BIBLE READING: LUKE 6:27-38  

SERMON

I know it's not called the motor Registry office anymore! It called something like State Service Centre or something - but I sure find my trips there tiring getting a number and waiting for the screen to let me know I will be seen at window 5 or whatever - and then when I finally get to the window - to discover that I have not got the right piece of paper or form or certificate and need to go through it all again! I hate any place like that where I have to waste my precious time waiting!

How about you? Do you “enjoy” a nice, long wait? It isn’t  “fun” to be waiting at the traffic lights behind an driver when the light turns green and you have places to go and people to see and they just sit there!

Waiting for our number to be called or at the traffic lights or waiting in lines at the Post Office 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 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.

Lewis Smeades wrote:
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’

When we read the Bible, God, 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 and Sarah and said, “Abraham, you’re going to become parents. You’ll be the ancestors of a great nation. But it won’t happen today. It won’t happen tomorrow. Just wait.” Abraham was 75 when he was told to wait! Twenty-four years later the promise came true!

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.”

The obvious question is WHY? Why does God make us wait? Since God can do anything and since God is all loving, why doesn’t God bring us relief and answers now? Several writers have said similar things about this “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, God is at work in us....moulding us and shaping us....maturing us.

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 and sisters, 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? Here are some ideas

(1) PATIENCE

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 God’s timing instead of our own.

Often we want God’s resources, but we don’t want God’s timing. We want God’s hand, but we don’t want God’s calendar. We forget God’s 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 God is doing.

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.”

(2) .... HUMILITY.

When you think about it, waiting is something by its nature that only the humble can do with grace. To wait for someone is to realise that I am not in control. I’m not calling the shots; the timing is not up to me.

To grow in these times of waiting on God we must remember that we are not in charge. We’re the creature. God is the Creator. God 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 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 God 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 God’s deity. God sees the big picture and we can’t. One author said, “There’s a certain paradox in the human situation that God gave us a mind and it’s our 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) HOPE

The third requirement for people who want to be able to benefit from times of waiting is an inextinguishable hope.

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 seven straight years of drought.

Where does it come from? 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.” It seems strange that Paul doesn’t 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. Rather, 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:

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 [one] who waits to see clearly before [they] will believe, never starts the journey.

You see, the more we seek God in daily prayer; the more we study the scriptures; the more we trust God enough to follow, well then, the more we see that God 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 God’s will. We get to know Godmore deeply BY DOING God’s will. We enter into an active relationship with God. 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 )