Hurry Up And Wait Series

You may have heard the expression “Hurry up and wait,” if you served in the military you certainly have heard it and seen it. Thirteen years in the U.S. Navy I have seen it first hand.

Wake you up at the crack of dawn just to sit and wait for an hour or more to get your orders for the day. Rush to cancel leave and report to your squadron and sit for hours to find out what in the world is going on.

But if you examine the expression and our own lives we all live this way rather we realize it or not. We tell our kids (usually in an impatient moment) It’s time for you to grow up! We really don’t mean it or want it but we do say it.

We rush to get to a store to find out they are out of what we want to buy and they have to order more. We call a business on the phone, only to sit on hold for an estimated wait time of 23 minutes….more like 53 minutes.

We run a “yellow light,” “Orange” probably red light only to sit and wait on a train and say why does this only happen to me. Our kids can’t wait until they are out of school, on their own and then many spend the rest of their lives feeling like they missed something in high school.

We rush to much. Our verse is a psalm of David. It fits with the call of God we looked at last week, the dream God plants in our hearts to serve Him and live life to the full.

What happens after the call? When the dream of your heart is awakened what’s next? You won’t like the answer but it is the truth. God puts us in a holding pattern. We have to wait on Him and on us. Those are the times we feel abandoned, a side story in life. Let’s examine the who, what and why we must wait. Psalm 27:14

Notice first of all

I. Who we wait on “The LORD”

David used the name of the LORD 12 times in these 14 verses and twice in our verse. He has written the entire psalm with the emphasis on the LORD. Capital LORD. It means Jehovah, “The existing ONE.” The one true God.

Maybe when things don’t happen in our time frame we need to understand who we are waiting on. At my house one of my boys seems to always be the last one out the door. I don’t know why but that’s the way it is.

For some of you maybe it’s the lady of the house. If you have small children she’s probably last because she has gotten all of them ready first but that’s another story.

Our trouble is our flesh longs for control. We get angry because we don’t have control. We say the wrong thing, voice our opinion, speak our mind because we at times believe we actually have some kind of control.

The Bible says, “Come now, you who say, ’Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit.’ whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, ’If the LORD wills, we shall live and do this or that.” James 4:13-15

Really who do we think we are? What control over life do we feel we have? If the LORD wills, what powerful words and the

audacity of us to believe we have the control.

Waiting on the LORD’s will and timing is the only way to live. Trying to control our lives, our children, and anybody else leads to bitter, miserable, hard hearts.

That’s why David starts and ends this verse with WAIT on the LORD. Folks God knows what HE is doing. What you want, or what you are going through doesn’t shock God. He has healed marriages before, He has healed cancer, and if He chooses not to do that please know that you still matter deeply to the LORD.

He can make all things right for a single mom if she’ll turn it over to Him. He can get your child off drugs, alcohol, and yes He can cause the leaders of a nation to turn to HIM. HE is The LORD!

Who we wait on

II. What happens when we Wait?

“strengthen your heart”

Remember the heart is the Real us. The mind must be focused on the LORD and indeed the enemy attacks the mind but the heart is the mind, and will of our lives. The heart is the heart of the matter.