wilderness and butterbeans.

First time at Kairos tonight. It was great; reminded me a lot of the Navigators at K-State, except a few hundred more people and I only knew one of them. When Paige Armstrong came to LifeWay last week to do a devotional, I interviewed her for Bible Express. I like this girl. She has such a beautiful heart. We got to talking about churches and Bible studies, and she invited me to Kairos at Brentwood Baptist. I met up with Paige there tonight.

Mike (the pastor/speaker) talked on Luke 1:80 and about John the Baptist and this waiting. He mentioned how we live in such a "microwave" world where we want everything to happen now. 30 seconds is too long. And here we are, stuck in this in-between: between when Jesus came and when Jesus said He's coming back. But we don't know when He's coming back.

Before Jesus was born, there were all these prophets saying that Jesus was coming. People knew this. The prophets were saying that he would come from Bethlehem. It was no secret. Yet when Jesus finally came, there wasn't a room for Him! You'd think these people would have set up a permanent room to have it ready whenever He finally came. They knew, but they didn't really believe. We're like that. We know Jesus is coming; it's no secret! But we aren't preparing. We aren't getting rid of the sin and filth in our hearts to make room for Him.

Mike also talked about John's time in the wilderness. He went out there and grew spiritually and you really don't hear about him at all until he appeared publicly when Jesus started his public ministry. Every person in the Bible experiences their time in the wilderness--their time when God wants to teach them something and he takes them out where nothing is straight and structured. Everything they've expected is gone. The people they thought would always be there for them: gone. Jesus was in the wilderness 40 days. John was in the wilderness. The Israelites were out there. Zechariah experienced wilderness in the form of losing his hearing and speech until John was born because he was too stubborn to listen to Gabriel.

Sometimes God brings us to the wilderness. He wants to teach us something. He wants to work in us in ways we can't even begin to imagine. And here we are (microwave world) acting like a kindergarten student with our milk cartons of dirt and butterbeans. The teacher promises something will grow from that bean, and one day we look at it and we see nothing. So we dig that sucker up and look at it. And it doesn't look like it's doing anything. Sheesh. So we bury it again in the dirt. The next day, we pull it up again. No wonder that bean won't grow! You have to allow it to sit in the soil long enough for things to start happening. Maybe God has you in a dark, uncomfortable place. Maybe it's moist like the dirt. Be patient, friend. He's working.