We all have a cross we must bear

And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:27

How do you handle it when God does not answer your prayer in the timing you think He should?  In Genesis 16, Abram and Sarai mixed faith with unbelief in their attempt to hurry along the promise from God of a son.  Because Sarai was still barren at the age of 75 she persuaded Abram to take her maid servant Hagar as his wife.  When Hagar conceived, Sarai was despised in Hagar's eyes.  Now lets stop there.  What was Abram and Sarai thinking??!!!  Well, it was a custom in that day to have your maid servants bear children for you if you were barren.  So they went along with the customs of their culture.  Abram and Sarai bought into the lie that because something worked it means it must be true or because it was accepted it must be right.  Wrong thinking leads to wrong actions.  As believers we face the same temptations today in waiting for God to answer our prayer or the fulfillment of a promise.  We all have a cross to bear and barrenness was one of Abrams and Sarai's.  Abram believed the promise of God to give him offspring but came up with a worldly solution.  We are guilty of that as well because, lets face it, sometimes we just don't want to bear our cross any more.  We become weary, impatient, frustrated. We stop praying and start justifying, manipulating and we try to remove our cross our selves.  It was a surprise to me when I first realized that it's not up to me to remove my cross.  In God's perfect timing He will remove it.  A part of our exercise of faith is to submit, wait and surrender our will in order for His will to be accomplished in our lives.  When we are confused about a situation or in need of wisdom the Lord is gracious to give us assurance when we ask in faith.  "If any of you lacks wisdom,let him ask of God who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him"  James 1:5