Waiting On God Series

Title: Waiting on God

Text: 2 Samuel/Psalm 27:14

Intro

I’m so excited to be here with you this morning! We are starting a new series called In the Meantime. If you need a Bible raise your hand and one of our ushers will get you one.

In this series we are going to be looking at several different characters in the OT and the NT that had to wait on God. We want to know what they had to do in the meantime. We are going to look at what they did well, what they didn’t do well and what we can learn.

Let me start this series off with a question… How’s your patience doing?

Throughout this series over the next 4 weeks we are going to be looking at what it means to wait on God. The story we are going to look at today is the story of David, In Psalm 27:14 he says this about patience: Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. Psalm 27:14 Let me ask you again, how’s your patience doing? Does it line up with this passage?

I suspect if we were to all answer this honestly most of us would admit we have room to improve. Nothing shows me that I have a need for more patience like when I am driving between 4:30-6:30pm… Nobody here knows how to merge or use their turning signals…

But there’s more serious ways that our lack of patience shows up. How about with your kids are you patient? Are you always patient with your spouse? How about with your boss? How about with that neighbor that won’t cut his grass? Eventually if we keep going down the list we will find something we all struggle to be patient with.

While those situations can all test our patience throughout this series we are going to look at what it means to wait on God. The stories in the Bible that we will look at throughout this series show people waiting on God. We will see what it means to wait on got for healing, deliverance, and God’s timing.

We will see people waiting on God for what he has promised them. We will see people get frustrated having to wait on God. We are going to see real people, in real situations, that have to have real patience. And what we what to do is look at them and see what we can learn. We want to know what we are supposed to do in the mean time…

Tension

Let’s set the stage before we look at how David waited on God… Saul is King of Israel. And he’s not a good one. In fact God rejects him. God decides to choose a new king to lead so he sends Samuel, a prophet, to anoint a new king. God tells Samuel to go find Jesse. One of Jesse’s son’s will be the next king of Israel.

When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed stands here before the Lord.” But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” Then Jesse called Abinadab and had him pass in front of Samuel. But Samuel said, “The Lord has not chosen this one either.” Jesse then had Shammah pass by, but Samuel said, “Nor has the Lord chosen this one.” Jesse had seven of his sons pass before Samuel, but Samuel said to him, “The Lord has not chosen these.” So he asked Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?” “There is still the youngest,” Jesse answered. “He is tending the sheep.” Samuel said, “Send for him; we will not sit down until he arrives.” So he sent for him and had him brought in. He was glowing with health and had a fine appearance and handsome features. Then the Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; this is the one.”

So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David. Samuel then went to Ramah. 1 Samuel 16:6-13

I remember Christmas of 96 very well… We gathered around the tree in the morning and started opening gifts. I could tell that there was this one envelope that everyone seemed excited for me to open it. I started thinking, what could it be? It was a little larger and more stuffed then just a normal card. I thought maybe there’s a lot of money in here… So I open it, not sure of what to find. And there’s pamphlets in there. I’m confused. I start noticing they are all disney pamphlets… All of a sudden I realized we where going to disney! My excitement shot through the roof. But then I asked when, assuming it would be tomorrow… Several months from now… You mean I have to wait?! I got a great gift but I couldn’t do anything with it for many more months.