Psalm 37:
7 – Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. (NIV)
Psalm 27:
14 – Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.
The place I least like to go in all the world is our state Motor Vehicle Administration. I absolutely dread those times when I am forced to make my way to their Clopper Road office because experience has taught me that what I will do most when I get there is WAIT in line. In fact I know that the very FIRST thing I’ll do when I walk in the door is stand in a line WAITING to find out which line to stand and WAIT in next. I’ve even stood in lines there WAITING for hours only to be told when it was finally my turn that I had not brought the right paper work with me and that I would have to return home to get it and then come back to WAIT in line once more. I hate any place like that where I have to waste my precious time WAITING!
How about you? Don’t you just enjoy a nice, long WAIT? Isn’t it fun to be waiting at a stop light behind an accelerator-challenged driver when the light turns green and you have places to go and people to see and he just sits there? Or how about those times when you pull into a gas station and all the pumps are occupied and you have to WAIT for someone in front of you who has already filled his tank but before moving his car so that you could gas up, he decides that he simply must go inside and buy a pack of gum or something!?
While we’re WAITING for this sermon introduction to end why don’t we take a few moments to evaluate our ability to wait. I’ll give you a couple scenarios and you pick how you would respond:
SCENARIO #1 – You’re at the tollbooth at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge on the way to Ocean City for a much-needed weekend away from the stresses of life in Montgomery County when the driver of the car in front of you pays his toll and then begins an extended conversation with the tollbooth operator. He’s probably a tourist asking how much concrete it took to build the bridge or something. Think for a moment about how you would react:
You’re happy. You are glad that this conversation is taking place. In fact you consider turning off your engine and going up to join in the conversation.
You could care less. You put your car in park and decide to lay back and take this opportunity to catch a few Z’s.
You are furious and attempt to drive your vehicle between the other person’s car and the tollbooth.
SCENARIO #2 – You’ve been sitting in the waiting room of your doctor’s office for an hour now sharing the germs with dozens of sick people sitting around you. How do you respond?
You’re grateful for the chance to catch up on the 1993 Reader’s Digest.
You start a contest with the other patients to see who has the biggest surgery scar.
You attempt to empty the waiting room by telling the rest of the people there that you have come to see the doctor because you think you were exposed to the EBOLA virus.
Now, all foolishness aside, these are fairly casual kinds of waiting that all people have to endure. Waiting at toll booths and in doctors offices and in lines at the Post Office or MacDonalds is a part of life. We’re used to that. But there are other more serious kinds of waiting. There’s the waiting of a single person to see if God has marriage in store for him or her. There’s the waiting of a childless couple who desperately want to start a family but day after day, week after week, year after year….their prayers bear no obvious fruit. There’s the waiting of someone who has a serious disease and the treatment is almost as bad as the illness. Its long and drawn out and they wonder if the cure will ever come. There’s the waiting of the person suffering from depression who has to struggle every day to get out of bed and life seems dark and dreary most of the time. They wonder if they will ever win this mental battle and see the sun shine again in their life. Many of us have experienced difficult WAITING times like this. Perhaps this is what inspired Lewis Smeades to write:
Waiting is our destiny. As creatures who cannot by themselves bring about what they hope for, we wait in the darkness for a flame we cannot light. We wait in fear for a happy ending we cannot write. We wait for a ‘not yet’ that feels like a ‘not ever.’
John Ortberg (to whom I am deeply indebted for this message) refers to waiting as, …the hardest work of hope. Yet, when we read the Bible, God Himself, Who is all-powerful, all-wise, and all-loving asks us over and over again to do just that: to WAIT. God came to Abraham when he was 75 years old and said, Abraham, you’re going to become a father. You’ll be the ancestor of a great nation. But it won’t happen today. It won’t happen tomorrow. Just wait. Do you remember how long it was before that promise came true? Twenty-four years! Think about being 75 years old and being told that instead of heading for the retirement home you’re about to head for the maternity ward…you’re going to be a dad and then WAITING nearly two and a half decades for it to come about! God told His people, Israel, that they would be a great nation…that they would be able to leave the slavery of Egypt and be independent, but they had to WAIT 400 years for that to happen.
Then came the promise that the MESSIAH, the SAVIOR, the REDEEMER from God would come. God’s people WAITED. They waited generation after generation, century after century-time in which God seemed to be silent. Then, strangest of all, when the Messiah came, He wasn’t at all what they had expected-not what they thought they were WAITING for. Due to their misinterpreting God’s prophets only a few recognized Jesus as the Messiah when He came. Remember the words of John’s gospel? He was in the world and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him…He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him. (John 1:10-11 ) A small, ragtag group of disciples DID follow Him as the CHRIST. They listened to His teachings and kept WAITING for Him to bring in the kingdom the way they expected-to right all the wrongs done to them and their people but He was crucified. They WAITED again…three days…and then He rose from the dead and things looked great! It was the best news ever heard! But in a few weeks He ascended to Heaven. And as He was leaving, they asked Him, Are You going to restore the Kingdom? In other words, Is our WAITING over now? And in Acts 1 He replied, Don’t leave Jerusalem but WAIT. So they did. They WAITED in the Upper Room and the Holy Spirit came.
But even that didn’t mean the time of waiting was over for the human race. As Paul writes in Romans 8:23, We ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly while we WAIT for adoption, the redemption of our bodies…
We wait and we wait. Forty-three times in the Old Testament, the people are commanded, Wait on the Lord. And…this instruction runs all through the Bible to the very last words. In the last chapter of Revelation, John closes by saying, The One who testifies to these things, says, ‘Behold, I am coming SOON.’ (Revelation 22:12 ) It may not seem like it, but in light of eternity, it’s soon. Hang on. And then John writes a reply in verse 20, Come, Lord Jesus. In other words, We’ll hang on. But come. We’re WAITING for you.
Now, I guess the obvious question is WHY? Why does God make us WAIT? Since He can do anything and since He’s all loving, why doesn’t He bring us relief and answers NOW? I certainly don’t understand ALL of why God does this, but to quote Ben Patterson, I believe at least in part, that what’s going on is seen in this principle: What God does IN US while we wait, is as important as WHAT WE ARE WAITING FOR. It may be hard for us to understand, but there is important growth that can only happen to us in these times when we suffer through long periods of waiting. In other words one reason God makes us wait is that He knows it is good for us. As we wait, He is at work in us….molding us and shaping us….maturing us.
A great example of this is found in the experience of the people of Israel when they were wandering in the desert for 40 years. God explained the purpose of these four decades of waiting in Deuteronomy 8:2-4 when He said,
Remember how the Lord your God has led you in the desert for these forty years, taking away your pride and testing you, because He wanted to show what was in your heart. He took away your pride when He let you get hungry and then He fed you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had ever seen. This was to teach you that a person does not live by eating only bread, but by everything the Lord says. During these forty years, your clothes did not wear out, and your feet did not swell. Know in your heart that the Lord your God corrects you as a parent corrects a child.
You see, during these desert decades God helped the Hebrew people to grow up. He took away their pride and proved that He would provide for them. Did God want them to reach the Promised Land? Of course. But He was more concerned that they arrive PREPARED than that they arrive SOON. The pain of waiting through these seemingly endless years of delay would serve to teach the Israelite people vital lessons.
This reminds me of the story of two maestros who attended a concert to hear a promising young soprano. One commented on the purity of her voice. The other responded, Yes, but she’ll sing better once her heart is broken. You see, there are certain passions only learned by pain. And there are times when God, knowing that, allows us to endure the pain of waiting for the sake of the song.
A New Testament example of this principle is found in the account of the death of Lazarus. Remember, Jesus delayed in going to Lazarus’ bedside. In that time of WAITING for the Miracle Worker to come, Mary and Martha watched their brother, Lazarus die. Only after he was dead and in the grave for four days did Jesus finally come — too late to do any good in the minds of Mary and Martha. When He arrived Martha said to Jesus, Lord if You had been here my brother would not have died. In other words, If You had not made us WAIT this wouldn’t have happened. Of course, Jesus then raised Lazarus back to life-and as a result, thanks to their experience of waiting, these two ladies learned an amazing truth about Jesus. To use the paraphrase of Henry Blackaby Jesus told them, If I had come when you asked Me to, I would have healed Lazarus. But you would have never known any more about Me than you already know. I made you wait because I wanted you to realize that I am the Resurrection and the Life. This time of waiting was an opportunity for Me to disclose to you more of Me than you have ever known.
So, scripture teaches over and over again that waiting is often part of God’s plan. For the believer, waiting can be an amazing blessing. Waiting can actually be good for us. This is why in James 1:2-4 it says: Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds [including the trials of WAITING], because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
Okay, we often see, especially in hindsight, that waiting does benefit us. We understand, at least in part WHY God makes us wait…but HOW can we wait? What must we do to make it possible for God to work-even in these times of waiting-for our good? In a recent issue of Preaching Today, John Ortberg suggests three basic attitudes or behaviors that are requirements for those who wait on the Lord: patience, humility, and hope. Let’s look at them this morning:
1. First, in order to grow and mature in these times of waiting we need to learn to be PATIENT.
As we watch the calendar slowly drag by we need to learn to patiently wait on God and trust His timing instead of our own. This is easier to do if we can come to realize that, whereas we exist IN time, God lives ABOVE or OUTSIDE of it. In other words God sees all of our lives at once unlike you and me who only see one slowly moving moment at a time. So, the days and months and years of waiting that we suffer through look different from God’s eternal perspective than they do to us. He sees more than we do. He knows the whole picture.
On the night of February 23, 1987 an astronomer in Chile observed the explosion of a distant supernova, a blast so powerful that it released as much energy in a single second than our sun will in ten billion years. But that event occurred on February 23, 1987 ONLY from the perspective of someone living on our planet. Actually, the supernova had exploded 170,000 years earlier, but the light generated by that event, traveling almost 6 trillion miles a year, took 170,000 years to reach our galaxy. Now, imagine a very large Being, larger than the entire universe-so large that the Being exists simultaneously on earth and in the space occupied by the supernova discovered in 1987. When that supernova was discovered, what time was it for this Being? Well, as Yancey reminds us in his book, Disappointment with God, that would depend on the perspective. From the perspective of earth, the Being would have observed 1987 history .but from the perspective of the supernova, the Being would have experienced what the earth would not know about for another 170,000 years. This Being thus observed both past-when He saw the supernova explode, the present-as the astronomer discovered the supernova, and the future-what is happening NOW in the galaxy where the supernova was-events that will not be seen for 170,000 years on earth.
The analogy is not perfect but it gives us at least a small window of understanding through which we can see truth that God sees our TIMES OF WAITING from an infinitely better perspective that we do. II Peter 3:8-9 alludes to this principle when it advises, …do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord, one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise as some think of slowness…. Perhaps you’ve heard the story of the economist who read this passage from 2 Peter and was quite amazed by it and talked to God about it. He prayed, Lord, is it true that a thousand years are just like one minute to you? The Lord said, Yes. The economist said, Well then a million dollars to us must be like one penny to you. And the Lord again said, Well, yes. The economist then said, Well, Lord, will you give me one of Your ‘pennies’? And the Lord said, All right, I will. Wait here a minute.
Often we want God’s resources, but we don’t want His timing. We want the penny but not the minute. We want His hand, but we don’t want His calendar. We forget His work in us while we wait which is as important as what we are waiting for. We must learn to trust that God knows what He is doing…that just as the lyrics to the chorus go, God, …makes all things beautiful in HIS time. Maybe you’re single this morning and you feel a legitimate longing for intimacy. You are tired of being alone. Waiting is so hard and maybe there’s a relationship at your fingertips that promises to take that loneliness away but you know that it is not honoring to God. You know in your heart this is not the right person for you…but you are tempted to think, I’ve been waiting long enough. I’m going to reach out for whatever satisfaction I can get in this life and worry about the consequences later. But when we’re faced with times like this we must find the courage to WAIT on God and to be patient and trust His timing-to say, Ok God, I will take You at Your word. I will not get mixed up with a relationship that I know would dishonor You and bring damage to the souls of those involved. Even though I don’t know what tomorrow holds and even though I sometimes feel like nobody in this world understands how painful it is to be alone, I will trust You. I will wait.
In Henri Nouwen’s book, Sabbatical Journeys, he writes about some friends who were trapeze artists and called themselves The Flying Roudellas. One thing they told Nouwen was that there’s a very special relationship between the flyer and the catcher on the trapeze. The flyer is the one that lets go, and the catcher is the one that catches. As you might imagine, this relationship is important-especially to the flyer. When the flyer is swinging high above the crowd on the trapeze, the moment comes when he must let go. He arcs out into the air and his job is to remain as still as possible and to wait for the strong hands of the catcher to pluck him from the air. This trapeze artist told Nouwen, The flyer must never try to catch the catcher. He must wait in patient, absolute trust. The catcher will catch him. But He must wait. In life there will be times when we feel like we are hanging there and we wonder what is taking God so long. We will be tempted to take things into our own hands but we must learn like the trapeze artist to trust our Catcher, to say with the Psalmist, I trust in You, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in Your hands. (Psalm 31:14-15 a) We must cling to Jesus’ promise in Luke 18:7 where He said, God will always give what is right to His people who cry to him night and day, and He will not be slow [according to His perfect timing] to answer them. When we experience seemingly endless times of waiting we need the patience of the man who prayed, God, I cannot grasp Your mind, but with my whole heart I trust Your love.
And then, a second attitude that is an essential requirement for those who want to grow and mature in times of waiting is…
2. …. HUMILITY.
When you think about it, waiting is something by its nature that only the humble can do-or at least only the humble can do with grace. To wait for someone is to realize that I am not in control. I’m not calling the shots; the timing is not up to me. In our society there is a direct correlation between status and waiting. Supposedly the higher your status the less you have to wait. I remember Boyd Robinson telling me of a time when, as President Bush’s dentist, he received a phone call from the President himself saying he was sorry but that he could not make a dental appointment. He told Boyd he had to go to Camp David for an important meeting. Well, knowing that the president was in a lot of pain, Boyd offered to come there to treat him. And Bush said, Can you do that for me? Is that allowable? Boyd said, Sure…you’re the president. Boyd knew that as our nation’s leader, he did not have to wait. Presidents never have to read old Readers Digest magazines.
So you see, to grow in these times of waiting on God we must remember that we are not in charge. We’re the creature. He is the Creator. He is the Potter. We are the clay. This is the principle that Proverbs 3:34 refers to when it says that God, resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble… It is right that we should wait on Him for when we trust God with this kind of quiet humility we are saying that we understand that He is able to take care of us in the waiting times. He is bigger than we are more intelligent than we are. He has the wisdom and power to run the entire universe so He is certainly more capable to run my life than I am…
You know, at birth the human brain weighs on average, 14 ounces. At its maximum size, the brain weighs an average of 46 ounces, slightly less than 3 pounds. In liquid measurement that’s about the size of a Big Gulp from 7-11. Scientists tell us that we only use about 10 percent of our brain capacity. So that means that we have a functioning mind about the size of a quarter pounder with cheese. Do you see how ridiculous it is for us to think that with our 4.6 ounces of functioning brain matter we’re going to comprehend the infinite and decipher the mysteries of the millenniums? To think this is the height of foolish pride! It is logically impossible that we as finite creatures could ever fully understand the infinite!
Do this little exercise: Picture 100 years, either direction — 1900 2100. Then picture 500 years either way. That’s a little harder. Now stretch it out-picture eternity past, eternity future. Can you do that? I can’t. Try the same thing with numbers. Think of the biggest one you can, and add another billion another trillion, and keep on going. Or try to comprehend the universe. Go out into the night and look at that sky and think how it doesn’t stop. Picture the farthest point you can think of and then way beyond that. I don’t know about you but when I try to do these things I start getting error messages in my mind: illegal operation….not enough RAM. If we can’t get our brains around these common things, how can we expect to grasp the ways of our eternal, infinite God?
Romans 11:33 says, Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments and His paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? From Him and through Him are all things.
It is guaranteed that you will live frustrated if you need to have every piece in the puzzle. On this side of eternity we will not be able to understand all the reasons that God makes us wait. It is only when history has run its course will we be able to look back and see that He has indeed worked …in all things for our good. So, to grow through these times we must learn to be humble people, content with our humanity and His deity. He’s God and we’re not. He sees the big picture and we can’t. One author said, There’s a certain paradox in the human situation that God gave man a mind and it’s man’s duty to use that mind to the very limit of human thought. But it is also true, that there are times when that limit is reached and all that is left is to accept and adore.
3. The third requirement for people who want to be able to benefit from times of waiting is an inextinguishable HOPE.
You know, HOPE is a very powerful thing for it motivates us to look beyond our circumstances and calendars and believe that things will get better eventually. It gives us the strength to endure until tomorrow again and again and again. Hope keeps hostages alive when they wait and wait and have no rational proof that anyone cares about their plight Hope is what entices farmers to plant seeds in the spring after three straight years of drought.
But, how can you generate that caliber of hope? Where does it come from? Well, I think the Bible teaches that for the Christian hope comes from simply being faithful; from obeying God even in the midst of long periods of waiting.
Romans 5:3-5 says, suffering produces perseverance; perseverance [produces] character, and character [produces] hope. I don’t know about you but I would have expected Paul to list hope first, as the fuel that keeps a person going in tough times. But Paul lists it at the end. He does this because faithful obedience to God shows that hope emerges from the struggle. It is a byproduct of faithfulness. So, for the believer waiting must not an inactive time. No, it is a time in which we act on what we know, obeying God as though we can see the outcome. When we do this we become more confident in His instruction, more hope-filled people.
In John 17:7 Jesus said, If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether My teaching comes from God or whether I speak on My own. Note the sequence: CHOOSE to do God’s will and then confidence comes-not the other way around. Thomas Merton wrote, Quote:
We receive enlightenment only in proportion as we give ourselves more and more completely to God by humble submission and love. We do not first see, then act; we act, then see…and that is why the man who waits to see clearly before he will believe, never starts the journey.
You see, the more we seek God in daily prayer; the more we study His word; the more we trust Him enough to follow His commands, well then, the more we see that He is worthy of our trust and then the more hopeful we can be-even in times of waiting.
We don’t get to know God and then do His will. We get to know Him more deeply BY DOING His will. We enter into an active relationship with Him. And in this relationship We develop a faith that is, …sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1 ), a faith that is confident that He who began a good work [in our lives] will carry it on to completion no matter how long it takes. (Philippians 1:6 )
This morning ask yourself: Am I having a tough time WAITING on God because I am trusting my timing more than His? Does my difficulty in enduring some lengthy trial stem from pride? Have I forgotten who is the creature and Who is the Creator? Do I need to trust His wisdom more and mine less? Do I feel hope-LESS because I am not being obedient to God’s clear commands?
You know, it amazes me to realize that our eternal, omnipotent, omniscient God actually WAITS on us. He perfectly models patience and humility for, instead of forcing us to follow Him, He invites and then awaits our response. He lovingly longs to fellowship with us but will not force Himself into our lives. In Matthew 23 Jesus refers to this aspect of God’s nature when He looks out over Jerusalem and says, …how often I have longed to gather you! In other words, how long I have WAITED to gather you close, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings but you were not willing. Revelation 3:20 says that even now He waits. He stands at our heart’s door …and knocks. He promises that, if anyone opens the door He will come in. This morning, at this very moment, God waits for us to give Him our trust. He waits to bless our lives as we commit to serve Him day in and day out. He waits to infuse our hearts with a HOPE that will keep us going. I guess the question then is, WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR? Why in the world NOT open the doors of our lives and invite Him in?
Today if you are not a Christian, I urge you to do just that. Don’t wait any longer. Right now say a prayer to God in which you confess your sin and ask His forgiveness through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Give Him your life to use as He sees fit. If you are already a believer and God is inviting you to make a decision that will deepen your walk with Him, I encourage you NOT to tarry. Perhaps He’s leading you to join this church. If so, don’t wait — obey Him. Maybe He is calling you to some special task or ministry. Whatever decision you have to make, I urge you to make it public by walking an aisle and sharing your commitment with me or Steve as we stand and sing.