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.
God of course knows this but also the enemy knows it as well. We must Guard our hearts and that’s why we must allow the LORD to strengthen them.
The word for strengthen means to be bold, determined, and to secure for oneself. See God is making mamby, pamby Christians.
Parents I don’t think you want your kids to grow up and never grow up.
God has given all of us a dream, a call from Him to grow in our faith and realize a life that is our heart’s desire. Not health, wealth and prosperity but living inn such a way that makes a difference in the lives of others.
In order to live that way we must let Him. Look at these verses:
“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10
Literally means we are His masterpiece. Your life is being built for His glory. Listen to this verse...“For it is God who works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure.” Philippians 2:13
Okay pastor but why then doesn’t everything happen good? I mean God is good and yet bad things happen.
There are some Bible men I wouldn’t want to be. Could you imagine being Job? Lose everything, family, fame, and finances?
What about Paul? Obeyed Jesus in every way after his conversion, yet he was beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, put in prison all for preaching the truth of God’s Word.
Just pick any disciple and the only one who died of old age was John and that was in prison on the aisle of Patmos. While there he wrote a wonderful book of the Bible; Revelation.
God is building us for His glory.
Who we wait on
What happens when we wait
III. Why wait?
“be of good courage”
“Wait on the LORD and be of good courage.” If you’re not careful you’ll pass over that be of good courage part. It doesn’t mean if you wait you’ll be a cheery soul. Sitting in the Doctor’s office doesn’t make that happen.
Courage here means to prevail, to grow firm, to be resolute. Two things happen as we wait.
Theologically: God is building us into the likeness of Jesus Christ. Jesus never saw a day wasted. I hear people say, I have wasted years of my life. I don’t believe that Jesus wastes anything in our lives.
Did God waste those years David was on the run from King Saul. Wasn’t God building Himself in David?
Did God waste the 25 years He was building Himself into Abraham?
Did God waste the 40 years He put Moses in the desert before He sent Moses back to Egypt?
Theologically that’s what happens but what happens to us
Psychologically?
We learn who we are and what we want. Folks we are children to God. Not grown ups who have it all figured out and truthfully you may think you have it all figured out and everyone else’s life too but brothers ands sisters we don’t really have a clue.
I asked last week if God said, “Do all that is in your heart, what would you do?”
Are you right now ready for God to move in your life?
Maybe, just maybe, we are the ones telling God to hurry up and do something in our lives but we are not ready for Him to do it.
Are we saying, “God Hurry up, and wait?”
Conclusion: God allows tests in our lives for us to see what we are really made of. He already knows what is going to happen but they are an opportunity for us to see what we can really do, really overcome, really believe and behave the way we should.
There’s a lady in the Bible that portrays this. She doesn’t get named simply called a women. Really if you examine the story you’ll see the reason we learn to wait on God, what He does and why He let’s us wait.
She’s simply called “The woman with the issue of blood.” I think that’s interesting because we all have at least one issue. Her story is like many in our churches...because Jesus was on His to heal a ruler’s daughter. To bring that girl back to life. The woman’s story like some feel today was really a side story….listen
“Now a woman, having a flow of blood for twelve years, who had spent all her livelihood on physicians and could not be healed by any came from behind and touched the border of His garment. And immediately her flow of blood stopped. And Jesus said, ‘Who touched me?” Luke 8:43-45
She was an outcast, unclean and had to stay away from society. A Jewish woman and that’s all they called her. But after she touched the hem of Jesus garment, she was healed and Jesus cast her into the limelight.
He singled her where she had to fess up. Then He said, “Daughter be of good cheer, you faith has made you well.”
What a side story in the Bible? No such thing by the way. An outcast of society now a daughter of Abraham?
When you wait on God’s timing and let Him build Himself into your life then your call, your life, goes from a nobody to a
somebody.
Jesus didn’t waste a day, just like that moment in the Gospels He’s building you to be the best you can be for Him and for
others.
He’s not in a hurry; are you?
Wait on the LORD. He knows what He’s doing. He knows who you are, where you are and what you are.
He know what you are capable of even more than you do.
Wait on the LORD.
He’s building a masterpiece and it’s you.
