Hope in Times of Waiting

Today we’re going to talk about finding hope in times of waiting.

How do you feel about waiting? Do you enjoy a nice long wait?

We don’t like to wait, do we?

We don’t like when we’re on a call and we get put on hold.
We don’t like when we have to stand in line at the grocery store.
We don’t like the DMV.
We don’t like sitting at a stop light behind an accelerator-challenged driver when the light turns green.
We don’t like sitting in the waiting room at a doctor’s office.
We don’t like listening to a sermon that just goes on and on and on.

Has that happened to you? You start to think, “This is never going to end.”

If it hasn’t, just wait.

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These are common situations we all tend to dislike that involve waiting. And we can get irritated, but we put up with them.

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Then there are other more difficult and serious kinds of waiting:

There’s the waiting of a single person to see if God might have marriage for them.

There’s the waiting of a couple who desperately want to start a family. But day after day, week after week, their prayer goes unanswered.

There’s the waiting of someone who longs to find work that’s meaningful and significant. But it doesn’t happen.

There’s the waiting of a deeply depressed person for a morning when they will wake up wanting to live. But that morning never seems to come.

There’s the waiting of a spouse who’s trapped in a hurting marriage that doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to change.

There’s the waiting for the results of some medical tests or biopsy.

There’s the waiting for the chemotherapy treatments to become effective.

Waiting can be one of the most difficult things in life.

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And the fact is many of us are in a season of waiting right now.

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And there’s this strange thing for followers of Christ — we’re assured over and over again by the writers of Scripture that God himself, who is all-powerful, all-wise and all-loving keeps saying to his people this word that we hate — “Wait.”

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God comes to Abraham when he’s 75 years old. God says, “Abraham, you’re going to become a father. You will be the ancestor of a great nation. But it won’t happen today, and it won’t happen tomorrow.”

Do you know how long it was before that promise came true?

24 years!

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Think about being 75 years old and being told you’re going to become a parent. And then you have to wait for 24 years. That’s how long Abraham had to wait.

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God told Israel, his people, they would be a nation, they would be able to leave the slavery of Egypt and be independent. But they had to wait 400 years.

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God told Moses he was going to lead his people into the Promised Land. But they had to go to the wilderness and wait 40 years.

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Then came the great promise of the Messiah, the Savior of the world. God’s people waited generation after generation, century after century when God seemed silent.

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Then Jesus comes. He heals and he teaches. And his disciples keep waiting for him to bring in the kingdom the way they expected him to — to right all the wrongs. But he was crucified.

And as Jesus was getting ready to ascend, they asked him again, “Is now the time? Are you going to restore the kingdom? Is our waiting over now?”

Jesus had one more command. It’s in Acts 1. He said, “Don’t leave Jerusalem, but…” — Anyone want to guess what the next word is? “But wait.”

So they do. They waited in the upper room, and the Holy Spirit came.

But that didn’t mean that the time of waiting was over for the human race.

Paul writes in Romans 8:

We who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we WAIT eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?

But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:23-25)

43 times in the Old Testament alone people are commanded, “Wait. Wait on the Lord.”

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Question — why does God make us wait?

If he can do anything, and if he’s all-loving, why doesn’t he bring us help and relief and answers now?

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Well, I certainly don’t understand all of this. But I believe that, at least in part, what’s going on is this:

What God does in us while we wait is just as important as what we’re waiting for.

What God does in us while we wait is just as important as what we’re waiting for.

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God’s focus is about the person he’s shaping us to be, not so much the place he’s leading us to.

God is a sculptor with our lives, not a traffic cop. He puts us on a potter’s wheel and molds us into something incredible.

God doesn’t just want to be our personal map application. He doesn’t want to stand in the intersection of our lives and point to the places we want to go.

He wants to put his hands on us and mold us into what he wants us to be.

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And a lot of times that means being still, not moving — waiting on the Lord.

God says, “My will for you is so much more about who you are than what you do or where you go.”

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The Apostle Paul said in Romans 5, while we’re waiting for God to set everything right, we suffer, but…

We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance.

And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. (Romans 5:3-4)

God is producing these qualities in us while we wait.

And what that means is that according to the writers of Scripture, waiting is not just something we have to do until we get what we want.

Waiting is something God uses to shape me into who he wants me to be.

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So in the time that remains today, I want to talk about what it means to “wait on the Lord.”

And when we understand this, and when we practice this, it will lead to having hope in times of waiting.

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And I want to start with what biblical waiting is not.

Biblical waiting is not a kind of passive waiting around for someone or something to come along that will get me out of trouble.

People sometimes say, “I’m just waiting on the Lord,” as an excuse to not face up to reality — to not take appropriate action or own up to their responsibility. That’s not what waiting on the Lord is.

I’ve heard people with impulsive spending habits and unbelievable financial debt, who refuse to save money and get into a huge financial problems say, “I’m waiting on the Lord to provide.”

That’s not biblical waiting.

Waiting on the Lord in this case doesn’t mean sitting around hoping you get a letter from Nordstrom saying, “Bank error in your favor. Collect two hundred dollars.”

Waiting on the Lord in this case probably means meeting with a financial planner and learning about biblical principles for your financial life.

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Biblical waiting is not passive. It’s not a way to avoid an unpleasant reality.

Waiting on the Lord is active. It takes discipline. It’s an expectant and sometimes painful trust in God.

Waiting on the Lord is the continual daily decision to say, “God, I will trust you. I will obey you even though the circumstances of my life are not turning out the way that I want them to and may never turn out the way I want them to. I’m betting everything on you God, and there is no plan B.”

That’s waiting on the Lord. And it’s hard work. But it lead to hope.

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Alright, there are, I think, 3 requirements to waiting on the Lord.

The first one is this: waiting on the Lord requires

Patient Trust

Will I trust that God has a good reason for saying wait? I don’t know what it is, but will I trust that God knows what he’s doing?

Will I remember that things look different to God because he views things from eternity?

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This is what Peter writes in 2 Peter 3:8

But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day.

The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. (2 Peter 3:8-9)

God has a different perspective.

An economist who read this passage was amazed by the truth of it. So he talked to God about it.

He said, “Lord, is it true that a thousand years to us is like one minute to you?”

The Lord said, “Yes, it is.”

The economist said, “Well, then a million dollars to us must be like one penny to you.”

The Lord said, “Well, yes it is.”

The economist said, “Well, Lord, will you give me one of those pennies?”

The Lord said, “Sure, wait here a minute.”

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Too 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.

And we forget his work in us while we wait — his work in you while you wait is as important as what it is you think you’re waiting for.

God’s will is much more about who we are than what we do, or where we go.

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When we start thinking about God’s will for our lives, immediately our minds start thinking decisions, choices, options — here or there, these people or those people, this thing or that thing, this situation or that situation. Which path am I supposed to take?

I think God is trying to speak to each one of us, saying, “My will begins with you. My primary will, my major agenda, my really big focus right now is not so much where you work or where you go to school or who you marry or where you live — it’s who you are.”

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I mean, what if right now God just supernaturally spoke to your question — the dilemma or the crossroads you’re in right now — like he sent you a text that only you could see, but it was the answer to the question you’ve been asking.

And you’d go, “That’s it. That’s what I’ve been looking for right there. That’s the right place. That’s where I’m supposed to go.”

And what if you went to that place, but all the while you never came to the point in your life where you allowed God to make you into the person he wanted you to be.

You could be in the right place and the whole time be the completely wrong person in that place and be completely out of the will of God — not because you’re doing the wrong thing, but because you weren’t the right person that God intended for you to be.

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Waiting means I must trust God knows what he’s doing.

It doesn’t seem like such a stretch, does it? I mean, if he’s God and I’m not God, it doesn’t seem like that would be such a stretch.

But it is for a lot of us.

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And it must be PATIENT trust — that is, trust that’s willing to wait again tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day.

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I just want to be real direct about this for a moment.

Maybe you’re here today and you’re single. We live in a society where so often the assumption is that marriage is normal and singleness is not. And you feel the pain of that stigma.

Maybe you feel a legitimate longing for intimacy. Maybe you feel the kind of loneliness that really only God can heal, and another human being can’t rescue you from.

But regardless, waiting is so hard.

And maybe there’s a potential relationship right at your fingertips that promises to take some of that loneliness away, but you know that relationship is not honoring to God.

Maybe you know in your heart that this is not the right person.
Maybe this person doesn’t share your ultimate commitment to God.
Maybe this person is putting pressure on you to be involved sexually even though you’re not married, and you’re quite clear on what God has to say about that.

But because of the pain, you’re tempted to think, “I’ve been waiting long enough. I’m tired of waiting. I’m going to reach out for whatever satisfaction I can get in this life and worry about the consequences later.”

So I’m asking you today, if you’re in that situation, will you wait on the Lord?

Will you courageously say, “Okay God. I will take you at your word. I will not get mixed up in a relationship that I know would dishonor you and bring damage to the souls of those involved.

“I’ll seek to build the best life I can right here where I am, not knowing what tomorrow holds. And even though I sometimes feel like no one in the world understands how painful it is, I’ll trust you. I will wait.”

Will you do that?

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Maybe you have a dream about certain things that you’d love to accomplish, a mark you’d like to make, something about your work or ministry. But for reasons you don’t understand, what you’ve always hoped for is not happening.

You don’t know why. You just know it hurts. And you’re tempted to try to force things to happen — to manipulate, or scheme, or use people.

Or maybe, on the other hand, you’re tempted to just give up ever trying to realize the potential God has given you and just drift.

I’m asking you today, do you have the patience to neither try to force it, nor to quit, but to wait patiently on God?

Continue to learn about your giftedness. Humbly and openly receive feedback and coaching from others. Grow in the truth one step at a time and trust God’s plan for you rather than what it is you think you need.

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Maybe you desire change in some real significant area of your life, but it hasn’t come so far, and it may not come tomorrow.

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Maybe you’re in a difficult marriage and you’d like to bail emotionally if not physically, and God is saying to you, “Wait. Be patient. Focus on the love that you can give to your spouse, not the love that you think you’ve got to get back from your spouse.”

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Maybe God is saying, “Will you let me love you? Will you trust me? Will you hang in there? Will you wait?”

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I read a beautiful picture of waiting on God from Henri Nouwen in his book “Sabbatical Journeys.”

He writes about a relationship he had with a group of trapeze artists. They were with a circus, and they had an impact on him.

One of the things they told him is there’s a very special relationship between the flyer and the catcher on the trapeze. As you might imagine, that’s a very important relationship, especially to the flyer.

When the flyer is swinging high above the crowd on the trapeze the moment comes when he must let go. Then he arcs out into the air.

His job is to remain as still as possible and wait for the strong arms of the catcher to pluck him out of the air.

These trapeze artists told Nouwen that the flyer must never try to catch the catcher. The flyer must wait in absolute trust. The catcher will catch him, but he must wait.

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Some of you are in that very vulnerable moment right now. You’ve let go of what it is that God has called you to let go of, but you can’t feel God’s hand catching you yet.

You’re tempted to start flailing around.

Will you just wait in absolute trust? Will you be patient?

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Waiting requires PATIENT TRUST. That’s the first thing waiting on the Lord requires.

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The second one is this. Waiting on the Lord requires:

Confident Humility

Isaiah wrote these words in Isaiah 32:

The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever. (Isaiah 32:17)

The result of righteousness, the prophet says, will be these two character qualities: quietness and confidence.

It’s odd to see these two qualities together — confidence and quietness. It’s the opposite of arrogance and boasting.

It’s the humble recognition of my limits — humble waiting.

Waiting is something that by its nature only the humble can do. At least only the humble can do it with grace because when I wait for something, what I have to recognize is that…

I am not in control.
I’m not running the show.
I am not calling the shots.
The timing is not up to me, and that’s a humble thing.

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In our society, there’s a direct correlation between status and waiting. The higher your status, the less you have to wait. The lower status person always has to wait on the higher status person. That’s the way it works.

If you wonder about that, the next time you go to your doctor’s office just knock on whatever door the doctor is behind and say, “I’m an important person. My time is too valuable to be kept waiting. You must see me right now.” See how far that gets you.

Waiting reminds me that I’m not in charge.

What’s the first room you have to go into at the doctor’s office?

It’s the waiting room.

The doctor doesn’t go to the waiting room. The patient goes to the waiting room.

The waiting room reminds me that I’m not in charge.

And we’re waiting on God because God is in charge. God is doing something in us. Therefore, we can trust his wisdom and his timing, and we can wait with confidence.

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And I would say the single most important activity for people waiting on God is prayer. Prayer is the primary form waiting on God takes.

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I read something interesting about Dallas Theological Seminary.

In 1924 Dallas Theological Seminary almost went bankrupt. On the day it was to foreclose at noon, Dr. Harry Ironside, the president, held a prayer meeting in his office.

That day he prayed a prayer he often prayed: “Lord, we know the cattle on a thousand hills are yours. Please sell some of them and give us the money.”

As he prayed with some staff and faculty, a tall Texas oil man walked in the receptionist’s office.

He told the secretary, “I just sold two truckloads of cattle in Fort Worth. I’ve been trying to make a business deal go through and it won’t work. I’ve been compelled to give this money to the seminary. I don’t know if you need it, but here’s the check.”

The secretary burst into the room where the staff were praying and said to Dr. Ironside, “God just sold the cattle.”

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It’s prayer that allows humble human beings to wait without worry.

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Have you had one of those nights where you can’t sleep because you’re troubled by all kinds of thoughts — “what if” kinds of thoughts.

What if I don’t get what I think I so desperately need?
What if some things don’t turn out the way that I desperately want them to turn out?
What if some things don’t change the way that I think they’ve got to change?

I think we’ve all had those nights.

And these are frantic voices that play over and over inside of our minds. There’s an appearance of truth to them — bad things can happen — but they don’t lead to life.

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I was reading in Mark 4 where Jesus and his friends are in the boat, and there’s this storm all around them. They get real frantic and panicky.

Do you know what Jesus was doing in the boat?

He was sleeping.

They wake him up, and he just says to them, “Be still.” He says to the storm, “Be still,” and everything becomes still.

And it struck me — there’s an aspect of life that Jesus did not experience. Jesus had pretty much every human emotion: sorrow, joy, pain. He was tired, he was angry, he was hopeful and so on.

But there’s one aspect of our lives that God never experiences. God is never frantic. God never panics. God is never worried.

So you can know when you hear desperate thoughts or panicky thoughts, that’s not God. God will never lead you into panicky desperation.

When you find yourself being led into panicky desperation, you can know that you’re not being led by God.

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Alright, we wait with patient trust.

We wait with confident humility — with confidence because God is leading us, and with humility because I’m not in charge.

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Then there’s a third thing. Waiting on the Lord requires:

Enduring Hope

Paul writes in Romans 8:

For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?

But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:24-25)

In other words, if I were to have it, I wouldn’t have hoped for it.

But if we hoped for what we do not see — what we don’t yet have, what we cry out for and long for and hunger and thirst for, but don’t yet experience — if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

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There’s a passage in the Bible with a wonderful promise attached to waiting on the Lord. I want to walk you through it.

These are beautiful words from the Prophet Isaiah:

Isaiah 40:30

Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who wait on the LORD will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. (Isaiah 40:30-31)

Now, I just want to unpack these words.

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Isaiah says, sometimes when you wait on the Lord, you will mount up or soar on wings like eagles.

This is a beautiful picture.

I did a little research on birds and flight and discovered that birds have basically three methods of flight.

The first one, the most familiar one, is flapping.

In flapping, birds just keep their wings in constant motion to counteract gravity. Hummingbirds can do this 70 to 100 times a second. Flapping keeps birds up in the air, but it’s a lot of work.

It’s quite awkward and clumsy, but I spend a lot of time flapping around. I know something of what it feels like to flap. I’m sure you do too.

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Then there’s gliding.

That’s when a bird builds up enough speed that it can coast for a while. It’s pretty smooth, but because of gravity, it doesn’t last very long. Coasting doesn’t last.

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Then there’s a third form of flight, and only a very few birds are capable of this — third is soaring.

An eagle can soar. An eagle’s wings are so strong that it is capable of catching rising currents of warm air.

Without moving a feather, in sheer majesty, an eagle can soar to great heights. It can soar right out of sight.

Eagles have been clocked at up to 80 miles per hour, soaring, without flapping at all, just soaring on invisible columns of rising air.

It’s a magnificent picture — the writer says that for those who wait on the Lord, these times will come. And when you soar, it’s like you catch a gust of the Spirit.

Jesus said, “The wind blows wherever it will, and so it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

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Some of you are in an era of spiritual soaring right now.

You find yourself simply held up by the Spirit of God.
God is answering prayer with extravagant generosity.
He’s using you in ways that leave you amazed.
He’s regularly giving you power to rise above temptation and sin.
He’s flooding you with strength and wisdom beyond your ability.

You’re just soaring right now.

If that’s your condition, be very grateful, and do all you can do to stay in the stream of the Spirit’s power. Be real obedient as the Spirit guides you.

And keep praying. Don’t assume you’re soaring on your own strength. Don’t assume it’s you.

Maybe there are certain disciplines helping you to catch the Spirit’s power — solitude or Scripture reading or simply getting enough rest.

Be real diligent in these things. Build on them and enjoy the ride because you’re soaring with the Spirit.

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But then there’s the next group. Some of us in this room are not soaring, but we’re running and not growing weary.

Now, if this is you, your life is not effortless right now.
You may not see a whole lot of miracles.
You may have to do some flapping every once in a while.
But with persistence and determination, you know you’re running the race. You’re staying on course.
You feel frustration, but you also feel God’s pleasure in your obedience sometimes.

If that’s you, you just need to keep running — faithfully obeying, and serving, and praying, and giving.

Don’t try to manufacture spiritual joy. Don’t compare yourself to someone who is soaring right now. Your time will come.

Just keep running. Stay faithful because when you run, you grow real strong.

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And then there’s a third group. Some of us in here are not soaring and cannot even run. Because of doubt or pain or fatigue or failure or crisis all we can do is just walk and not faint, just walk and not keel over.

For some in this room, all you can say today is, “God, I’ll hang on. I don’t seem too fruitful or productive. I don’t feel very triumphant. I’ve been hurt. I’m wounded. I’ve suffered loss. I’m confused. But God, I won’t let go. I will obey you, and I’ll just keep walking.”

I want to say a word to those of you who are in this third group.

You may be surrounded by some real fast runners. You may be surrounded by some eagles that soar higher than you can see. It’s a hard thing to be a walker when you’re surrounded by racers and eagles.

But sometimes walking is the best you can offer God, and you know what? God understands. Jesus knows all about that because he really did become a human being, and he knows all about our condition.

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Sometimes Jesus soared. And you can read all about those times in the gospels.

I think when he was on the Mount of Transfiguration and he was so immersed in the glory of God that his body became literally, physically radiant with beauty and light. I think he soared that day.

I think when he stood by the tomb of his friend, Lazarus, and he just spoke the word, and a body that had been laying there dead came out of the tomb, filled with life, I think Jesus soared on that day.

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But he didn’t always soar. There were some times when he faced pretty serious obstacles, and I think he kept running.

When he wept over the defiance of Jerusalem.
When he was frustrated because his disciples were so slow, they were so disciple-challenged.
When he faced the opposition of religious leaders who should have been his first followers, but fought him every step of the way.

I think in those times he kept running. He just ran.

He didn’t turn aside from the path even when it went uphill. He just kept running.

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But then one day it came time to take the road to Calvary, to the cross. He wasn’t soaring on that day. When the cross was placed on his bruised and bleeding back, he didn’t sprint up to Calvary.

He was a young man, but he stumbled and fell that day — the creator of the universe. His knees buckled, and his back bent, and he stumbled and fell.

And then he just got up and kept walking. All he could do was just walk some more.

Sometimes, walking is all you can do. But in those times, thank God walking is enough.

In fact, I want to say this — I think maybe it’s when life is the hardest and we want so badly to quit, but we say to God from the deepest part of our being, unsupported by soaring emotions or running strength, “God, I won’t quit. No matter what, I won’t quit. I’ll just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and I’ll take up my cross, and I’ll follow Jesus even on this hardest of roads.”

I think maybe, just maybe, God cherishes our walking even more than our soaring and our running.

Because what we wait for is not more important than what happens to us while we’re waiting.

And because the one we wait for will be worth the wait. He will be worth the wait. He will, because:

Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who wait on the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

Let me pray for you as the worship team comes to lead us in a closing song.

Blue Oaks Church
Pleasanton, CA