Good morning. I am so glad you're here joining us at church And I got a talk today that is very important from my life And I am so excited to be able to share some of these things with you that hopefully I've learned over a few years of my life And so if you grab a cup of coffee if you haven't done that Gather some people with you and let's get into some exciting things. I gotta start with this I am just not a big fan of waiting Waiting we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about waiting and I'm just not a big fan of waiting on things We know the drill Trying to get to the shore on a busy holiday weekend 78 when it's full of traffic trying to get across the George Washington Bridge trying to navigate our way down at the grocery store When you know the person in front of you is cheating with how many things they have in their basket Trying to go through the drive-through and getting your food.
Why does it take more than five minutes? I am just not a big fan of waiting and you know for me Just today my wife and I were on the phone and we're talking to some agency And they have a computer voice that said your estimated time for answering is 55 minutes and we're looking at each other saying 55 minutes What do we do with that 55 minutes the worst is when you're on there and about 45 minutes in suddenly you hear some noise and you're disconnected But we all wait. I don't think this is anything new in my life and maybe you can understand the same feelings of I just can't wait I remember as a kid growing up at the Jersey Shore. I could not wait for the end of school every single day I couldn't wait for that marvelous fabulous Magnificent day called the last day of school When that day hit I knew the rest of the summer was gonna be down at the beach I couldn't wait to get home.
I couldn't wait to get in my old clothes. I couldn't wait to get out and play ball I couldn't wait for an early dinner. I couldn't wait maybe to turn on the television and see something that's on TV So we all go through this thing about waiting. I've heard people recently say I Can't wait till this whole covid thing is over.
I identify with that I can be there as well because I can't wait till this covid thing is over We want to be meeting at the church as we're doing on the parking lot so much But you know something about it. We are just going to have to wait and waiting isn't always easy for us as human beings There's a lot of waiting in life And I think the idea about waiting is whoever told us that life was really instant like where did that come from? My mom and dad never told me that life was gonna be instant But I get the feeling that it is why does it take more than five minutes to get a hamburger through a drive-in? Why can't I just zip through the line at the grocery store?
Why'd other people have to be on the road when I'm on the road trying to go to beach on Labor Day weekend? But why do we think that everything is gonna be different than that? Who told us that life was instant? Well, maybe it was instant oatmeal instant coffee instant noodles, but those things all miss a little something is there so instant?
No, there's some idea here that we just have to learn to wait on things But we know how to wait we wait to go to sleep we wait to wake up we wait for breakfast we wait for the sunrise We wait for a sunny day we wait for rain on our garden. We know what waiting is all about But we still don't really like it Well, I can tell you in my life. I had to totally reevaluate this whole relationship I had with waiting Because when I turn to what God has said in his word I find out that there are all of these principles about waiting on God Waiting on God. Why do I have to wait on God?
I mean he's busy. We're busy Why do I have to learn to wait and why did he ask me to do so? But then as I go into his book I find out this waiting thing is actually kind of an important thing to God Now waiting on God doesn't seem to be something that comes naturally to us You know I remember seeing something the other day a podcast and it was talking about how to get rid of all of those things That waste time every day and it was kind of hysterical because it started to go like this Make sure that you don't take your camera and take pictures Don't form any collections with your life. Don't spend more than five minutes grooming.
I'm like really Don't spend an ordinary amount of time with other people Don't shop don't clean your house and as I was watching this podcast a little pop-up Piece came and it said this do you want to learn how to do things faster? And I said no, so I'm trying to reevaluate this whole thing about waiting But I certainly don't buy into this idea that productivity means taking out all the things that are fun in life in order to be more Productive at the end of the day so waiting on God What is that all about and how can I reevaluate my life and learn why I'm supposed to be doing that? Well because waiting is a part of everything we do and now God's gonna figure into it, you know waiting on God is not like Waiting for a bus on the side of a street and hoping it comes some point Waiting on God is not like being backed up on the George Washington Bridge to get into the city or to get home on the cross-brought expressway and Realizing there's nothing to do waiting on God is not sitting down at the dealership when your car is getting fixed and sitting down with the stale Donuts and a little bit of instant coffee. That's not waiting on God That's not the kind of waiting that he's talking about But there is something there where he tells us the power of waiting on him And there's some beautiful pieces to that and when I look at it I say why does why does God want me to be waiting for him?
I mean Isn't waiting on God seemingly kind of slow? Isn't waiting on God like I don't know what I'm really gonna get out of it Isn't waiting on God kind of like why can't I read a blog and if I read a blog It's gonna take less time than if I actually get quiet before him and let him speak to my soul Isn't waiting on God kind of taking away from other things in life that I really wanted to do These are the challenges on this whole spiritual discipline. Isn't it kind of sort of boring? Well God had to have something in that or he wouldn't ask us to wait on him.
There's a verse I'd like to read it right now, and it's just Psalm 27 verse 14 and it says this Wait for the Lord be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord So it's really there and what it means we want to throw to unpack today Because I'm in the same world you're in I want things to happen. I don't like to sit there waiting for the bus I don't like waiting for the computer to load and having to reboot it I want things done and yet I realize that productivity in our world has so much more to do than saving additional minutes for the End of the day and so people and I know you've probably felt this way I know I have I say to myself I can't wait till COVID's over and I think it makes sense Because so much of life is disrupted But when I start to think about it, I realize that if I'm going to start to think that my life is in neutral until COVID is over I probably am wasting a lot of time in fact. I don't think COVID has really taken away any hours or any minutes I don't think COVID is move the atomic clock slower than it normally is Can't take away the 24-7 that you have and that I have But I must say that during this time of COVID it seems as if our priorities have changed We just can't do everything that we used to do all the little things on my life that took so much time outside the house I can't get as easily involved with in fact it would seem that some of the biggest impacts of COVID Is in personal relationships? I'm with my wife.
Maybe you're with your kids or your husband. You're centered on the relationships It means so much I know that Janine and I have noticed so much more wildlife in our backyard since all of this COVID time Just two days ago. There was a deer and a turkey looking at each other face to face in our backyard I guess they became friends. We may not have even noticed that so we're looking at different things and I'm sure in your life If you take a moment there's some priorities that have changed so COVID isn't something that we just waste our time at It's something that we can fill and one thing we can learn to do is wait on the Lord You know, I think it's so easy in life to say I can't wait till this is over I can't wait till that's over I can't wait till this goes on I can't wait till that goes on and it seems as if we race through our life not really enjoying the moments The hours and the time that we have to be alive You know God wants us to be alive and to enjoy his world And if this COVID thing has shifted us Maybe we can enter in and embrace the shift because there will come a time when that shift is over.
I used to think that waiting on God Seems slow and then I had to ask myself Well, who's slow God or is it me a God who can make everything happen instantly Maybe needs to slow down in his relationship with me And that's what something that is about what it is to wait on God But when I began to understand what waiting on God was all about it really changed my perspective I don't know why I never heard this before but in the word for wait in Hebrew is such a fascinating word It's not the idea that I wait for a bus with my hands in my pocket It's not the idea that I'm sitting at the dealership or I have to keep rebooting something that fails to go on It's not like the computer is frozen in a spot and I can't even move the mouse That's not the word for wait The word for wait in Hebrew is not to put your brain in neutral and just a sort of Abstractly walk through life for a period of time It is such a particular word and this is what the word wait means the root of it a very early and ancient Hebrew core to that verb wait means to twirl thread to twirl wool to twirl cotton and To twirl it that is the actual core to the word wait And so when we hear as we explore what does it mean to wait on God as we hear the psalmist and the writer saying wait on God and wait For God it's not to go into neutral. It's not to join a monastery Because as we know about Jesus he was all about contextualizing the incarnational life of being a follower of God in The cosmopolitan culture that we live in so somehow I have to be able to wait on God and ride on a subway or cross the George Washington Bridge But the original value the original word is the literally twirl thread now What does that mean? Well, I had a rubber band I was playing with this morning and I noticed that when I spun it it kind of gathered itself up Or if you take thread or you take a piece of wool and you just start to twist it it centers itself And I think one aspect of that is that it centers itself when it just twirls And so waiting on God is not emptiness waiting on God is not neutral It's time that we take in order to find ourselves Centered in his presence by actually being productive in things that we're doing We're just waiting on him and his participation in our life in that instance The thing about twirling thread Janine and I went to look at how that happened in colonial times And they had to literally twirl thread and twirl a weave and what that weave would do then It would gather with other weaves and other threads and we become strong Such as an ecclesiastes it says that a cord of three strands is not easily broken You can break one strand pretty easily But once you get into that cord of three strands or even more it becomes strong So somewhere in this waiting for God and waiting on God I become strong So what are the keys of waiting on God? What are the keys that we find out?
Why would we even do this? First let's break free from some things Waiting on God is not doing what the next person on the internet does and tells you what to do It isn't waking up at three in the morning unless you like to wake up at three in the morning It doesn't mean you have to do what everybody else does Because each of us has the capacity to understand and walk in what it means to wait on God Individually in our relationship with him some people talk about practicing the presence of God They go through their day and God is always a piece of conversation There was a guy named Moody when the 19th century was in Chicago And his way of waiting on God was walking down the busy streets of Chicago But he was praying as he was doing it and so that was waiting on God for him And so some of us are mourning people some of us are evening people some of us read a book or we watch something Where it says you need to be starting an hour a day No my heart for you is to spend if you aren't doing this at all try spending five minutes a day Kind of waiting on God Just five minutes You know my best time is actually when I in the late afternoon I take a walk in my neighborhood and during that time I sing to the lord during that time I talk to the lord some of that time I complain to the lord I call out for things I need and that time becomes so rich And I miss that time if i'm not there So that's my winding thread time. It's what I've developed in my own life Now it doesn't mean that I don't find other times to wait on the lord But those are times Can I encourage you if you really don't know where to start? Start with five simple minutes And in those five minutes, how would I begin?
Well, just start talking to God You say well, it's bouncing off the ceiling it may feel that way But you know after a while it's not going to feel that way And there'll come a time when you find out that as you wait on God He joins you in that time and can even reveal some very powerful things So what are five pieces of why we want to be learning to wait on God And waiting on God is not merely time where I'm sitting or walking quietly Waiting on God can take a context for our whole life It just means to wait Maybe it's like the road sign when you get on a highway that says yield You just not got to go flying out there unless you live in Maryland where they do this They go first But generally you want to wait and look and then when people have passed then you join in And so some of that is just waiting on God But here are five things that we want to do and why it's important for us to wait on God Number one we wait on God so that he can reveal and speak to our lives Really? I'm not talking about audibly But God has the power To speak to us through his word and in that still small voice You know today if you think that God is a closed system and he can't communicate with his people There are too many verses in the old and new testament that tell us the opposite of that And if you're wondering why join up on seeker six Which are six evenings where I'm going to zoom and talk about If God wanted to be known how would he make himself known? Why would he make himself known? How does he make himself known and how can we trust what we have received as actually being from him?
So we have a fun time in that seeker six But I want to encourage you to know that God says as Jesus said my sheep hear my voice Now God isn't a chatterbox And he speaks in that stillness of our heart or in his word when he wants to But if we go and approach christianity as if God is out there and we're here And there's absolutely no communion between God and ourselves We really want to evaluate that I can tell you some of the richest pieces and awareness of my life and how and why he's called me and his love for me Have come through those times where I call out to him and then in his timing He speaks and so that's one reason why it's so important to wait on God In fact the word says if we seek him as we remember from the last time I talked He says that he's a rewarder of those who seek him and that's one way that he rewards us As I like to say God is always present with us But just sometimes he finds ways to let us know That's the first thing number two We want to wait on him to move and to act in our lives You know, I knew some football players We have some in the church I knew a lot of football players from Penn State and whether they were running backs or they were quarterback or they were on a defensive line One of the things that was so important was timing You give a ball to a running back and go crash into the line. You're not going anywhere As a quarterback if the if the route isn't completed The ball's going in the place where no one's going to catch it So timing is so absolutely important And you know God has a timing for us too We have to wait for things And that waiting is not wasted Waiting time is not wasted time I had to reorient my thoughts Waiting time is not wasted time And so one of the ways that we learn to wait on the Lord is for him to act I want to use a baseball illustration Some of us are having hard times in our life and finances and all this And I like to say in a baseball terminology Just wait for God to step up to the plate Because when God steps up to the plate Things happen But generally we have to wait for those times Not that he's torturing us But the discipline of waiting is a powerful piece Because nowhere in our world where we told that things happen instantly I need to learn the discipline the spiritual discipline of waiting Number three we wait on him because he can show us direction for our life Elijah up on the mountain You're the disciples God gives us a sense of direction Now, yeah, we can be wrong But there's no sin in being wrong It's learning through some of our mistakes How to differentiate what he's saying to us versus what we're saying to ourselves And one of the most important ways to get to that Is by having a spiritual mentor in your life Being involved in a small group Having an older believer who can sort of you can bounce off some of your thoughts with But scripture tells us we come to a time Where we can begin to discern the good things that God has for us From the ways that we shouldn't go And so one of the fruits of waiting on God Is that he may give us direction for our lives He's our father, our heavenly father Why wouldn't he want to reveal in his word how we're to be moving through our life? Number four to hear about him for our lives You know, I need to hear from God for my life Just on the idea of waiting Because it's so different than what we hear in our culture today As we know America is a very impatient culture Other cultures are way more patient than we are We don't like to wait And so I had asked God to open into my life And show me the spiritual discipline of waiting And even being silent before him In order to inhale Then I may exhale We can't be exhaling all the time Without spiritually intaking And so God speaks to our life In those times that we wait on him I put the devices down There's always Google But I want to remind myself To go to God before even going to Google Google seems fast God seems penetratingly powerful and wonderful And when he speaks into my heart It's something that can change my life For the rest of my days Number five to put life into balance And to move our priorities where they need to be You know it's amazing I can look back at my life And how God seems to be in all of the trials that I go through Has this powerful instructional Continual message That he is my heavenly Father And that he takes care of me And you know he takes care of you But if I don't get quiet in his presence In his word I may miss that In the chatter of a thousand noises Which is our society today So how do I do it? Forget the guilt Explore Go on an adventure A spiritual pilgrimage And start by five minutes a day Whether you walk or get quiet or Look in the backyard Or however you do it Find out what rhythms work for you And this is what God promises I love this This is a promise from him In Isaiah chapter 40 In verse 28 through 31 And I want to stress In this case the new American Standard Bible Which has a more accurate rendering Of the Hebrew word for wait Sometimes you own your Bible And it's not that it's an errant Bible At all Hope or something else But in Bible translation There's always a balance between accuracy And fluidity for those who read And so that's kind of a slide bar And in this case knowing the original Wait in Hebrew It is more clear to see And that's why I'm going to read From the new American Standard Bible here This is what God says He says this Do you not know No I never knew Have you not heard No I haven't heard The everlasting God The Lord The creator of the end of the earth Those are three names for God in the same verse Jehovah, Elohim and Creator That means it's important He doesn't become weary or tired I do You probably do too His understanding is inscrutable He's not slow He has to work with me I'm the one who's slow He gives strength to the weary You know that's a promise friend When we're weary He says I will give you strength And to him who lacks might He increases power It's like going from 4G to 5G 1G to 2G 5G Increases the power How about you but I need power for life He says this Though you's around you They grow weary and tired And you just turn on the news And you find out how our society Is so tired of each other Wery of each other Quick to jump on each other And figure us young people Or men stumble badly And we see that everywhere Those who wait There's that word Those who wait Those who wait On the Lord Not standing at the bus stop Not rebooting a frozen computer Not sitting in the dealer's Offices Tapping the stale donuts But those who wait on the Lord The twirling of thread Gathering itself Spending some time with God Quiting the soul Waiting for him to move Those who wait on the Lord His word says Those who wait Will gain new strength That's not old rehash strength That's new strength Brand new There's a difference between restored strength And new strength He go to the store And they have a restored piece of equipment You don't know where it's been Very different possibly than the new one So God doesn't give you some rehash Restored kind of strength you had before He says He has new strength for you He says they Those who wait on the Lord Those who realize that waiting Is not wasting That waiting time Is not wasted time It says that they will mount up with wings like eagles I saw a bald eagle for the first time in my life Flying high over my house Down in Old Wick, New Jersey And it wasn't flapping its wings It was just riding an unseen Current of air That's the wings of an eagle And that's where God says we will be As we wait on the Lord They will run And not grow tired They will walk And not become weary I don't know about you But this revolutionized my whole idea Of waiting for God Not a matter of wasting time Not a matter of wasting my life away And wishing it for another dimension Using each day and even moments of my life To recognize that He is with me Remember this Prayer and waiting on God Is not time to tw- Prayer is not the time of trying to twist the arm of a reluctant God It is joining Him in the participation of believing Him for His promises To bring them forth in our life and our world Bless you Have a great start And let's take some time this week Those five minutes a day And wait on the Lord I'll see you soon Bye-bye