Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Our dear Heavenly Father, you have chosen in your great love to meet us in our great need.
You speak to us in Psalm 130, and you say that when you are in the depths, I have mercy for you.
When sin has humiliated you, I have forgiveness for you.
Then you ask us to have the faith to wait on you.
And so I pray your Holy Spirit would instruct us this morning and we could feel the reality of all of this in the kind of way that we would draw near to you.
In Christ's name, Amen.
We're studying Psalm 130, and it's a psalm about those desperate times in our life, those times where, ah, we're at the end of ourself.
And Psalm 130 says, when you feel that you are at the end of yourself, you should cry out to the Lord because he's full of mercy.
And then he says, when sin has left you feeling ashamed, you should seek mercy from. You should seek forgiveness from him, because he is abundant in forgiveness.
And this week he says to us, when you're having hard times, you have a tendency to act in unhealthy ways.
So instead of doing that, wait on the Lord.
I don't know about you, but I'm not a good waiter.
I have a definite time limit, and if things don't happen within that time limit, I leave.
I have a life to live, and I'm not sitting there for forever.
Some of you are probably better waiters.
You have more patience.
But I have found waiting is not a strong suit in my life.
Ironically, the Bible is full of waiting stories.
We all know about the 10 plagues, and we all know about the miracles of Moses.
But how easy it is to read over the fact that.
That Moses waited 40 years, 40 years in the wilderness before God empowered him to go, say to Pharaoh, let my people go.
We're not talking 40 hours.
We're not talking 40 days.
We're talking four decades of waiting.
Ah, the great apostle Paul probably waited 10 years between the time he became a Christian and the time he started actually being influential for Christ.
Ah, Jesus Himself waited 30 years.
30 years until he started his ministry.
So waiting is a biblical theme.
Now you're ready to hear The Psalm. Psalm 130, verses 5 and 6.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits.
And in his word I hope my soul waits for the Lord more than the watchman for the morning.
More than the watchman for the morning.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: Ah.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Would it help you if I translated it this way?
I anticipate the Lord.
My soul remains in readiness for the Lord.
What does it mean to wait for the Lord?
It means to have this internal anticipation, this internal expectation.
I expect God to show up in my life. That's what the psalmist is saying.
He says, I'm holding myself ready for the Lord to show up in my life.
In difficult times, we tend toward chaotic activity when we should move toward stillness.
Isn't it easy when things get chaotic in your life, when things get difficult in your life to let chaotic activity take over?
What's this chaotic activity look like?
Well, first of all, it's in difficult and desperate times, we give into acting in obedience to the strongest emotion at the time.
So things get difficult and desperate. And our strongest emotion at the moment is anger. So we start acting out in anger, or our strongest emotion is resentment. We start acting out in resentment. Or our strongest emotion is a confusion and we start acting out in confusion.
And the psalmist says, instead of chaotic activity, still yourself and wait for the Lord.
This chaotic activity often looks like I'll do anything I have to do to escape this moment.
I don't like the way it feels, I don't like what's happening and I will do anything I can to escape this.
Often this chaotic activity is I'm going to avoid this in every way I can.
Often this chaotic activity is. We develop self soothing patterns in our life and instead of waiting on the Lord, we turn to one of our self soothing patterns and sadly, this becomes our habitual way of reacting to difficult times.
In difficult times we develop this pattern and instead of being still and seeking God in that moment, we resort to the pattern that we have created. And it never helps with the difficulty.
It never.
Those difficult times never change us. And we find that they get repeated in our life again and again. Because in those moments when we should be turning to the Lord, we're turning to the wrong thing.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: Ah.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: It'S interesting.
Chaos doesn't take any time at all. It's instant.
Am I right?
Chaos can take over instantly, but waiting takes time.
Waiting is not something that can happen instantly.
The prophet Jeremiah tried to explain this waiting on the Lord after Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians. He looked at it and he was in the depths of despair. He was in the depths of depression. And he wrote a book about it in the Old Testament called Lamentation.
He looked at Jerusalem and it confounded him and he was depressed and discouraged.
And he starts his book out by saying, is it nothing to you all you who pass by?
You pass by and look at this ruin and you act like it's nothing at all.
This is what Jeremiah said.
The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
At his most desperate time in life, at his most difficult time in life, he refused to give in to the patterns of.
And he said, I believe that even though I am in a terrible place, God is still good.
Now I'm starting to deal with the difficulty. Now I'm starting to deal with the ugliness.
Because in these desperate times, if we're not careful, we come to doubt the goodness of God.
I've had people actually say to me, doc, if God is good, why this or why that?
A church.
Your circumstances don't determine whether God is good or not. God is good whether your circumstances are or are not. And that is the first step.
Then he says, because I believe God is good, I'm not gonna do some harebrained thing in this difficult time.
I'm going to wait for the Lord believing in his goodness, believing that he's looking for ways to be good to me. I'm going to wait and see how he'll be good to me in this.
In his waiting, he also said, ah, you have to the soul that seeks the Lord.
Now, I want to talk about this several times, several ways this morning. And I want to talk about it in a different. In different ways. So what does it mean to wait on the Lord, or what does it mean to seek the Lord? All right, you have an inner self.
You have an. Somebody's in there.
You're more than just a greasy body.
There is a true self in there.
And if you will be still and calm yourself, you become aware of your inner self.
You become aware.
You.
You sense your own soul.
And if you can sense your own soul, you're just one step away from sensing the God who, Who created your soul to be a natural sensor for. For who he is.
The human soul was created by God to be a natural receiver of who God is.
So when you seek the Lord, when you wait on the Lord, you quiet yourself.
You become inwardly aware of yourself.
And then the next step is you open yourself to. To sensing the presence of God.
Now that's exactly what Jeremiah is saying. Jeremiah is saying, everything went wrong.
I can't. It could not have been any worse. We were defeated by our worst enemies. They wrecked everything. They took anything that was worth anything, and they hauled people away that I love as captives.
And in his despair, he said, God is good.
I'm Gonna wait for the Lord.
And while I'm waiting, I'm gonna deal with this difficulty by trying to sense the Lord. I'm going to seek the Lord. I'm gonna open myself up to Him.
It is good that one should wait quietly.
This is what Jeremiah is saying.
My world is turned upside down, but I still believe.
It's good for me to be still and know that God is.
That God is the Lord.
And then he says, when I do that, I have a sense that the salvation of the Lord will come.
I'm looking at a ruined life.
I'm looking at a culture that will be gone the rest of my life.
People I know and love have been carried into captivity. I don't have one thing that's worth anything.
But he says, I still believe that the salvation of the Lord will come.
This does not mean that God will not redeem. This does not mean that God will not meet my need. This does not mean that God isn't going to show up. And so because I believe that I'm going to wait for the Lord, see what's happening.
I'm looking beyond the circumstances.
I'm making it up my mind, not based on what my eyes see, but what the reality of my soul senses and believes.
Jeremiah said, I'm going to stay in place.
I'm ready for God to deal with me.
I found this quote this week. Carl Sagan.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
Carl wasn't thinking about God when he wrote that.
But when I read that quotation, I thought, even a guy, even a guy who was unashamed to call himself an atheist. Listen what he says.
Somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known.
That something incredible, that's the living God church somewhere. God is waiting on you right now for you to draw near to him so that he can make Himself known to you in a real and more powerful way.
This inner stillness draws peace and strength from the Lord.
It's hard for us to wait on the Lord because many times we ask ourselves, is it worth it?
Have you ever gone to a restaurant, the line was too long, and you said, this restaurant is not worth waiting that long for. And you got in your car and went somewhere else.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Ah.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: We have to discern it in our mind.
Is God worth waiting for?
Is there something about who God is that's worth me carving out quiet time and simply waiting for him to reveal Himself to me? Is he worth it?
So what Isaiah says, have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint. And to him who has no might, he increases strength.
Here's Isaiah. Isaiah is a man who knew God well.
Isaiah was a man who knew what it meant to wait on the Lord.
And he says, let me tell you what I've learned about God because I've waited on Him. Number one.
He is the everlasting God.
Every problem you have is temporary.
Every single problem you have is temporary.
There have been times in my life I thought, I'll never get over this.
I got over it.
Every problem is temporary.
But God is everlasting.
Can you hear this?
The everlasting God is meeting us in our temporary disasters.
The second thing he says is, he is the creator of the ends of the earth, the God you are waiting for. He's the God who made all of this.
This is all his.
It's his good ideas. He understands how it works perfectly.
And then he says, this everlasting God, this creator of the earth, he does not faint or grow weary.
Isaiah said, I have been weary.
I've been at the end of myself.
I've not known how to take one more step forward.
But when I waited on the Lord, I found out that he isn't like me.
He never grows weary. He never faints.
His understanding is unsearchable.
In our desperation, we become confused. But God is never confused.
God has never been confused.
He is. His understanding is unsearchable.
On top of that, he not only has power, he gives power.
The power you need to get through the difficult time is power that God has and he's willing to share with you.
He goes on to say, even youth shall faint and be weary and young men shall fall exhausted.
He says, life has a way of wearing everybody out at one time or another.
Say, Doc, I'm not. This sermon series isn't connecting with me right now. I'm in a good spot. Yeah, but guess what?
Those good spots come and go.
You may not be having a hard time today, but I guarantee you they will come.
And to know the skill before it gets here. The trouble gets here is a beautiful thing.
Some of you are in hard places. You are in very difficult places. And it feels like you're isolated there and alone. Listen.
Life at one time or another even makes the strong weary.
And then Isaiah ended this meditation by saying, but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.
They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.
Is the Lord worth waiting for?
Only.
Only if you want to have the strength to soar above the difficulties and the traumas of life.
Is the Lord worth waiting for? Only if you want the strength to run face first at life and live life to the fullest.
Is the Lord worth waiting for?
Only if you want the strength to walk steadfastly with the Lord and live a life that counts in God's eternal plan.
In this stillness, we contemplate the great ideas of God in scripture.
And then the Psalmist 1 Psalm 130 said, and in his Word I hope.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Ah.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: I have been in the depths, he said. Out of the depths I cried and I sensed God's mercy.
And I confessed to him the sin that made me ashamed.
And I had a sense of his forgiveness.
And I started waiting on the Lord.
And as I waited on the Lord, my discouragement, my despair, my depression started giving way to hope.
But I'm going to hold the hope idea for next week.
Waiting is a conscious decision that must be made multiple times because it's easier to be impatient than it is to wait.
Now, for some of you who have never done this, I'm going to tell you how it works.
You say, I'm going to wait on the Lord.
Maybe you say, ah, to get started. I'm going to wait on the Lord for five minutes, okay?
You laugh. Waiting on the Lord for five minutes is 500 times harder than what you think.
I mean, I have a chair that I sit in, and I try to be as quiet on the inside as I can. I do my best to sense God's presence.
And 30 seconds seems like a half hour.
Has anybody ever done this?
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Ah.
Ah.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: You get about two minutes in it. And if you're like me, your brain starts saying, dude, you're wasting time.
You could have this, this, and this done.
And here you're setting, stretching for the clouds, okay?
Life does everything it can. It conspires against you as much as it can to keep you from waiting on the Lord because it is so spiritually transforming. Do you hear this?
Here's what I'm asking you to do. I'm asking you to follow the psalmist model and create some time where you simply wait for the Lord.
You put life on hold, you let life take care of itself for a while, and you get yourself in a quiet space, you go inside and you start reaching out for God.
Ah, Waiting on the Lord is a form of meditation.
Now, I wanna talk to you about what happens, all right?
This waiting on the Lord requires physical stillness.
You can't wait on the Lord. When you're driving home from work.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: You.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: Can pray, you can, you can seek him, but you can't wait on the Lord. It requires physical stillness.
Sometimes you're going to have to take a half a dozen deep breaths just to get your body still. Because your body's not used to being still.
It's also emotional still stillness inside.
I emotionally move from fear to faith.
My dominant, my dominant emotion in that I'm seeking is this deep confidence, this deep trust that God is good and something of his goodness is going to touch my life.
We have to, we have to calm our stormy thoughts.
Isn't it hard, isn't it hard to make your brain behave and simply say, I don't, I'm not playing that tape over again.
I'm not thinking. I'm not, I'm just not going to think about that.
There are better things to think about. And in fact, calming ourselves and making our brain be still, we, we have to focus on calm, peace and well being.
Sometimes I say to myself, all right, think slowly.
You know things about God. Now think about these things you know about God, but think about them slowly.
Or I'll say to myself, when I'm seeking the Lord, I'll say to myself, I'm gonna tell myself one of the stories about Christ from the Gospels.
And I'll sit very quietly in a chair and I'll say, think slowly. And I will say, for example, I'll tell myself the story of the Good Samaritan, and I'll tell myself that story. And then I'll say, I'm in my inner self.
I'm seeking the God that is revealed in the story of the Good Samaritan.
You see, this is allowing the peace that passes understanding to guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Remain in a state of expectation and anticipation.
When your brain starts saying to you, nothing's happening, you're wasting time, then that's when you have to say, I am expecting.
Because I haven't experienced God the way I want to. I'm still in anticipation of that. I'm still expecting that. I'm gonna wait a little longer for that.
And then it struck me today.
Not today, but this week when I was writing this sermon.
We often call servers waiters, huh?
Probably not so much anymore.
But it used to be people called them waiters and waitresses, right? All right.
What if that applies to waiting upon the Lord?
As I wait on the Lord, I say to the Lord, I am your servant.
Here to serve you.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Ah. Ah.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: The servant has to wait for the Lord to say what the Lord wants, Right?
The servant waits to see what the Lord wants done.
When I wait on the Lord, I'm doing more than just.
I'm doing more than just seeking his presence.
I'm presenting myself to him as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable. Well, pleasing to God.
Dear God, I'm waiting on you.
But in this moment, I'm not waiting for what you can do for me.
I'm waiting to find out what you. How you would like me to serve you.
How can. In this moment where I'm seeking you, what is it that I can do to serve you that would be pleasing to you?
Church, we're waiting on the Lord.
I also thought this.
If I lay in wait for somebody, what does that mean?
I'm looking to ambush them. Right?
You lay in wait for them. You ever watch a cowboy show, there's always somebody gonna ambush you and they hide in the rocks and they wait for you to come.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: Ah.
Ah.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: I wanna ambush the Lord sometimes.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: Ah.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: It's my expectation that throughout my week he's going to meet me. He's gonna meet me in quiet moments, he's gonna meet me in people, and somebody's gonna say to me just exactly what I need to hear.
God ambushes me throughout the week, but I would like to ambush God sometimes.
I'd like to be waiting. I'd like to be ready. I. I'd like to be anticipating. And when his spirit passes by, I want to reach out and grab Him. Church these are spiritual metaphors, but they are also realities of the human soul. The human soul can take hold of the Lord.
The human soul can.
Can embrace the divine.
The human soul is fully capable of clinging to God.
And I believe if we were more disciplined and if we were. If we were more willing, there would be times in our life that the spirit of the Lord passes by. And instead of just allowing him to pass by and say, that was a beautiful moment, we reach out and take hold of the Lord.
So what do I think about when I wait for the Lord? I think about who he is. I think about what he does.
I think about what I want from God.
I think about what God has already done for me.
The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
The world is full of incredibly divine things that we. That we could discover if we would patiently wait and seek them.
And then the poet uses. The psalmist uses a little poem.
My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchman for the morning, more than the watchman for the morning.
This is a poetic image.
You have guard duty, you have the night watch.
You're on guard duty till morning and you have to stay awake and you have to stay alert and things depend on you.
You're the watchman.
And the psalmist said in the same way that a watchman is as alert as he possibly can, waiting for morning to come. You have to be spiritually alert in waiting for the Lord.
This also carries an emotion with it. There is a I can't wait for morning.
I can't wait for morning.
Have you ever worked a night shift? I only did it once. I hated it. I was going to college and I worked at a hotel. That man, that three o' clock till six o' clock in the morning is just anyone. No.
All right.
There is an emotional feeling. The watchman is looking at his watch and saying, I. Oh, there's if only morning would get here. If only morning would get here. There is a longing and an anticipation. That's the poetic image. In the very same way that a watchman is at the last watch of the night and he's doing his job. He's being alert, he's waiting with expectation. But he also has a longing for the morning to come.
The psalmist said, that's what. That's spiritually an illustration of what I'm trying to say.
This waiting on the Lord intensifies our love, longing and readiness for God.
You see, when I'm willing to wait, I'm saying to God, I love you enough to wait for you.
I've often said something that to someone I've spent my whole life with, I love you enough to wait, I pick on her.
We this woman has put up with my nonsense for 53 years.
It's our anniversary tomorrow.
When I say to God, I love you enough to wait, that means something.
When I say to God, I have a longing that I can't touch in any other way than by experiencing you. That says something.
When I say to God, you know what? I don't really have time to wait for you.
If you're gonna do something, get it done, because I don't have time to wait any longer.
That says something about my love for God.
When I say to God, it would be nice if you showed up, but if you don't, I can get by without it.
That says something when I say to God, I have a longing for you that I can't deal with in any other way.
So if I have to wait I'll wait.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: Ah.
[00:35:47] Speaker A: I'm talking to the Lord God Almighty.
I have been told to wait my turn in life.
Wait your turn.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: Ah.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: I've said to God on occasions I would like this to go well, but I'm willing to wait my turn.
If it means waiting twice as long as I want to. I'm willing to wait my turn.
If, if, if, if it isn't as rich as I hoped it would be. I'm willing to wait my turn.
If it takes multiple times of waiting, I'm willing to wait my turn.
You are with worth it.
Waiting helps us refocus from our desperation in a life to the wonder of who God is.
Waiting on the Lord doesn't change my circumstances. It changes me. And I face the future differently than I would have had I not waited for the Lord.
Ah, Charles Spurgeon. I've read thousands of his sermons. Listen what he says.
We are in hot haste to set the world right and to order all affairs.
The Lord has the leisure of conscious power and unerring wisdom. And it will be well for us if we learn to wait.
Church.
This business that I can rush through my spiritual life.
This business that my spiritual life is a fast food industry. We got to let that go.
This kind of relationship with God takes time.
It takes earnestness, it takes interest, it takes. It takes a willingness to wait on the Lord. And as we wait on the Lord in our times of difficulty, He. He renews our strength. And now I'm going to face tomorrow differently than I would.
I may be able to mount up with wings like an eagle. I may be able to just run and not be weary.
Or I may just be empowered to walk a straight line with God tomorrow. But no matter which of these three, it is by waiting on the Lord I have become a different person. And despair gives way to hope.
Our dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you would teach us to wait on the Lord.
I pray that what feels obscure about this, your spirit could make more concrete.
I pray that what feels mysterious, your spirit could turn into understanding.
But most of all, I pray that your spirit would trigger within each of us this inclination to try and wait on the Lord.
I pray, Heavenly Father, especially for those who are in difficult times today. Their life is hard, they're discouraged, things haven't worked out the way they had hoped, and they're looking at the future with.
With an emptiness.
Oh, how I pray that you would help them wait on you.
And as they wait on you, I pray that you would renew their strength.
I pray that you would fill them with a new hope.
Father, I pray especially for those who. Who need to wait on you for that very best gift you give.
The forgiveness of sin and eternal life.
I pray that those souls, this morning, right now, they would be still.
They would open themselves to you. They would wait for the grace that only you could give.
And I asked this through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
