In relation to the kingdom of God, impatience can make people blind and lead them tragically astray. All the good things that we strive for and hope for from God can be taken away from us when we give in to this failing and are impatient.

The root of our impatience lies in our compulsion to achieve. Nothing motivates us more than being asked to do something in keeping with our strength, our ability. Just the pledge to do something, to improve a situation, can excite thousands of people. Even sensible people waver and get carried away. They think, yes, we must and we can do something!

When this human element enters, many people begin to act on their own. God is not fast enough for them, and they rush ahead and press forward according to their own understanding. They also want leaders, if they can find such, to whom they can subordinate themselves and whom they can follow with enthusiasm. Then human strength is roused, in spite of all the misery, all the failure, all the sin that we know is there.

The kingdom of God, however, comes in an entirely different way. It makes no call upon human strength or the exertions of the flesh. The kingdom of God makes us quiet - and for us this is the hardest thing. To have to see that we ourselves are powerless when it comes to the most important affairs of our lives and in attaining the highest goals, and that we must drop all our powers, good as well as bad, is the hardest thing for us to do (Jer. 9:23-24).

Again and again impatience rears up in our hearts like a dragon. In fact, it is almost a rebellion against the living God because we, in comparison to him, are nothing at all… Silently, secretly, the words ring within our hearts: “We want to be great people! We want to brandish the sword! We want to become men and women of renown! We want a battle cry with which to storm the world…

But God holds back those who want to go forward on their own strength and who want to justify their flesh by their own zeal. He holds back those who would like to bring all their old nature with them into the kingdom of God and to be praised because they are the driving force, because they are the people who advanced the cause. God holds back all these souls; he strikes them down.

Anyone who does not want to be held back by God must find the path that leads downward: the path upon which we become free of ourselves; the path upon which we must die, the path upon which we see our strength always acting wrongly and always deceiving us.

This selection is excerpted from this free pdf ebook.