Waiting On God

Waiting on God

OPENING JOKE: A group of travelers were being made to wait on their airplane, which was late due to another flight being canceled. The crowd looked horrible and impatient as the time went on and on. Finally an angry passenger pushed his way to the front of the line, slammed his ticket down and said, “I must be on this flight now and I must be in first class”. The flight attendant, trying to be nice said, “Sir, we will get to you as soon as possible, but you must wait in line like everyone else”. He quickly said, “Ma’am, do you have any idea who I am?”

Without hesitation, she smiled, picked up her intercom microphone and said, “We have a passenger here at the gate WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. If anyone can help him find his identity, please come to gate 17.”

Zachariah and Elizabeth Luke 1:5-25

I have spent hours waiting in the woods on deer to come and show themselves.

I heard Charles Stanley message the same day coming out of Wal mart parking lot-Waiting on God

Psalms 27, 62

A pastor friend told how one grandson got cold at 10am left, and the other grandson killed a six point at 11am. If only I had waited the first kept saying.

A pastor told of being in the store the other day and the person in front of him wanted to leave, but her receipt was slow coming out of the cash register. She started making motions with her hand trying to speed up the printing of her receipt. As he watched her he was amused until he realized how many times he had done the very same thing. He had become impatient waiting for the printer to print, the coffee to brew, and the light to change. We who live in this culture of convenience and instant gratification have lost the art of waiting. People in places like Russia may wait in line for hours for a loaf of bread. People in places like Afghanistan may wait weeks. But we are irritated if the line at McDonald’s isn’t moving fast enough.

We are now entering the holiday season with the challenge of gift selection and buying that requires us to travel to stores whose parking lots, and the drive to get to there, try our patience. I recently came across a saying that I think would make a great bumper sticker for us to place on our cars. - "Don’t give up. It took Noah six months to find a parking place."

Ah, patience! We find it in short supply these days. We seek it in the grocery store line, at the ATM, when we hook-up to the Internet, when we are late for class or school or work, when we are trying to get to church on time, when have to go to the bathroom, and I mean really go, and there is a long line.

We do a better job of practicing impatience that patience. We have those smart aleck signs in our car windows that indicate our great impatience with drivers of other vehicles and what we believe their chief character defects to be.

We scream at our computers when they take so long to start-up or suddenly slow down. We yell at our children to slow down when they are going bonkers and yell at them to speed up when they are going at a snail’s pace.

We are in such a hurry these days. Why is patience in such short supply?

Saul didn’t wait for Samuel to do the Sacrifice.

The disciples waited 10 days at Pentecosr

Abraham didn’t wait on God for child and made a mess with Hagar.

Simeon waited for the Messiah and saw the baby Jesus.

Absalom did not wait to be crowned king so he tried to take it by force.

In this scripture the Jews had been waiting for the messiah for centuries. Elizabeth and Zachariah had prayed for a child for many years, but after waiting past the normal child bearing years they gave up praying. Zachariah could not even believe it when an angel from heaven told him. His prayers he had prayed long ago were just now coming to pass. After many years of waiting.

I WHAT IS WAITING ON GOD?

Waiting for God is not laziness. Waiting for God is not going to sleep. Waiting for God is not the abandonment of effort. Waiting for God means, first, activity under command; second, readiness for any new command that may come; third, the ability to do nothing until the command is given. - G. Campbell Morgan

Restless Heart Leads to a Reckless Life

Warren Wiersbe makes the observation, “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.”