This evening, I want to share with you a journey that I’ve been on over the last year. There have been a lot of unknowns in me life after that and it’s been a real struggle at times for me, but God has been teaching me to wait on Him. It hasn’t been easy, and I know He will continue to work on me, but He is good, amen? So, I take you on this journey with me. Well, I guess it’s more of a tour of my journey. So, this evening, let me be your tour guide as we look at what it means to wait on the Lord together.
As many of you know, I work as a customer service center in Fredericton. And, all in all, it’s not a bad place to work, all things considered. What I’ve found though, is that call centres are NOT for everybody. And here’s why: I take, on an average day 80-90 calls. 75% of those calls are routine, simple calls that take very little effort. But, a good 10-15 calls are the kind that make your teeth clench and your body stiffen. You’ve probably heard of these types of calls. There are people who call in and aren’t actually looking for help, they’re just looking to complain. Their bills are too high. Their house is too cold. “It took me 25 minutes to get to talk to somebody real!” I had one person who refused to let me go who talked for, get this, fifty-seven minutes about how he believed we cheated him out of thirty-four cents (which we didn’t, by the way and I ever gave a credit of thirty-four cents just to try to pacify him).
One thing that you absolutely must have as part of my job is patience. Without patience, you ARE NOT going to last. Without patience, every upset customer turns you into a ticking time-bomb, waiting to explode. I’ve seen so many representatives quit because they did not have the patience to handle difficult customers.
It really got me thinking, though. Patience is an issue that most of us deal with. Goodness, I don’t at all claim to have the concept of waiting nailed down. Many of us our like children who peak at their presents because they can’t wait for Christmas. It is hard for us to grasp the idea of waiting for what we want. We hate to play the waiting game. We hate doing nothing. We hate to wait.
If you have your Bibles here, would you turn with me to the book of John, chapter eleven starting at the beginning of the chapter. I’ll be reading from the NIV, and we’ll read at the first fifteen verses together:
READ TEXT: John 11:1-15
Many of you know the familiar story of the death Lazarus. Now, after his conversation with his disciples, Jesus makes the trip to Bethany and is immediately met by Lazarus’ sister Martha who said “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask”. Jesus assures Martha that Lazarus will rise again, utilizing the eloquent words “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live”!
Lazarus’ sister Mary leads Jesus to his grave, where he commands that the stone that sealed the tomb be moved, and after praying to the Father, commands “Lazarus, come out!” And to the amazement to all those around him, Lazarus walks out with graveclothes hanging off him. At the close of the story, verse 45 relates that “Many of the people who were with Mary believed in Jesus when they saw this happen”. This event changed their lives forever.
Lazarus’ sisters had been in a bind. Their dear brother was bed-ridden and dying; no medicine could cure him, and prayers had yet to heal him. So, they turned to the one person they thought could save their brother from certain death: they called on Jesus, begging him to come and heal their brother. But Jesus did something that nobody, not even his disciples expected: he did nothing. In fact, he wasn’t even planning on going to Bethany right away. He decided to stay where He was in Bethabara.
So Mary and Martha were confronted with a situation that forced them to learn a hard lesson. They learned how to wait on the Lord. As their brother lay dying, as their family mourned the death of their brother, they waited. With no reason given to them, Jesus made them wait. They waited for days and days, watching their brother die. And still they waiting on the Lord.
And this evening, we live in a face-paced, go-go-go- society, and it seems that we have lost the art of waiting. And this evening, we are people who need to learn how to wait. Pastor and author Warren Wiersbe once observed that “the ability to calm your soul and wait before God is one of the most difficult things in the Christian life. Our old nature is restless...the world around us is frantically in a hurry. But a restless heart usually leads to a reckless life.”
And that is the truth this evening, by nature we are restless, but as Christians we need to relearn the discipline of waiting on the Lord. But how? How can we learn this discipline?
As I read our passage, I found a couple attributes of a person who waits for the Lord, things that we can put into practice as we learn the discipline of Waiting on Him.
The first attribute of a person who Waits on the Lord is: patience. As we wait on the Lord, we must have patience.
Patience is an essential attribute to a person learning to wait on the Lord because waiting takes time. Patience, by its definition, is the ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay.
Look at verses 5-7: Although Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, he stayed where he was for the next two days and did not go to them. Finally after two days, he said to his disciples, "Let’s go to Judea again."
After Mary and Martha called on Jesus to come and heal their brother, Jesus stayed two more days where he was before even contemplate doing anything else! It may have taken Jesus up to a week to arrive in Bethany from Bethabara, on the other side of the Jordan River! Surely, this felt like an eternity to Lazarus’ sisters!
As they waited, I’m sure Mary and Martha began to think “What’s taking Jesus so long? Does he not care? Is he not coming?” But, God’s ways are higher than ours, and sometimes, in his perfect and divine plan, he asks us to just wait. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care; he just asks us to wait.
But often times we are impatient. Oftentimes, we are like the boy that finds the magic thread. He discovers that every time he pulls on that thread, he can skip through time. So, during test in school, he pulls the string slightly and suddenly the test is over. And as time went by, he continued to pull the string whenever he wanted time to speed up. He skipped through college. He’d skip an argument with his wife. He’d skip all of the things that he did not enjoy. But all was not well for him because suddenly the boy realized he was a man and realized that he had missed out on all of the good that he could have experienced; all because he did not want to take the time.
Waiting takes time. But who, today, knows how to wait? Who today truly knows how to wait? In our society, we look for labels that say “Instant”, “Easy”, and “Quick” because we don’t want to wait. We are willing to sacrifice for the convenience of not having to wait.
How many times do we treat God like a cosmic vending machine? We can’t just walk up to a “Miracle Machine” and hit B1 to get our quick fix, and many of us know that.
But when our answer does not come quick enough, we get frustrated, we get mad at God. We ask “Why won’t God just answer me?” But God is not a genie in a bottle, he’s not at our beck and call, and he’s not a slave of ours to do our bidding whenever we please. And in our consumer society, where waiting five minutes for a meal at McDonald’s is unacceptable, we too often forget the virtue of waiting.
Chuck Swindoll once said that ”true patience is waiting without worrying”. If we learn to be patient, and accept that waiting will take time, then we will begin to learn the discipline of waiting on the Lord. Patience is the first attribute, this evening.
The second attribute of a person who waits on the Lord is perseverance. As we wait on the Lord, we must have perseverance.
Perseverance is essential because waiting will be difficult. But, perseverance is maintaining in spite of difficulty, obstacles, or discouragement. It is continuing steadfastly despite them.
Mary and Martha had to persevere; they faced great difficulty, obstacles and discouragement. They watch their beloved brother suffer and die, but still they waited on the Lord. Still, they waited for Jesus. When Jesus finally arrived, Martha says to him, in verses 21 and 22: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask”. Can there be anything more difficult than watching your brother die, but still wait for Jesus? But this is exactly what Mary and Martha did.
And this evening, we have to realize that waiting on the Lord is not going to be an easy task. Sometimes it is going to be difficult, especially if it is a new concept to us. There will be times when we will have to endure difficult circumstances as we wait, but it is our calling, nonetheless. Even though it is difficult, we must learn to wait on the Lord.
And excellent example of perseverance can be found in my family when we learned the hard way that waiting on the Lord would prove difficult.
My aunt gave birth to her firstborn child, a girl named Emily. Emily was a beautiful baby, but shortly after she was born, Emily contracted a brain infection. It quickly began to affect her little body, and the doctors could do nothing to stop the infection as it incapacitated Emily. There were doubts that Emily would survive, let alone recover. Experts told my aunt that their daughter would be a vegetable for the rest of her life, short as it may be.
Our family began to pray. Our extended family began to pray. Our church family began to pray for Emily, for her life and for her healing. But each day we waited and prayed, it seemed that nothing happened and Emily seemed to be slipping further and further away from us, and seemed to get closer and closer to death. The doctors even broached the idea of taking her off life support; she didn’t “deserve” to suffer. But her parents would have none of that!
So, we kept waiting. We kept praying. And we kept aching. Even I, at the age of eight, ached for Emily and ached for her healing. I remember crying to God, weeping for my cousin’s life. It was one of the toughest times for our family. But we persevered. We continued to believe that God would bring his healing in Emily’s life, and, sure enough, one day she began to come back to us. She began to improve. The doctors were amazed at her improvement. They couldn’t explain it at all. No longer did the doctors say that she would remain a vegetable. With time, she was taken off the life support. And now, twelve years later, Emily is still alive and living a happy life. This was one of the hardest things I have ever seen, but God blessed my family’s faith and perseverance and Emily is alive today.
As I look back at the story of Lazarus, I am reminded, too, that Mary, Martha and Lazarus weren’t the only ones affected by Lazarus’s death. Jesus, himself was affected. Jesus felt the pain of seeing his friend, one that he loved, die. The shortest verse in the Bible is found in this chapter, verse 35: “Jesus wept”.
When we are suffering through a situation or finding it difficult to wait on the Lord, we must remember that Jesus is suffering with us. He does not enjoy our pain, but feels the pain that we do. Through the difficulty and pain, Jesus will be our strength. The Psalmist in Psalm 28, verse seven praises God for he LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped.” When we trust in the Lord, even in the hard times, He will be our strength.
When waiting becomes difficult; when waiting becomes painful; when we don’t see a resolution, we persevere, we press on, we continue on in faith. James 1:12 says “God blesses the people who patiently endure testing. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him”. We persevere when the going gets tough and reap the rewards that God has for us. It’s not going to be easy, it’s going to take you making the decision several times to continue on. Walter Elliot said it well when he said “Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.” To be people who wait for the Lord, we must be people who persevere!
This evening, we have been called to wait on the Lord. And when we are faithful to this calling, when are faithfully wait on the Lord with patience and with perseverance, God will reward us. When we wait faithfully on Him, God’s will will be done, and his name will be glorified.
This is something that has been difficult for me. I am the kind of person that likes to have the answers laid out in front of me. I understand in my head that God’s will will be done, but I still struggle with this, but in my heart I tend to be a worrier. God has really been giving me stretching me in this aspect.
And I’m sure that this is something that Mary and Martha had to work though. Look at verse 4: where Jesus says “Lazarus’s sickness will not end in death. No, it is for the glory of God. I, the Son of God, will receive glory from this." And he says it again in verse 40 before he raises Lazarus.
But, we also see in verses 14 and 15 Jesus telling his disciples: “Lazarus is dead. And for your sake, I am glad I wasn’t there, because this will give you another opportunity to believe in me. Come, let’s go see him.”
Waiting will sometimes be necessary so that God will receive glory. You see, Jesus could have gone right to Bethany immediately after getting the call about Lazarus, but he didn’t because he knew that if he waited, God would get so much more glory. The question you really have to ask is “Would it have been more miraculous if Jesus had just healed Lazarus or was it more miraculous that he waited and raised Lazarus from the dead?” It seems evident to all who read this story that it was far more miraculous that Lazarus was raised from the dead. But, as we go through our own troubles, it is hard to see how God can work. But He will still work, even when it seems in impossible.
People thought it was impossible for Abraham and Sarah to have a son in their old age, but Isaac would begin a line that would lead to the Messiah! People also thought it was impossible that a young teenager could kill a giant in battle, but David slew Goliath. People thought it was impossible that a man could survive a night in a Lion’s den, but Daniel stepped out alive. And people thought it was impossible for a man for a man from Nazareth to be the Savior of the world, but Jesus became our conquering King by defeating death on the cross. God is in the business of doing the impossible. No matter how impossible our situation may seem, God is more powerful. No matter how incapable for a human, God is more than capable.
And this is true in any area of your life. I don’t often use my relationship as an example, but it is appropriate for this, I think. When I was a freshman at Bethany Bible College, I made a commitment to God that I would faithfully wait for the woman that he would bring into my life. I committed to not mess around with dating, and that I would wait for God’s timing before getting involved with somebody. It took over a year and a half before anything happened, before I felt that God was telling me that it was the right time. I’m sure you can understand how difficult it was to just wait, not to pursue, but to just wait for the right timing. I thought I was crazy, but God assured me in my heart that I was doing the right thing.
When the timing was right, God gave me the go-ahead and he has blessed me incredibly for it. My relationship with Jennifer has been tremendous, and I truly believe that it is largely because we both waited for God’s timing in our lives. We had both committed to waiting for Him. Because we waiting for God’s timing in our lives, he has blessed us more than I could ever imagine. There were times that I felt that I couldn’t wait any longer, that God was never going to bring somebody to me. It was difficult, even if it was on a small scale, but God came through.
And as we wait for the Lord it is important that we remember this. That as we wait, we may feel as if God will not answer our prayer. Our situation may feel insurmountable. We may feel like nothing good will ever come from our predicament, but God wants to turn that into good. God is bigger than our problems; He’s bigger than our short-comings; He’s bigger than any situation we could ever face.
But when we wait for the Lord, he will bless us. When we wait, knowing that His will will be done, and His name will be glorified through any circumstance, He will do greater things in us and through us than we could ever imagine. (Pause)
I want to encourage you today that if you are struggling with Waiting tonight; if you are struggling to be patient and to persevere, that God “know[s] the plans [He has] for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” and if we will wait upon the Lord, He will renew our strength, and we will mount up with wings as eagles. We will run and not be weary; we will walk and not faint. Teach me, Lord, to wait.
Let’s pray: Father, we thank you for our time together. And, Lord, I pray that you will help us today to wait on you. Even when it is long and hard, Lord, help us to give you the glory. Teach us to wait today, Father. For it is in the name of Your Son Jesus we pray, Amen.
