TEXT: Psalm 31, 62
TITLE: The Growing Church: GROWING PAIN #2: Growing through Waiting
TOPIC: Spiritual Growth - Part One
OCCASION: Burnside Christian Church, April 13th, 2008
PROP.: Waiting is probably not one of our favorite things to do. But in our times of waiting, Spiritual growth can take place! And when we wait on the Lord, we will experience His full blessing!
INTRODUCTION: JAMES MACDONALD Look-a-like contest.
Mark’s Picture
Paul’s Picture
Truth is: neither one of us looks much like James. And because of that, neither of us ‘won the prize’.
This month, we are focusing on SPIRITUAL growth! I’m so glad that God doesn’t have a look-a-like contest. Because there are times that I don’t look much like his Son Jesus, I look more like the world.
But I understand that growth is a process and I’m working on looking more like Jesus with each passing day!
So I’ve titled this month’s messages: Growing Pains. Because, in order to become the Growing Church, we are going to look at one area that we are called to ‘stretch’. To grow!
TODAY’S AREA OF STRETCHING THAT GOD HAS CALLED YOU TO IS TO:
Grow through Waiting!
WAITING. Isn’t that just a lot of fun? What could be more enjoyable than waiting! We will do anything to avoid waiting! We expect snappy service at the restaurant. We will find the quickest clerk at the bank. We will even find a detour in the event of a traffic jam.
None of us like to wait. We get frustrated and impatient, frazzled and worn out. And when the wait involves something serious and significant, like having a home in escrow, hearing back from a job interview, or getting biopsy results, we can struggle with fear and discouragement and anxiety and anger.
Waiting on things that are insignificant is one thing. But have you ever had to wait on God?
I know there are some here today are WAITING on God.
JOB--You are in a job that absolutely hate and they are WAITING on God to step in and intervene!
RELATIONSHIPS --
Marriage: There are some who are WAITING in their marriage relationship. You are struggling to get-a-long with your spouse let alone LOVE your spouse. You have placed it in God’s hands through the power of prayer and now you’re WAITING on God to show up and act!
Dating: Then there are those who are in a dating relationship who are waiting on God’s plan for marriage by not having sex before marriage and in doing so YOU WILL BE BLESSED! Sure it’s not easy. It’s not what the rest of the world is doing. But you WILL be blessed!
WAITING ON GOD AND RECEIVING BLESSING
GO HAND IN HAND!
How about you?
Are you waiting on God? For God’s timing? Are you in the midst of a period in your life that is uncomfortable and you are waiting for God to show up? Has it ever seemed that God has seemed distracted or even dis-interested in coming to your aide or providing answers? IF YOU HAVEN’T HAD TO WAIT ON GOD, YOU WILL! Why is that???? It might just be that God is wanting to bless you!!
KEY THOUGHT: (I WANT YOU TO GET THIS TODAY!!)
When you wait on God, you will be blessed!
T.S.: Let’s look at the blessings that are ours when we wait on the Lord.
PSALM 27:1-14
1. WHEN YOU WAIT ON THE LORD, YOU WILL HAVE THE BLESSING OF HIS PROVISION
When you let God do the things He wants to do when He wants to do them, you will see that He will show up BIG TIME in your life.
“Taste and see that the Lord is good!” -
(EXAMPLE OF NOAH)
Look at the story of Noah!
God provided:
0. The Plan
1. The animals.
2. The time to build the ark.
3. The rain! -- Noah didn’t even know what rain was! Yet, God provided it! Even when it didn’t seem like it…through the ridicule of his neighbors, and the doubt of his own family…Noah waited on the Lord and the Lord provided!
David’s Psalm 27:
In the 27th Psalm, David starts off with how ferocious his enemies are! Maybe you can relate to David. Your enemies are big and numerous. How can victory be yours? And so you wait on God to come to the rescue! Like UNDER-DOG : here I come to save the day!
He focuses on the bad! But he ends on the good! David comes the reality that God is a PROVIDER! Listen to Psalm 27:13,14
“I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord!”
God’s goodness will be experienced in the land of the living because God is a PROVIDER!
A. What does God provide? Psalm 62 Go on turn there…because I think we are quick to forget what God provides!!!
Deliverance: From Him is my Salvation (vs. 1b) if not in the life, then the next!
God provides -
Security: He only is my rock…my stronghold (vs. 2,6)
Hope: “For my hope is from Him (vs. 5b) Hope that the rain won’t last forever! The sun will shine eventually!
Glory: On God my salvation and my glory rest (vs. 7a)
Refuge: My refuge is in God (vs. 7 & 8)
Are you waiting on the Lord? Have you experienced His perfect provision! If we don’t wait on the Lord, if we try to rush things and provide things on our own, then we may never know just how capable God is to provide His children with things!
ILLUSTRATION: James MacDonald tells the story about Dolphins tickets. Greenbay vs. Miami. He REALLY, REALLY wanted to go to this game so he prayed about it. He needed 6 tickets. And he told his son to watch for tickets on eBay. So his son did. He bid on a few tickets but always was out bid. The game was two weeks away and they still had no tickets. So he told his son, “Look, we need these tickets.” So his son stepped up his efforts. He bid on 12 different tickets that were being offered on eBay. The problem was, he won them all! So James and his family now had 12 tickets! Twice as many tickets as he needed! Not only that, but he got a phone call from a buddy who went to church there and he was a season ticket holder and had 4 tickets that he couldn’t use and he wanted to give them to James. The next day after that, another friend called him up and had purchased two tickets for James to give to him. NOW James had 18 tickets! But you know something, if he would have been patient and waited on GOD’S timing…he would have ended up with the RIGHT amount of tickets!
The LORD WILL Provide was Abraham’s answer to Isaac. And provide He did! Are you allowing God to show you that HE WILL PROVIDE?
Secondly,
2. WHEN YOU WAIT ON THE LORD, YOU WILL HAVE THE BLESSING TO KNOW THAT GOD IS FAITHFUL! (we will LEARN TO TRUST HIM)
Why is waiting hard? Because it requires you to trust!
Illustration: Guys, when you wait in the car for your wife to go shopping and it seems to be taking forever, you begin to question things: Like - Is she spending all of our money? Will she ever come back? Did she get lost? So you know that trusting while you wait is hard!
Waiting on the Lord stretches your faith! But when we wait, our TRUST will GROW! And you will realize that God does NOT forget His people!
AGAIN: Look at Noah
1. Noah’s faith was tested for 120 years while building the ark…but then the rain came. God was faithful to his promise! Noah had to wait for the rain, but as he waited on God, his faith in God grew!
2. Noah’s faith was tested when he and his family entered the Ark. Everyone else was dying! They were perishing. But God kept them safe and in doing so, was faithful to his promise! Noah had to wait for the dry land…but in doing so, his faith in God grew!
3. Noah’s faith was tested time and time again. Each time, as Noah waited on God to do his plan, his trust GREW!
And it’s not just true for Noah! Anyone who has ever had to wait on the Lord were not disappointed! They had the blessing to see God’s faithfulness!
Noah - During the years he built the ark, Noah most likely endured his neighbors’ criticism and perhaps his own doubts. Remember, it had never rained before. And once he was inside the ark, it was more than a year before he stepped on dry land again.
Job- His life’s work wiped out in an instant, his children killed with one devastating gust of wind, his health ravaged. This left Job struggling to find God’s reason for his suffering. Waiting was no serene exercise for him; he unloaded at the incompetent and insensitive counsel of his friends and then RAGED at God’s seeming unfairness, until he was humbled by God’s own words in the midst of the storm and God then restored to him what he had lost.
Abraham & Sarah - Barren. The word haunted Sarah for 89 years. Finally when she was 90 and Abraham was 100, they had their first child together, Isaac, the child of God’s promise. A promise that God had declared to Abraham 25 years before.
Joseph - He endured years in an Egyptian prison for a crime he didn’t commit. But rather than withering and dying, Joseph’s faith grew through the wait because he trusted in God’s sovereignty.
Paul - After a humbling encounter with the risen lord, Paul temporarily blinded waited 3 days before his sight was restored. The rest of his life was spent waiting on God to direct his steps, sharing the gospel wherever God would lead him.
Are you waiting on the Lord in your life? Maybe it’s with a prayer. I’m telling you: keep waiting in the Lord! You will not be disappointed!
Each of these had to wait…and their waiting involved TRUST! They had to trust that God was in control! AND LOOK AND LEARN FROM THEIR RESULT!
Thirdly,
3. WHEN YOU WAIT ON THE LORD, YOU EXPERIENCE THE BLESSING OF GOD’S PRESENCE! (YOU WON’T BE ALONE!
If you go ahead with your plans, God may not be working in the direction you are headed. And you just may find that you are alone!
Which is easier? Multiple choice question:
A. Working WITH GOD.
B. Working WITHOUT GOD. -- The Israelite army that was defeated because God was not ‘with them’.
And you’re like: DUH. Working with God. Oh really? Then why do we constantly work without God’s approval?
Sometimes we want to force the issue! We want to go charging off into some spiritual battle or some area of life only to realize that we are charging off alone!
Illustration: Peter before the Sanhedrin. And Gamaliel (one who was respected by everyone said these words)
Acts 5:38,39
38Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. 39But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God."
EXAMPLE OF NOAH:
I can’t help but think of the peace Noah had as the “LORD SHUT THEM IN” the ark as rain started to come down. Noah was given one last re-assurance that God had not forgotten them! Nor was God going to leave them alone! God was with them! What peace. What relief!
Romans: 8:31“If God is for us who can possibly be against us?”
With God on your side, you’re never alone! It’s best to wait on His plans than to travel this life alone!
And lastly,
4. WHEN YOU WAIT ON THE LORD, YOU’LL EXPERIENE THE BLESSING OF PATIENCE! (You’ll PRODUCE PATIENCE.)
Let’s face it. There is nothing you can do to ‘hurry God up’. You can’t sit in the drive way of life and honk the horn to urge God to speed things up a bit!
You’re going to have to simply wait. But, waiting on the God doesn’t mean that you sit idly glancing through expired magazine subscriptions. During those time of waiting, you are being productive! How?
A. WHAT TO DO - While you wait, focus on God. For God we are called to wait. Not panicking over our circumstances, not fretting over the meanness of other people who are doing us wrong. Not on the pain you are suffering through. Focus on God’s power, might and love!
ILLUSTRATION: “Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus…” is the old Hymn that applies this lesson. What does it tell us will happen when we do it? “The things of earth will grow strangely dim…” The suffering, the pain, will appear strangely dim when we focus on what we’ve been called to concentrate on.
B. HOW TO WAIT - 62:1,5 “My soul WAITS in silence for God only!”
in silence With our mouths and hearts stilled, we can concentrate on what’s important. During these times of silence, God may bring to mind a needed truth, a praise, something to be thankful for, or a practical application of His word that we had been missing!
In Confidence - “I shall not be greatly shaken” (vs. 2 of Psalm 62) GOD WILL DO EXACTLY WHAT HE SAYS HE WILL DO! Just not on our time frame! It’s in HIS time! Not anything in that happens to you will zap your faith, or your trust in God. That’s a bold statement! But that’s the kind of confidence we are to have in God!
EXAMPLE OF NOAH:
There was nothing that Noah could do to help the waters recede faster. It took 150 days for the water to fully be removed from the earth. He sent out a Raven first to see if there was any vegetation. Then he sent a dove out three times! He was REALLY wanting to get out of the ark!
And not ONCE is it recorded that Noah complained. Not once is it recorded that he was mad at God. Not once is it recorded that Noah was frustrated. And he had to wait on God for HOW long?
If Noah wasn’t a patient man, through this process, I’m assuming he produced some patience! Noah had some patience!
ILLUSTRATION: What is easily taught but not soon learned: easily preached, but not soon believed: good advice, but not easily followed: well spoken but hard to do?.
The answer? Patience. If there is one thing that none of us is capable of doing well it is practicing a patient, waiting attitude when it comes to the promises of God. He promises blessings if we can endure the hardships. We flinch at the hardships and forget about the goal.
CONCLUSION: Waiting on the Lord isn’t always fun. But when you wait on the Lord you will no doubt experience God’s full blessing!!!! Some of you have waited a long time! I want to encourage you to not grow weary of waiting on the Lord!
God has a plan…and you are included in that plan! If we will merely adjust our will to God’s timing, we will no doubt see that:
God provides
God is faithful
And
God is always with us.
That is no where better demonstrated than through his Son Jesus!
He provided Jesus to take away our sin.
God proves his faithfulness to His people through Christ’s sacrifice
God provides his presence through the Holy Spirit.
