Gateway Church's Podcast
When God Says Wait
Well, Pastor Robert is not here this morning, but he will be back with us next weekend to continue his series on happiness redefined, but today I want to share a message with you called when God says wait, and God says wait. If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Isaiah chapter 40. And as you're doing that, I'm going to question for you. Do you really enjoy waiting? Just want to know. I mean, have you ever gone at a stop sign? Have you ever been to stop light and turns yellow and then to red and your stop there and as it's cycling around back to, you know, green 15 minutes later, and it finally turns green. Have you ever thought to yourself, man, I wish it would have just stayed red for a few minutes longer. I was just starting to relax and enjoy looking at the people around me and the other cars. Never do that. Never happens, right? Have you ever purchased a new computer, brought it home and then realized, you know, I got to take this back to the store and you take it back to the salesman and you tell them this computer runs too fast. Do you have anything slower? It never happens. Those of you that have dial-up internet really understand what I'm talking about. I've been to the doctor's office in the waiting room for, I don't know, half your life and then finally they call your name and you've ever said to the nurse, no, please take a few more patients. I'm just getting into this issue from 1998's Newsweek. It just never happens, does it? Why is that? Because we hate to wait. I haven't found one person in life that said, I just love to wait. We hate to wait. It's part of our human DNA and yet 43 times in the Old Testament alone, we are instructed to wait on the Lord, including Isaiah chapter 40. I'm reading it verse 29. Isaiah writes and he says, "He gives power to the week, he God, he has power to the week and to those who have no might, he increases strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary and the young men shall utterly fall. But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up on wings as eagles, they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk in that faint." You know, as I was preparing the message this week, I was kind of reflecting back to when my family first came to Gateway, it was almost five years ago and this was the weekend of the bus building first opened. And as I was thinking through that and what's happened the last five years in this great church of ours, the story behind how we came to Gateway really serves as a great illustration on what you and I are to do when we wait. You see, a little over six years ago, I brought my family to Texas and I took position as a senior pastor in this area and we came with great excitement about what we felt God was going to do, we looked at different opportunities to be a senior pastor in other places around the country. You just fell in love with this area and with the church and thought, "God's calling us here." And I came with such vision and passion to really see God move and do something great in that church. And when we arrived here, we really came into the full realization that this was a church that was in a full-blown crisis. I mean, it was a bad situation. I don't need to go into details, but let me just say, it was a bad situation. If you've been in those kinds of churches, you know what I'm talking about? I came with such a passion and sense of vision and I ended up spending the next 16 months trying to do crisis management. And finally, after 16 months, the Lord released me from that leadership position and I knew that without a position to go to, without another church to go to, I just knew God had something in mind and I was just going to say, "God, whatever you have next, it's just going to be a few weeks." And I told my wife, "This is a short season. It's going to be over soon and God's going to provide the new opportunity." Well, the next few months passed and I had several offers from churches, but nothing seemed right. And I was not going to take my family back through what we had just gone through. After three or four months, the severance pay ran out and we put our house in the market and we'd been attending gateway all of those months. Most of our friends were here and we were just loving the excitement and the life that's in this place. This is the kind of church I had dreamed about for 25 years. And as I looked at my wife, I said, "Listen, we don't know what we're going to do. We had some plans that as this fall was getting closer that we would take our kids and we would move up to Chicago where we were from and that my wife's brother and his wife and family had invited us to live with them until things had kind of worked out. We figured that would be the best move, giving our limited financial resources. But I told my wife, I said, "I don't know what God's up to. I don't understand all that's happened to us. I can't figure out what God is doing." Ever been there? I said, "I just need to get away and hear from God. I need a word from God." And so she said, "All right." And I set up a three-day retreat in May Pearl, Texas outside of Loxahatchee where our denomination had a campground and there they had a cabin for pastors. And for three days I got alone with God because I needed a word from the Lord and this time of waiting. First day I was there, you know, it's adjustment to the quietness and the lack of television and noise and kids and it was just a time alone with the Lord and that night and the next morning I got up and I walked around the lake and had some time with the Lord and then I came back in the morning and I sat down and I wrote a long letter to God with everything that was inside of me, the frustration and the hurt and the pain. It was not a love letter. And as I poured myself out to the Lord there was just that sense of God not saying anything to me. His voice was dawning, nothing, nothing from the Lord. I went through the rest of the second day and into the second evening and I knew that the next morning I would need to get up and clean the cabin and drive back home and the first thing my wife would say to me is, "What did God say to you?" And I heard nothing until two o'clock on the third morning, 2 a.m. I'm sitting in a rocking chair in that little bedroom. There's a full moon that's shining in through the window and I'm crying uncontrollably to the Lord. And as I'm pouring out my heart, my questions that are there, I say, "God why are you so silent?" And I'm so desperate. And in that moment the Lord gave me a word and a scripture. I would have preferred a chapter, paragraph would have been good, maybe a long sentence, would have been fine, but it was one word and one scripture and here was the word. Wait. Wasn't the word I was hoping for, but that was the word. And the passage that he gave me was the passage from Isaiah 40 and he reminded me of the words of Isaiah. "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They'll mount up on wings as eagles." And God said, "John, I have seen you soar in ministry because I've been there as the wind underneath your wings." And then he says, "You will run and not grow weary." And the Lord said to me in that in that quiet place, he said, "And I have seen you faithfully walk out my call and you've not grown weary." And then he said, "John, I'm asking you in this season of life and the thing that caught my attention is the Lord said, 'I'm asking you.'" He said, "I'm asking you to walk and not faint. Don't give up. Morning came. I cleaned up. I went home. I told my wife with the Lord and said, "And I assumed inside my spirit, but just a matter of a few weeks." And this nightmare was going to be over, but the household, the answer did not come. We moved to Chicago and all this time I was grieving because we were leaving our church family here at Gateway that we had come to love. And as I'm sitting in Chicago, each day praying to the Lord for the direction of my life, God spoke clearly and powerfully and he said, "The answer you're looking for is through Gateway, but I was sitting in Chicago." Day after day the Lord would say to me, "The answer you're looking for is through Gateway." And I sensed Gateway would be a catalyst for the next move, the next position in ministry. And so I told my wife, I said, "I've got to go back to Texas. All of our stuff is there and God's answer is there." And so she agreed that I would come down and look for a secular job, something I hadn't done in 20-some years. I came down here and I moved in with some dear friends, and for three weeks I pounded the pavement. I started with corporate America and worked my way up to Coles and Walmart and Kmart and Target. I answered more questions about drugs I've never taken and things I've never stolen in all my life. But at the end of three weeks, I had no job and it was time to go back to Chicago. It was a Saturday morning, I was making my way over 114 up to 121 to catch the 635 to head to Chicago. But I could not move the steering wheel on the on-ramp to 635. I kept going straight in the wrong direction. I pulled into Fellowship Church's parking lot. I still remember it, sitting there by the lake. And with tears flowing down my cheeks I called my wife and I said, "I can't leave this place." God has told me to wait and he says the answer is through Gateway Church. Give me two more weeks, I missed my family. But I needed two more weeks. And to her credit, she agreed. For the next two weeks I just diligently searched with urgency. Almost frantic. God provides some job, some position and after two more weeks I called my wife and I said I found nothing. But it's not good for us to be alone. I miss you guys. It's been five weeks. But I'm asking you to trust me in this. I'm asking you to bring your kids, I'm asking you to come down so that we can be a family again. It's a small little apartment and somehow God's going to see us through. Because he said wait and he said the answer is here. To her credit, she brought the kids down. We got a tiny apartment. She started working in a dental office a few days later. And two weeks after that I finally was hired. Seasonal full time at Best Buy right over here. Selling cameras and computers to all of you. I hadn't sold anything in my life. I was a terrible salesman but I didn't want to tell them that. And I was making $10 an hour and one day I sat down and figured out what I was making as a senior pastor here in this area with benefits and retirement and salary and what I was making at Best Buy and it was exactly a $100,000 cutting pay. Every day as I would iron my khaki pants and I would put on that blue shirt. Every day I would drive by this building and every day I would remind God that he said wait and the answer is through Gateway. Every day. Every single day we drive by this building and for 14 months the answer did not come. Over three years ago I was invited to join the staff at Gateway. That wasn't what I was waiting for but as I prayed about it that was God's answer for the season of waiting and I am privileged to be a part of this family and this team to see what God is doing. The only thing that sustains you through a time of waiting is when you know God has spoken to you. Turn if you have your Bibles to the 2nd Peter chapter 3 and I want to show you something to you. I want to show you this. Patient waiting is a part of God's nature. It may not be inherent within our nature in our human nature but it is a part of our spiritual nature that God wants to pour into us. The 2nd Peter chapter 3 in verse 8 says this, "But do not forget this one thing dear friends. With the Lord today is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise as some understand slowness. He is patient with you when translation has he waits for you. Not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to full repentance. If you are in a time of waiting, awaiting season of your life and many of you probably are, understand this, God is not slow and he is not deaf. God's nature is to wait but God just tends to operate on a different timetable than we do. A banker read this passage once and he is quite amazed by it and so he asked the Lord. He said, "Lord, if a thousand years for us is just like one day for you, then a hundred years for us must seem like one minute to you." The Lord said, "Yes." The banker said, "Well, then a million dollars to us must seem like just a penny to you." The Lord said, "Well, yes, what's your point?" The banker said, "Well, Lord, will you give me one of those pennies?" The Lord said, "All right, I will. Wait here a minute." You see, the problem is we want God's blessing but we don't want His timing. We want His penny but we don't want His minute. We want His help but we're not interested in His calendar. What are you waiting on God for today? First point I have this morning is when you wait on God, there's always a purpose behind the waiting. There's always a purpose behind the waiting. As I look back on the situation, I just shared with you now three years removed, it's becoming clear the purpose and plan God had in mind in the waiting season of my life because God always has a greater purpose. God always has a greater purpose when He calls you to wait, to wait patiently upon Him. John Chapter 11, if you have a Bible you can turn there because in John Chapter 11 there's an interesting story. It's the story of the death of Lazarus, the friend of Jesus, Lazarus and Martha and Mary and Lazarus is dying and news gets to Jesus and that's where we pick up the story and it says a lot to us about the purpose behind God's waiting. John Chapter 11 verse 5, this is what it says. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, so when he heard that he was sick, notice this, Jesus stayed two more days in the place where He was, there's a clue, remember that. Then after this He said to His disciples, "Let us go to Judea again," and so they're made their way back to Bethany where Lazarus and his sisters lived and as he arrived he met the sisters and they ushered him to the place where they were laying Lazarus in His tomb. Verse 38 says this, "As Jesus comes to the tomb of Lazarus," so then again, then Jesus again, groaning in Himself, came to the tomb, it was a cave and a stone lay against it and Jesus said, "Take away the stone," and Martha, the sister of Him who was dead, said to Him, "Lord, by this time there is a stench for He has been dead four days." Verse 43, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth and he who died came out bound, hand and foot with grave clothes and his face was wrapped with a cloth and Jesus said to them, "Lose him and let him go." Here's Lazarus, four days in the grave, but when Jesus brings life into our bodies, He does a complete work, there was no decomposition, there was nothing wrong, He brought Lazarus from death to life, perfect and complete and whole and that's what Jesus does in your life as well. If Jesus too says that we were dead in our transgression and sin, but in Jesus Christ, we have been made alive and we are whole in Him, but the question still must be asked, what was the purpose in Jesus' delay, two days? What we need to understand is this, in the days of Jesus, the Jews believed that a body would stay dormant for three days and the soul would hover around the body of a dead person for three days. With the hopes that that body would come back to life and the soul would rejoin the body and they would become alive again, but after three days, the Jews believed that decomposition would set in and the color would leave the face and the soul would recognize that death has had its victory and the soul would leave. The Jews believed that no one, no one can come back to life after three days and the only person who could resurrect anyone from the dead after three days would be the Messiah whenever He would come and so when Jesus hears of Lazarus death, he waits two more days because if he would have left immediately and if Lazarus died four days earlier, Jesus would have arrived on the third day and the soul they believed would still be hovering, but the reason why Jesus delayed was to share a dynamic principle as Jesus was moving towards his own death, that you know what? Even on the fourth day, God can turn death into life because nothing is impossible with God. If you're going through a waiting season today, let me remind you of this, there's always a purpose with God behind the waiting, always. Second, when God says wait, there are always lessons to be learned in it. There are always lessons to be learned in it in the season of waiting and so it makes the obvious question, why does God make us wait? Because I believe what God desires to do in us is more important than what God desires to do in our situation. The waiting is more about the lessons that we must learn because when we wait on the Lord, there is no such thing as idle time, waiting for something to happen. God wants to teach us something through the waiting and sometimes God says that the waiting is there because we're not ready yet for what he plans to do in our lives. He says, I've got some lessons to teach you, I've got some trials to take you through, got some things you need to learn. Like James says, consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds because the testing of your faith builds perseverance and perseverance must finish its work so that you might be mature and whole and complete. There's purpose to the lessons of waiting. I think about Joseph. Joseph received a great vision from the Lord as a 17-year-old, but there were some lessons that he needed to learn. The first lesson he needed to learn was when God gives you a vision that your brothers will bow down to you, don't share the vision with them. That was the first lesson. But there are other lessons that Joseph needed to learn. Joseph ended up in a pit, sold into slavery by his own brothers, falsely accused by Potiphar's wife and ends up in jail. Now God gave him a vision that he would one day rule the nation. I wonder how many times Joseph asked the Lord, what does your plan have to do with me being in this pit? But what are you trying to teach me in my life and what good is it that I'm sitting in this prison? He told me that I would one day rule the nations. How does my present situation measure up to your vision and plan for my life? What are you trying to teach me? That's the exact question I asked of the Lord almost on a daily basis as I made my way to Best Buy. God, there's got to be a lesson in here because this can't be all for nothing. Teach me the lessons I need to learn. I think of David. David was anointed king by Samuel as a young teenager, but 14 years later he finally ascended to the throne because he would not take matters into his own hands. He had many opportunities to take out Saul, but he said, "Listen, that is God's anointed. And when God is ready to make me king, he will present me with the throne, but I will not take matters into my own hands." So one of the great lessons that we learned for the times of waiting is that we need to let God do his work and not us prematurely trying to force God's timetable. There's lessons in the waiting friends. I believe that everyone in this room today is waiting on something from the Lord. There's something in our lives that we're saying, "You know what, John, as you're sharing this, there's some things that I guess I'm really waiting on. In fact, I know that God gave me a vision for what he wanted to do with my life 27 years ago, and that vision has not yet been fulfilled. I'm still in the waiting season." What are you waiting on the Lord for today? That's the question we need to ask ourselves. For anyone who is waiting on the Lord, there are three lessons that I've learned that have changed my life completely. Here's the first one. Waiting on God requires absolute trust. Waiting on God requires absolute trust. You never really know what it is to wait until you learn to trust God to put yourself, and this is what happened in our lives, as we walked through those difficult, difficult months and years, is when you put yourself out on the limb because you know you've heard from God, but you put yourself in such a place of vulnerability, such a place of utter failure. If God doesn't come through, you're just going to utterly fail. That's when we learn the lessons of trusting God. That's what it is to trust the Lord, letting go of everything that you have put your confidence in. The money that we had accumulated, a decent savings, all of that was gone. I had confidence in my abilities that God had put in me and the skills that were there. None of that mattered, because the question God was asking was not what abilities do you have to give? He was asking, "Are you willing to trust me?" Through the waiting. Because for me, it was a daily decision to say to God, "God, I don't understand everything that's going on. I don't have the answers as to why I'm going through this. I don't understand what you're trying to do, but I trust you completely because I don't have a plan B." Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 says this, "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding." It's often the difficult part, isn't it? In all your ways, acknowledge God and He shall direct your path. Maybe you're here today and you're single and you're dating someone, but you know that that person doesn't hold the same beliefs that you do. They're not following the Lord as you are and you're asking God, "What do I do?" You want to honor God, but you're afraid to wait longer for the right person to come along. I understand that. I was 29 years old when I finally got married. There were a lot of people, I was seven years as a pastor. There were a lot of people that started asking the question, "What's wrong with him?" After a while, I started asking myself the question, "What's wrong with me?" But I lived by this adage, "It's better to be single and wish you were married than married and wished you were single." And finally, at the age of 29, God brought the perfect woman into my life. If you ever met my wife, you realized that I married way over my head. And now people ask the question, "How did he get her?" Me. You got limited intelligence, not very good looking. How did he get her? I'll tell you what. All the years of waiting for the spouse that I was praying for were worth it. All the waiting of the Lord, because when finally there was the divine connection, it was worth the wait. It was worth the wait. You got to trust in the Lord. The question you need to ask yourself this morning, "If you're in a waiting season is, are you willing to trust the Lord?" The second lesson that I'm learning is this, waiting on God will humble you. Waiting on God will humble you. In our society, there is direct correlation between status and waiting. The more status you have, the less waiting you have to do. That's not how it is in God's economy. You see, waiting on God reminds me of this, "I'm not in charge. It's not about me, because you cannot wait on the Lord without being humbled in the process. As I stood at Best Buy there in the computer area with my khakis and blue shirt on, I had many times to reflect. I had a lot of time on my hands. As I stood there thinking about where I was, and I thought back over the past 20 years in ministry, and I said, "God, there were some times I said, 'Lord, I've pastored the fastest growing church in my denomination in the state of Illinois. I look back in my past and I said, 'God, I have studied diligently all those years. I've got two masters in the doctrine. I've taught in the doctoral program at my denomination. I've done all these things, God, and now I'm standing here at Best Buy in khakis and blues, making ten dollars an hour, asking a manager who's half my age when I can use the restroom and when I can eat my sandwich." It'll humble you. When you're going through the waiting season, God will humble you, because difficult times of waiting will humble you in the presence of a holy God. Third and finally, waiting on God will change you. Waiting on God will change you. What we are waiting for is not as important to God as to what He wants to do in us. He wants to change us, and we usually ask God to change our circumstances, and what God is saying back to me so often is, "That's fine, but first, I want to change you." As I was praying about this a while back, God reminded me of the story in Acts chapter 9, it's the conversion of the Apostle Paul, once called Saul, the greatest contributor to the New Testament writings. And then even though the story from Acts chapter 9, Saul is on his way to Damascus, rounding up Christians to be persecuted, and on that road, God strikes him down and a bright light is shining, and in that moment Jesus speaks out and says, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" He said, "Saul, why do you persecute my people? Why do you persecute the church?" He said, "Saul, why do you persecute me?" And in that moment, Saul is converted, and I tell you, I've heard messages on that passage time again, but I've never heard anyone preach on what happened next, because what happens next to me is the most important. As Saul gets up, God blinds him. He strikes him blind, and for three days Saul is led by the hand, and he fast and praise, and he waits on God. And remember one morning in my devotion time, I asked the Lord, I said, "Why did you blind Saul?" I mean, I understand the dynamic conversion, he was a great man with great skills that were misdirected, Saul had spent his life trying to please God by being righteous and good enough that God would be pleased with him, and that he would demand God's blessing. And then God, you struck him down, and God said this, he said, "The reason why I blind it Saul, and gave him three days to wait, is because I needed to give him a new set of eyes." And then he said this, he said, "And the three days that you spent it may purl. Those are the days that I needed to give you a new set of eyes. When you're going through the waiting season, one of the things God desires to do is to change you, and you can't see your situation the same way and survive. I needed to have God's perspective on the waiting, otherwise I would have been utterly destroyed, or the pressure of what I was experiencing. Finally, today, when God says, "Wait, there's always a blessing when he brings you through it." I think of Abraham and Sarah. God has spoken to Abraham when he was 75 years old, and he said, "I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is, you're going to have a son. The bad news is, it's not going to be today, and it's not going to be this month." And by the way, and he was 75 years old, God said, "You're going to need to wait a little longer." In fact, Abraham had to wait 24 years, and finally, God brings the answer. The promise is fulfilled, and this is when it says in Genesis chapter 21, because there's always a blessing when God brings you through a waiting season, and in Genesis 21, this is what it says in verse 1. The Lord kept his word, and did for Sarah exactly what he had promised. She became pregnant, and she gave birth to a son for Abraham in his old age. Notice this. This happened at just the time God had said it would. Twenty-four years later, and the blessing is fulfilled. The communion, and Anna, had prayed that they would see the Messiah. Anna had lived in the temple of the Lord 64 years, every day fasting and praying in the temple as a widow from the age of 20 to the age of 84, believing that when God said that your eyes would see the Messiah, that she could take him at God's word. But it was 64 years of waiting, but one day that 84-year-old woman held the promise of the Messiah in her very hands, because when God says wait, there's always a blessing when you're willing to wait through it. Many people have asked me over the years, you know, knowing the story that I've just shared with you, the tens of thousands of dollars that we have lost in that process, the time of waiting, the days that pass by, the nights that I would cry out to God, and I'd say, "God, I'm hanging on by a thread here, help me." People have asked me, was it worth it? Was it worth the pain? Was it worth the suffering? Was it worth the shame? Was it worth the embarrassment? Was it worth the time that you had to invest? Was it worth taking your children through all of those steps? Was it worth it? I can tell you this. My answer is it's worth it all, because there's a blessing when God brings you through the waiting. I'm standing here before you today as a blessed man. I'm a blessed man. It was worth it all. If it was only for this, if it was only for this weekend, when I have the privilege to stand before thousands of people at Gateway and share my story, if it was only for that blessing that we had to go through all of that trial, I could stand here today and say it was worth it all. But one life could be changed because of what God brought me through. Are you going through a waiting season today? What are you waiting on the Lord for today? Are you waiting for a business decision to go through? Are you waiting for someone that needs, that you believe will be your future husband or wife? Are you waiting for a change in your job or a new job opportunity? Are you waiting for a marriage that needs to get better? What is it today that you're waiting on God for? Because I can tell you this, if you will wait diligently for the Lord, He's going to bring you through and He's going to teach you lessons and He's going to show you the purpose behind the waiting and He's going to bless you through the process. If you're willing to wait on the Lord, God has a blessing when God says wait. Would you bow your heads with me, please, close your eyes.