Now there is a reason for delays. I'll show you exactly what it is in a moment, and there's a part of God's planning for your character development and your life that always involves an aspect of delay. That's why the spirit of the age, which wants it all now, can never build Godly men. Godly men have to learn how to handle delay. In fact actually even as a simple principle in life, say for example in finances, if you will learn to manage your money carefully now and put off buying until later, if you put off gratification, you will succeed financially. Most people don't succeed because they want it now, they want to feel good now, and so they make actions and decisions that get them into a mess now, so they feel good now. Then tomorrow they feel worse, because the new problems come up, so in God it's always there's this issue of being patient. Now impatience is the inability to endure steadfast until God's timing. It's the inability to endure steadfastly until God comes through, here's the time.
1 Peter 5, Verse 6, it says humble yourself under the mighty had of God - notice that humble yourself. So this is something you have to do. Humble yourself has to do with trusting God, with doing what God's calling you to do, and then in due time He exalts you. So I've found that in life God can lift you up, God can promote you, but there's always a due time - kairot, an appointed time by God. Now you can't hurry God's appointed time. In the Book of Acts, Jesus spoke expressly, wait until the power of God comes on you. I'm going to give the promise of the Father, you're going to be filled with power of the Holy Ghost. He told that to at least 500 people, but when the day of Pentecost came, there was only 120 there. The 500 had quit on the way. The 10 day delay was all it took to cause the majority, four-fifths of the whole group to disappear, so instead of there being 500 or more, there was only 120 on that upper room on that day. Delay always has a way of pressuring us, so there's a due time. Now you can't hurry God's timing for things. Harvest time will come. If you sow there will be a harvest. You just can't hurry the harvest.
One guy was telling me, he said he started to plant some kind of vegetables in the garden, and he wanted to see how they were getting on, so he kept digging them up to have a look at how they were going and putting them back in the ground. Then he'd go back a few days later, dig them up to see how they were - oh, they're not doing too badly. They were potatoes. He found after a while, when finally the time of harvest came, he found at the end of the harvest came there was almost nothing there to show for all his labour and all his work. When his wife said I can't believe that this didn't work out, what on earth went wrong, he admitted to her he'd dug them up to have a check on them, see how they were doing. She said well you can't dig stuff up. You've got to just sow it, plant it, wait and the due time will come. There is a time of harvest, you can't do that.
I want you read with me in Hebrews 6, so the answer to delays is very simple. It's found in two words, two words that a lot of people struggle with and the words are faith and patience. Faith and patients. Hebrews, Chapter 6, look at this. It tells us don't be slothful. Rather - here it is, Verse 12 - do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. So it tells us two things. It says don't be sluggish. That word means lazy, inactive. It actually also refers to someone who's a little bit thick, not thinking right. They're a little bit slow on the uptake, so it's saying don't be slow on the uptake. Don't be a slow learner. Don't be a lazy person, but understand this, that it is through faith and patience - through. In other words the vehicle that the promises of God come are faith and patience. The way God's promises come are faith and patience. That's how things get to you - faith and patience. Well we'd like the faith bit, but the patience bit's the hard bit. See faith and patience, see? So patience means a constant steady confident advance. You remain confident, and you continue to do what you need to do. Patience is never passive. Biblical patience isn't well, I'll wait around until something happens. A lot of Christians wait until something happens. This is a problem. We're never to wait until something happens. We must persevere, doing the thing God wants us to do, until something happens.