God’s Waiting Room

Oh boy how we dislike, even hate, God’s waiting room. (Hi Jen )

We pray and pray for something we want. We exert ourselves with an effort beyond any we’d ever made before. We just aren’t sure we’ll get what we want so we ask God to please, please God, let me have this just this one time, please…

God, you know how hard we worked, you know how qualified we are, you know how much we want this in our hearts.

We’ve been good God! Honest! You know we have… We’ve fulfilled all of your requests, even did things we didn’t want to do! Come on God – you know we’re “in between” what we have and what we want.

Just this one time God please, I promise I’ll do whatever you want, give up whatever you want, change however you want, if you please just let me have this one, simple thing. PLEASE!

Besides this form of prayer being distinctly discussed in Step Two – “We had always said ‘Grant Me My Wishes’ instead of ‘Thy Will Be Done’ and also becoming more a demand than a prayer, the simplicity of it is that God has, very simply put to me by Matt Monahan, only three answers that He avails Himself of;

1 – Yes

2 – No

And…

3 – NOT NOW!!!

When God answers NOT NOW we have arrived in God’s waiting room.

Something Bill Wilson says in the Big Book (pg. 13) became very important to me on this topic;

“Never was I to pray for myself, except as my requests bore on my usefulness to others. Then only might I expect to receive. But that would be in great measure.” (You might want to reference Job)

Thy Will Be Done, Not Mine eases the wait.