"Waiting On The Lord"
Sermon Transcript for February 15, 2004
Scripture Reading: James 1:2-4
By Rev. Mike Beck
Well, obviously this past four to five weeks have been a time of waiting for me. Isn’t it true that much of our life is spent waiting? When we’re little, we are waiting on birthdays and Santa Claus. As we get a little bit older we begin to wait on a phone call to see if I’ve got a date to the prom. Then we get a little bit older and the things we begin to wait on begin to be more and more of significance of times of life and death kinds of things. Times of waiting…and when we wait we also normally wonder what the outcome will be…are never easy. It’s interesting. I had decided that I wanted to preach somewhat out of my own recent experience on this first Sunday back in the pulpit. But knowing that the vast majority of you are even now waiting on something in your life. Last Sunday morning when I was at home I watched the video of Reverend Dan’s last sermon. A very excellent sermon series to begin the New Year! And lo and behold, where does he end that series but with this comment. The very last thing he said to you is “Normally as God works in our life, we have to be willing to wait.” Well, he had no idea what I had decided to preach on. It was one of those situations where the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing, but God was orchestrating things.
This is kind of painful but all of us, if we look back on our life experiences, can think of times in which we reap very negative consequences from our failure to be patient and to wait. Now, there are certainly times that God wants us to seize the moment, to act, to move forward. But, friends, there are also times in which what God wants us to do is to be still and to wait upon him. And unless we learn to wait upon the Lord, what we will often do is we will mess up the present moment. Think back on your life. How many times have you spoiled what would have been a wonderful moment of surprise or joy because you weren’t willing to wait? How often, if we don’t learn to wait, will we sacrifice the future that might have been? And, unless we learn to wait, we will never become a mature believer that God wants us to be.
In the Scripture, the Bible talks about gifts of the Spirit and fruits of the Spirit. Now, gifts of the Spirit we do not determine. God gives them as He chooses. He gives all of us gifts. But then Galatians talks about the fruits of the Spirit. There are nine of them. Those are things that God is expecting us to develop, the Holy Spirit being our helper, within our lives. And one of those fruits of the Spirit is patience. Now, if you are not aware of that, be very careful in praying for patience for this reason. The Bible teaches that patience is only developed in times of adversity. So if you find yourself praying for patience, the only way God can answer that prayer is to allow you to go through periods of trial.
The Book of James is filled with many pieces of practical advice about how we live out the Christian faith. One of those pieces comes right off the bat in verses 2-4 that we read this morning. But, friends, what do we do with verse two where it says, “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials”? Does that mean that when I’m going through the difficult periods in life, I’m to go around with a big smile on my face and say, “Life has never been better”? I don’t think that’s what James is telling us. I think what he is saying here when he says, “Count it all joy”, has to do with the attitude and the perspective that we choose to bring to a difficult situation. And then let’s look again at the rest of the verse, “Knowing…” Now “knowing” only comes by trusting God, by reading His Word. But then James says, “Knowing this, that the testing of your faith”. And God knows that that time is not easy for you, but He says it will “produce patience”. And that’s what we want to think about this morning.
Philippians, Chapter 4, Verse 6 and 7 are very related versus. They are versus that as a believer of Christ you ought to have them committed to memory. And I want you to read those two versus with me. Join me. “Do not be anxious about anything; but in everything, by prayer and petition, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” So I want to just share briefly a few things about waiting this morning. I want to begin with the obvious:
Times of waiting are not easy times because of the emotions that they illicit especially if what we are waiting on, the outcome of that is going to be very significant to our life. A lot of emotions develop. One of those emotions being the emotion of fear. In this matter of following Christ, we need to remember there are two signs to that point of being a Christian. One sign is the marvelous salvation, that grace and strength of God, the peace in the verse we just read God promises to us. But following Christ also has another side to the coin. For when we read the Gospels, we read that Jesus tells us to sacrifice. He says, “You may experience times of trial. There are going to be periods of suffering.”
The Disciple Bible Study group I’m having the privilege of leading has been studying the Gospel. And they discovered a few weeks ago the Book of Mark. But Mark, Chapter 9, Verse 34, is a pivot in the Gospel. For prior to that time, great crowds are following Jesus. He’s very popular. There are all these miracles going on. He’s passing out free lunches on the hillside. But then things change and Jesus says to the disciples, “Boys, I’ve got to go to Jerusalem now. When I go to Jerusalem I’m going to suffer and I’m going to die.” Mark 5:34 is a pivotal verse. It simply says, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
We’re moving in to the season of Lent. We’ve all heard of Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of Christ. That film is going to impact our community. It’s going to impact our society. We are going to take our sermons during Lent and we’re going to tie it in to that film because that film is going to remind us in a way that we have never experienced perhaps before of the suffering of Christ for us.
John 16:33 is another verse we ought to have committed to memory. Jesus there in the Upper Room said to His disciples, he said, “In this world, you will have problems”. But there is not a period there, there’s the word “but”. “But be of good cheer,” he said, “for I have overcome the world.” So times of waiting are not easy.
Times of waiting test and prove our faith. A lot of you know your Bibles quite well so I don’t want to ignore versus 5 through 8 that follow. James goes on to say, “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. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting” (Whoops, I’m right there) “for he who doubts is like the wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not the man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man unstable in all of his ways.” For our faith to grow to the point that we never doubt, that is the objective. But friends, take heart, your pastor is not there yet either. There are times that doubt creeps in. There are times that I am like the man who had the boy inflicted by evil spirits who came to Jesus asking him to heal his son. And Jesus said, “Do you believe that I can heal your boy?” And do you remember the man’s replay? He said, “Lord, I believe. Help now my unbelief.” Isn’t that where most of us live most of the time? I want you to take home this morning this quote, “Faith is not the absence of doubt, but rather the willingness to trust and obey in the midst of the doubt.” That is what authentic faith is. In times of waiting, test and prove our faith.
Times of waiting can deepen our trust in God: Now I want you to notice the word “can”; that it is not automatic. You’ve got to be willing to let that happen. But if we partner with God, it can deepen our trust. For in times of waiting, we come to realize there are many things in life that are beyond our ability to control. That’s when we begin to truly learn to trust God. And, friends, I want you to take this home this morning. Genuine trust in God is not dependent upon the outcome. I was hopeful related to this surgery, but I had to say to God, “God, if it doesn’t work, you are still God. You’ve called me to ministry and I will still seek to serve you.” Here we deal with the complex issue of the sovereignty of God. What God causes, what God allows, how the freedom of the human will enters in to all of that. We think about Job there in the Old Testament. When the roof of his life caved in on him, he cried out to God. He questioned God. He got angry with God. Remember what his wife told him to do? She said, “Just curse God, Job, and die.” But yet Job was able, in the midst of all of his unanswered questions, to say in that great verse of Scripture, “Even if God slay me, yet I will trust Him.” The disciples, when they began to realize that it wasn’t just going to be all fun and games in following Jesus and the crowds that followed Jesus began to thin out, and Jesus turned to them one day and said, “Boys, will you leave me also?” Do you remember their answer? They said, “Lord, to whom would we go for only you have the Words of eternal life.” In times of waiting, our trust in God can be deepened.
Times of waiting can improve our perspective on life: Friends, the way we look at life, especially if life is going well, is so out of kilter. What times of waiting do is they slow us down and usually it’s only when we slow down that we learn to count our blessings. Times of waiting bring in to focus the things in life that are truly important. I was sharing with the Worship Team this week and planning for the services how nervous I was about returning to preaching. I said to them everybody was going to be waiting and wondering what’s he sound like? I haven’t preached, haven’t talked this much in several weeks. I wonder whether it’s going to hold out, how’s it going to work—this new apparatus in there? And Cindy Winteregg was God’s word to me when Cindy said, “But Mike you are forgetting something. When you get up there this week, yeah I know you are nervous, but would you please remember that out there are people who love you and care about you.” And I needed that perspective. And times of waiting do that for us.
Times of waiting help us to remember: This is one we may be have not thought about. We get so busy in our lives that often there is no time for reflection. Believe me, your pastor has had plenty of time for reflection during the last five weeks. And you know, it’s been interesting stuff that’s gone on in my mind. Even though I was willing to try this surgery, I was willing to try anything if I could get rid of the constant trips to Nashville for Botox injections, for the first couple of weeks while my neck was swollen up, you know I’ve always had a double chin—well I had a triple or quadruple chin for a few weeks there—I could not bring myself to believe that it would work. I’ve been disappointed too many times before. But then I began to discover that it was getting better. And so all of a sudden I began to let my feelings get out of balance the other way and I began to think maybe I’m going to get my old voice back. And then I remembered what the doctor said. He said, “Mike, you are not going to get your old, normal voice back. We are going to try to give you a steady, functional voice and hopefully eliminate the need for the Botox.” In the time of reflection I remembered.
Another example, after about three weeks I thought, “I’m ready to be back”. And then I remembered. When I asked the doctor in October I said, “Doc, how long do I have to be away from work?” He said, “I want two weeks total voice rest and then I want you two weeks of taking it very easy.” And I said, “I’m a Type A personality. I don’t know whether I can do that.” And I remember what he said. I remember him saying, “Wouldn’t a couple extra weeks of taking it easy, if it led to a lifetime of better voice, be worth it?” But it was only as I slowed down that I remembered.
As I was thinking about this point, I was thinking about the game of basketball and the substitute over on the sideline waiting to get in to the game. I want you to think about that substitute being God. And isn’t it true that often times what happens, we are so busy going up and down the floor, there’s no break in the action that God wants to get in the game but he doesn’t have a chance to get in the game because we haven’t slowed down. Do you remember when Jesus ascended to heaven he’s there with his disciples and he didn’t tell them to immediately go back to ministry. What did he tell them to do? He said, “Go back to Jerusalem and wait.” They ended up waiting forty days for the coming of the Holy Spirit. And I wonder in that time of waiting together how much of Jesus’ words did they begin to remember and put in to perspective. Times of waiting help us to remember.
Times of waiting help us to mature in our faith. For our purpose in life, although it contains much happiness and joy, our ultimate purpose in life is to become like Christ. You know, I don’t like this quote but I know it’s true. God says to us, “The ultimate goal is not your comfort, it is your character.” And I want to read as we close The Message translation of this passage we’ve looked at this morning. In The Message it’s translated this way: “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides for you know that under pressure your faith life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so that you may become mature and developed, not deficient in any way.”
So, friends, as we close I want to say that it’s easy to wait upon the Lord. Do we enjoy times of waiting? Not unless you are wired way different than I am. But times of waiting are essential to development and maturity of our faith. And when we ask, “Will God provide us the resources to equip us during our times of waiting and wondering?” The answer is a resounding, “Yes, through His amazing grace, but only if we are willing to wait upon the Lord, to become clay in the master potter’s hands.” And why can we be confident of that? --Because God has proven over and over again to those who are willing to trust Him, that He is there.
E-mail Comments to: Reverend Dan Sinkhorn