Eeek!! I'm a microwave Christian!!

Like so many people my age, I am a certain product of my generation. We are the generation that saw the microwave enter nearly every American home. We are the generation of "I want it all and I want it NOW!" Remember that song?? 

I see this in several areas of my life. My weight loss for sure! Who of us doesn't want to see the weight come off overnight? Even as much as I tell myself that is not healthy even if I could find a way to make it happen, I STILL want it to happen that way. Even worse, I still get discouraged when the weight doesn't come off as quickly as I'd like to see.

I see it in my parenting. I want to be able to tell my kids how things are supposed to be and have them follow and obey without question. Anyone who has kids (especially teenagers) knows this is NOT how it happens. You have to train them and correct them, then train them and then correct them again. At times it feels like they are never going to get it. But we have to stick with it and they don't become well adjusted, with a good work ethic, high morals and great character over night. It takes years of patient parenting to get to that point.

I realized this past week that I see it in my running too. It's hard for me to slow down and build up to faster speeds and greater endurance because "I want it all, and I want it now!" On ever run I go for now, I remind have to myself to take it slow and steady. I'm going to have to crochet myself a tiny turtle to take on my runs to remind myself of this. Again, it's the patient building of muscles and endurance through many practice runs. This takes time.

I also see it in my prayer life. I've been wanting to learn to pray more effectively and not be so bored in prayer and not have my mind wander as it tends to when I'm trying to converse with Jesus. I got discouraged when I tried to pray the way Daniel Henderson outlines Worship based prayer. 

What I think I failed to recognize is that much like my running, I am in prayer training. It's going to take patient building of my prayer 'muscles and endurance'. That is of course assuming that I'm going into prayer with the correct motivations and with a clean heart before my Lord. But that is a totally different discussion.

So basically the Lord is teaching me to slow down and listen for HIS leading instead of running off half cocked barely having any idea what direction I'm even going.