out here.  But anyway, we all have seen that kid that standing in line that is about to pee all over the place.  You know.  Knees together, holding themselves, eyes turning yellow.  Not really waiting so patiently.

A few days ago I had to take my daughter to the doctor and afterward I realized that we waited in a completely different way.  Like most any doctor’s appointment we had to wait in the waiting room.  No big deal.  There wasn’t anyone else in the waiting room with us but of course we still had to wait.  If you are a parent you know that with a kid you either wait impatiently and painfully or you help them get their mind off waiting and give them something to do.  So as we waited, we played and played.  We crawled all over the place.  She flew through the air.  She climbed on stuff.

As I thought about it, many of us are in a place of waiting.  I know I am.  We just left our most recent home, our job, our town, etc. and came to a new place, new town, no job, etc.  Maybe you are in a place waiting between jobs.  Maybe you are trying to get pregnant.  Maybe you are waiting for an answer from God.  Whatever it is, many of us are waiting.  In that place of waiting we have a choice to make.

Are you waiting for that next thing like that little kid about to pee all over the place and totally impatient or are you waiting in a place that you can still enjoy the things and people around you?

As you may assume from the title of this post, I am struggling with my patience at the moment.  Unfortunately, I am not waiting on just one thing so I think that is making it worse.  But on the fortuitous side, the things I am waiting on are all great things!  One of the main things is a huge step that our new church is taking (I say new even though we have been there for several months now because I was a part of our last church for around 7 years) in the next couple months.

As a staff we have been talking, planning, praying, and dreaming for the past several months as we have been dealing with the sale of the current facilities and then the inevitable move to somewhere new.  I believe that we have been faithful to do our part and God, who is always faithful to do His, has come through and set before us a great situation that we are very excited about.  So after all that _____ing that we did as a staff, we finally made the announcement to the church this past weekend.  It went great!  True, we are going from a permanent facility to setup and teardown portability, but we are also gaining so many things that we believe will be huge for the vision of the church!  We will finally be right smack in the middle of the community!  We will financially be able to do things to reach out to those we are literally surrounded by!  We are gonna crank it up and rock out in a theater!

Coming in October we will be moving from Irvine, CA to Aliso Viejo, CA.  It is only a few miles down the road, but I believe it will make a huge difference and God has some great things planned!  I can’t wait to get this going!  Although, I do have TONS to do.  Not only are we in the middle of nailing down our portable package, I am working on revamping the website, and really dialing in my band and team.  Watch out for Kingsfield Church, Aliso Viejo…or Orange County for that matter.  I’m just the Music & Media Pastor, but we are on our way in many different ways!

As for those other things I am not so patiently waiting on, I will get into those some other time.

So I’m told patience is a virtue.  It’s an easy thing to tell someone, “well you just need to be patient.”  I have always thought of myself as a pretty patient person when it comes to life issues (exluding morons on the road that can’t drive or people that are waiting in line just like you when you are asking the subway sandwich maker what comes on a sandwich or idiots that feel like they have to beat you to a parking spot when you are actually leaving and not parking…these people I have no patience for).  But sometimes waiting on the Lord is hard.  As my wife and I have dealt with several difficult situations over the past year or so, we have to continue hanging on to verses like Romans 5:3-4.  In the end, I think we always have to know that our God has so much more planned for us than we can ever imagine.  Anything we can come up with, He can easily blow out of the water.  I like that.