And that’s where this message comes from. And I will be using hunting analogies. Hopefully, hunting doesn’t offend you. If it does, well, sorry. Get over it.
The brief outline of what I want to share today is, you know, God has asked us to wait for things. We’ll talk about what He’s asked us to wait for, what waiting means, why we wait, the Lord’s perspective on waiting, and finally, some tips for waiting.
So what are we waiting on?
The first thing that comes to mind, usually, when someone says “wait,” is that we’re waiting on the Lord’s return. And that’s the thing that usually pops into my mind.
Luke 21:34-36 is the Lord talking about His second coming, His return. And the key thing here is that we’re to keep on the alert. There’ll be a lot of things happening, but we’re to keep on the alert and watch and pray that we’ll be strengthened.
Also, in waiting for the Lord, there’s a lot of talk in Scripture about waiting for His first appearance. In Luke 2, there were Anna and Simeon, who had been waiting all their lives for the Lord to appear the first time. And because they were waiting, they were ready when the Lord appeared, and they recognised Him. Even as a baby, they recognised Him.
And Simeon said that he was very relieved that his wait was over and that the consolation and the redemption of Israel had arrived. He could then depart in peace.
So another thing that we wait on is for the Lord to move. And although this isn’t the one that comes to mind immediately when we’re waiting on the Lord, it’s the one that we actually have day-to-day practice in, as we wait for the Lord to move in a situation.
Brenda and I have been praying for a while for some of our children to return to the Lord and for the Lord to move in their lives. You know, it’s a hard process. But the Lord is working in us in that waiting. And we trust and we expect and we hope that He is going to move in His time. We just need to wait and watch for that.
You know, there is an example of not waiting in Scripture. Actually, there are lots of examples of not waiting in Scripture. And the one I want to talk about today, that I talk about a lot in this message, is in 1 Samuel 13, when Saul was waiting for Samuel.
And Saul didn’t wait very well. You know, when you read the situation, you could hardly blame Saul for not waiting. Things were falling apart. The people were leaving. The Philistines were gathering by the thousands. It says they were like more than the sand on the beach. And they were prepared to swarm Israel because Israel had become odious to the Philistines. I like that term, “odious.” I have to use that in my work sometime.
And Samuel had told Saul to wait for seven days. And then, on the seventh day, Saul couldn’t wait any longer. He didn’t wait until completion. He took it upon himself to do what Samuel, the Lord’s prophet, was appointed to do.
Saul didn’t have the faith that day to completely wait and to do things the right way. And that day, he lost his kingdom. He wasn’t deposed that day, but the Lord said:
Your kingdom will not last.
But Saul’s successor, David, did wait. There were lots of opportunities for David to take the throne from Saul and take it with his own hands, and he did not do that. He waited for the Lord to provide the throne of Israel to David.
So what else do we wait on? We wait on answers to prayer. And this is very similar to waiting for a move of the Lord.
Yeah, we could ask and pray for the Lord to do something, but it’s all up to His timing to do that. And like Diane said a couple of weeks ago in her testimony, the Lord works on an eternal timescale. But what we can do is pray, and we can wait with hopeful expectation and watch for an answer.
So what does waiting mean? Sometimes the simple words can be the easiest ones to explain. You know, we can wait in traffic. We can wait for somebody. We can wait for me to get done so you can have lunch.
And when I was younger, I used to occasionally have to wait for my mother to pick me up from school. And I would get so angry—just furious—if she were even a few minutes late. I was very much a brat, very impatient then. I would just get furious at wasting time.
But that’s not the kind of waiting we’re going to be talking about today. There are a couple of different definitions or uses of the term “waiting” in Scripture.
The first one is lying in wait. And although, when you’re hunting, you lie in wait, that’s not the type of waiting we’re going to be talking about today.
The second one is just passing time. And that has the connotation of just sitting and doing nothing. And that was my conception for a long time of waiting on the Lord: “I’m just gonna sit and do nothing. And maybe one day, the Lord will do something.”
And that was my attitude when I was waiting on my mother: “I’m just going to sit and do nothing and waste my time.” And that’s why I get so frustrated in waiting sometimes, because it’s a total waste of time. But, you know, that’s not the type of waiting we’re talking about here.
But if you’re thinking about waiting as passing time, we always look for ways to pass time faster. I want to take kind of an extremely practical tangent here.
You know, if we’re thinking about waiting as just passing time, we now have the ability to make time pass faster. You know, if we’re waiting and doing nothing, just idling, we can whip out our phones and start looking at our phones. We look for any kind of interesting post, any good salacious tweets on Twitter, some videos on YouTube, or see if somebody’s liked any pictures we’ve posted. We can just fall down this rabbit hole and spend hours just passing time, doing nothing, just looking at that screen.
But that’s really not waiting in any sense of the word. We’re wasting time. We’re passing time. You know, these apps that we have on our phones have been designed by some very clever people to hold our attention. It’s called engagement. And that’s how they make money, by keeping your attention.
And they keep your attention by stimulating portions of your brain. And the brain becomes addicted to those little stimulations. We go looking for a tweet, we’re looking for a post, and we get this little hit of instant gratification. And in this process, our minds become addicted to that.
Now, what this actually does is take something that the Lord meant for a time of contemplation and prayer—and that is being still—and turn it into something else. It turns it into basically feeding our flesh with junk food.
It turns these times that should be for contemplation into just a neurochemical frenzy of instant gratification. And that actually kills our ability to sit and contemplate the Lord.
So, as an encouragement, try putting your phone away for several hours. See if the Lord could actually talk to you then.
Okay, enough on that tangent. The waiting we’re going to be talking about today is the ultimate example of delayed gratification. Our phones give us instant gratification—maybe the ultimate example of instant gratification—and waiting on the Lord is the ultimate example of delayed gratification.
And it’s delayed because we’re putting the satisfaction of our desires and our wants totally in the hands of the Lord and His timing. We just hope and trust that our desire will be satisfied when He is ready.
So that leads to the third type of waiting. This is the type of waiting we’re going to talk about today, and that is waiting with hopeful expectation.
Now, the first use of this term, this type of waiting, is in Genesis 49:18. And it says:
For Your salvation I wait, O Lord.
Now, the Hebrew word here for “wait” is translated several different ways in Scripture. Those different translations are very illuminating to the meaning of the word beyond just waiting:
And this is the type of waiting I want to talk about today. You know, when I was a kid, and even just the other day, I would confuse the second type of waiting—passing time—with the third type of waiting: waiting with hopeful expectation, or watching with hopeful expectation.
Yeah, when you’re really waiting on something, you do have a hopeful expectation. You’re hopeful, and you’re looking, and you’re eager. And that’s what I’m going to talk about today.
So what does this kind of waiting look like? Well, first off, it’s expecting something to happen. When we’re waiting on the Lord, we’re expecting the Lord to move.
Actually, did I miss? I missed a lot there. Sorry. I know this expectation is much stronger than just expecting.
You know, we can expect the light to turn green. We can expect to have lunch today. And these are very light, surface forms of expectation, because there’s really not any real engagement or involvement or ownership of that. It’s not something that is eagerly wanted.
But the expectation we’re talking about here in Scripture is a much deeper, much stronger expectation. It’s like the expectation of a groom waiting for his bride to walk down the aisle. Or it’s the expectation of waiting for the birth of your first child—or of any child. Sorry, Noah, any child.
You know, something that every day you’re checking on. Like when we were waiting for the birth of any of our children, all of our children, the slightest little thing, we’re like, “Is it time? Is the baby coming? Is it gonna arrive soon?” And it’s something we’re excited about seeing, something we’re excited about seeing.
So before my first hunting trip, I was actually very anxious about whether I would be able to sit quietly in a hunting blind and wait for hours for something to show up. But I was. When I got there, I was able to sit and wait quietly for hours for something to show up, because I discovered I was waiting with anticipation. I was waiting with expectation. I was excited about what was gonna show up.
And, you know, having faith that the Lord is going to move, that He will return, is our expectation that allows us to wait on Him. And if we’re not excited about what He’s gonna do, the waiting becomes much more of a passing time, much more idleness.
But what happens if you lose that expectation? If you’re waiting and you just kind of decide that this isn’t really gonna happen?
This happens sometimes when you’re hunting. It’s too windy, it’s too rainy, or it’s cold, or too hot, or something, and you just know the animal’s not gonna show up. At that point, you lose hope, you lose the expectation, and the waiting just becomes torture, because you’re just sitting there doing nothing, and nothing’s gonna happen.
It just becomes a matter of willpower: “I’m going to sit here until the time is done because that’s what I’m supposed to do.” And it’s just torture to wait without expectation. You know, it’s something that we’ve all done, something that I’ve done, and it’s probably something that I’ll do again very soon.
So you need hope to wait. If you don’t have hope, the waiting is torture. You know, without the hope of Christ’s return or the promise of His answering our prayers, waiting on Him just becomes a matter of willpower, and that willpower is eventually going to run out.
So the faith that He gives us, that faith gives us the expectation to wait on Him.
So some of this waiting is also watching for that thing to happen. Waiting and watching are often mentioned together in Scripture, and there’s a reason for this. Because if you’re waiting with expectation, then you’re going to be watching for that thing to happen, just like we were watching for our children to be born.
If we have expectation that the Lord is gonna do something, we’re gonna be watching for Him to do that. We’ll be expecting Him to do that. We’ll be looking for it, looking for signs that it’s happening. And to do that, you need a clear view—a view that is not cluttered, not obstructed by other things.
You know, if I’m sitting in a blind waiting for an animal to show up, I don’t really know which direction it’s gonna come from. It could come from behind me, to the right or the left, way out in the distance. You really don’t know. So you need a clear, unobstructed view.
And if we’re honest about it, for these things we’re waiting on from the Lord—for His return, for answers to prayer—we really don’t know exactly how the Lord is going to answer that or how He’s going to move.
You know, the Pharisees in Christ’s time were waiting for the Messiah. But they thought they knew exactly how the Messiah was going to appear when He did come, and they completely missed Him because of that. And they weren’t looking with an uncluttered view. They were looking through their own biases, and they had very strong blinders on.
But we can look in Scripture and see through Scripture, and also see in our own lives and the lives of other saints around us, that the Lord moves in unexpected ways. He moves even in discarded vessels. But He always moves in ways that are perfect for the situation.
We also need listening ears.
Yeah, when you’re out hunting and you sit in the woods for a little while, you can start to hear the woods do things as the animals are moving around. You start to hear different animals, and sometimes you can tell when your quarry is coming. But you need to be very still and very quiet to hear that.
And it’s something that’s not immediate. It can take twenty to thirty minutes for the woods to calm down after you’ve moved into the woods, before you start to hear things.
And likewise, if we’re waiting on the Lord, we need to be listening for Him as well. We need to listen for Him and to Him, to sense His movement. And it’s not something that’s immediate either. I think it’s something that takes a while for us to settle and to be able to hear the Lord.
Yeah, we can’t be rushing along, doing all kinds of things, and stop for a millisecond and say, “Lord, speak to me,” and then just keep going. We need a time to settle and to listen and to commune with the Lord.
We can’t just say, “Stop. Lord, speak to me,” and then whip our phones out, shove them in our faces, and expect the Lord to speak to us. We need to be still and know that He is God.
What else does waiting look like? It looks like praying for those things to happen.
You know, this area is very different from hunting. When I’m hunting, I don’t pray to the animals to show up. I do pray. I pray for things that the Lord brings to mind, pray for my family, pray for the assembly, pray for our friends, pray for work situations, pray for animals to show up. But I don’t pray to the animal to show up.
On the contrary, when we’re waiting on the Lord, we can actually commune and pray to the One that we’re waiting on. And that praying to the Lord and communing with Him actually increases our expectation and increases our hope that He’s going to move.
And also, kind of in a paradox, as it increases our expectation, it increases our peace that the Lord will move. So it is a paradox to have strong expectation and building expectation and peace at the same time.
So why do we wait? You know, we know that the Lord does everything for a purpose. He’s not a purposeless God. So what is the purpose for our waiting with expectation on Him?
Well, the short answer is to make us like Him. And that is very true. But I want to dive a little deeper today and talk about how that transformation works through that waiting.
But first, before we get into that, I want to talk about why we wouldn’t wait. Why do we not wait sometimes? So the main reason why we don’t wait is because I believe that we think we know better. We know what’s best. We think that we are the centre of the universe, and we have a complete view of everything that’s happening.
And when you read the verses in 1 Samuel about Saul’s not waiting, I think you get some clues to what he was thinking and seeing in there. In 1 Samuel 13, Saul says:
Because I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come within the appointed days, and the Philistines were assembling at Michmash.
Notice what Saul said here. He said, “I saw that the people were scattering. I saw that you did not come. I saw that the Philistines were gathering.” You know, it appears that Saul was thinking that he was seeing everything, and the Lord was seeing none of that.
When we choose to act outside of the Lord’s timing, we’re essentially saying that we see the situation better than the Lord does.
So let’s not get impatient and think that we know better than the Lord because we’re seeing the situation better. He sees all. He is the only One Who’s omniscient.
So the first way that this waiting transforms us into the image of the Son is through learning submission. Waiting on the Lord is letting the Lord be in control. It’s submitting our timing to His timing. And this training in submission is one of the aspects of waiting that transforms us into His image.
There’s a Machiavellian tactic in business where somebody will make someone else wait for no good reason, just to make them submit to their authority. You know, the victim goes into the boss’s office. The boss just makes them wait for a few minutes, just because. And it’s a control thing. It’s saying, “Submit to me. Submit to my time.”
It’s a very sick thing when people do this to each other. If you have a boss that does that, you should maybe go find a new job. Okay. But I’m not talking about person-to-person submission here. I’m talking about God-to-person submission.
And when the Lord asks us to submit to His timing, it’s proper submission. It’s not a malevolent, Machiavellian submission. But it’s a submission through which we’re being trained to be sons. You know, God is not on some power trip where He’s got to force us to submit.
Christ is the ultimate example of that submission. He fully submitted Himself to the will of the Father throughout His life and to the timing of the will of His Father. He waited thirty years to start His public ministry. And seeing how much the Lord loved people and wanted to minister to people, that was quite some submission.
There’s a verse in 1 Peter I want to call out that kind of sums up this type of submission and the results of this type of submission. 1 Peter 5:6-7:
Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,
Casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.
We are to humble ourselves before God, and that includes waiting on His timing. We’re going to cast our anxieties on Him because He knows what He’s doing and because He cares for us. In His time, at the proper time, it says He will exalt those who have humbled themselves before Him.
The next transforming factor, or conforming factor, of waiting is to learn dependence. We’re dependent on the Lord to move when we’re waiting on Him, and we’re not trying to force that move.
And when Saul was waiting on Samuel, he was not fully dependent on the Lord. He knew that he needed the Lord’s blessing to win the battle, but he acted on his own to get that. He acted independently instead of waiting for the Lord’s representative.
As a consultant in my professional life, I’m expected and paid to act independently, to be independent, and to get things done. But what I do professionally really runs contrary to how the Lord would have us behave in regard to waiting for Him.
We’re not to act independently to try to move the Lord’s timing ahead. You know, He’s going to move when He’s going to move, in His proper time. The only way that we can affect His move and His return is to be dependent and submissive to His will.
In other words, the only way that we can hasten the day of the Lord is to wait with hopeful expectation on Him and to live in that hopeful expectation.
Then, through those, we experience transformation. And I don’t think that someone can wait on the Lord and stay the same. Letting go of our own desires, submitting to the Lord, acting in dependence on the Lord is transformative.
It’s not the waiting in and of itself that transforms us into the image of Christ, but it’s the submission and the dependence on the Lord that opens the way for the Holy Spirit to do His transforming work in us. He’s not going to transform an unwilling and uncooperative mind.
Also, when we’re waiting, another purpose of waiting is to exercise faith. Again, it’s letting go of control and letting God do the work in His timing.
Hebrews 11:1 says:
Faith is the evidence of things hoped for.
And our waiting, and the things that we do while we’re waiting, that is the evidence of what we’re hoping for. So waiting is an exercise of faith, and it’s always good to exercise those faith muscles.
Then also, after waiting, there’s a tremendous payoff. There’s a reward for waiting. There’s a tremendous release when what we’re expecting finally appears. You know, like Simeon in the temple when he saw Christ. He was relieved that he had seen the redemption and consolation of Israel.
So waiting for the Lord, and then seeing Him move after our waiting, is a tremendous blessing that we will always remember when those things happen. And that reward seems to solidify the transformation that the Lord is doing in us.
You know, in this country, in this world, we’re pretty big on instant gratification these days. Almost our entire economy is based on instant gratification. But these things that we wait on with the Lord provide a much deeper and longer-lasting gratification and satisfaction than any instant gratification our flesh may desire.
Now, there’s a saying we have in English, that “it was worth the wait.” I just want to say that waiting on the Lord is always worth the wait, because when He moves, He always moves in the right way, at the right time, in the perfect way.
And it is a gift to wait. And it’s a wonderful blessing to see the Lord move in His perfect timing and to have our hopeful expectations fulfilled.
So what’s the Lord’s perspective on waiting? He wants a bride that is waiting on Him, waiting and looking for Him in hopeful expectation.
You know, in our country now, we’re not very used to a patriarchal view of marriage. We like to share things fifty-fifty. But our relationship with Christ is very patriarchal. He is in control of things. He is the ultimate Head of the relationship. He has ultimate authority in the relationship, and there’s no fifty-fifty sharing of authority.
Imagine if a groom were standing at the altar, and his bride didn’t show up because she was too busy shopping.
Or, since most of us haven’t been at the altar for a while, except for Joe and Lauren—congratulations again—imagine if you’d arranged a special date night with your wife. And you’ve gotten nice reservations and everything, and you’re ready to go, but she didn’t get ready because she was too busy looking at Instagram.
You know, the Lord wants us waiting. He wants a bride that’s waiting and looking for Him and ready to move when He moves.
The Lord also wants bondservants that are fully attentive to Him. And while we’re waiting with hopeful expectation, by definition, we’re going to be attentive to what the Lord is doing.
Now, the thing that we’re waiting on, that we have hopeful expectation for, becomes the centre of our universe. Now, I won’t talk about the lady with the bumper sticker. I’ll let Kenny do that in some other message. I have seen that lady with the bumper sticker, though. I’ve seen it in the wild.
Now, that thing we’re waiting on becomes the centre of our universe. And, you know, the Lord is the centre of the universe, and He just wants us to make Him the centre of our universe.
Okay.
Some tips for waiting. I’ll get another drink here.
These are a little more practical things that the Lord has shown me, and this is where we get into more of the hunting analogies.
So the first thing is to watch. Sorry, is that really disturbing, that big?
Abraham looked for a city. Saul looked for Samuel. And if we’re waiting with hopeful expectation on the Lord’s move, we need to be watching for the Lord to move.
You know, it’s only natural, if we have that hope and that faith that He’s going to move, that we would be watching for it. That watching isn’t just a quick gaze. It’s not just glancing around. It’s actually examining over time and in detail, looking for those little detail changes, looking at different perspectives to see what’s really going on. And it also involves looking in the right direction and in the right places.
You know, when you’re out hunting, you need to be alert and looking around. If I’m sitting in a blind and I’m looking at my phone, or I close my eyes for a few minutes of rest, my quarry may just walk right by me, and I wouldn’t see it or wouldn’t hear it.
Like this time: this picture was taken with a game camera. I was sitting in a blind on the right at that time, and a deer walked behind me, that little deer on the left. And I wasn’t looking in the right direction.
So we need to be looking, and looking in the right place. So what is the spiritual application of this? We need to be looking in the direction that reflects His character.
To illustrate this, let me tell you a story. I had a friend in college. His name was Daniel. Daniel was a really nice guy. And I went to homecoming about five years after graduation, and some of his friends were sitting around talking.
And Daniel—not this Daniel, my friend from college—said, “You know, I’m really praying and waiting for the Lord to send me a godly Christian wife.”
“Wow, that’s really great, Daniel. That’s wonderful.”
So another friend said, “Well, Daniel, are there any Christian women in the church that you go to?”
He said, “Well, I haven’t been going to church. I don’t really have a church I’ve been going to.”
And someone asked, “Well, Daniel, how are you expecting God to bring you a Christian wife?”
He said, “Well, I’ve been going to bars and nightclubs, hoping the Lord will bring her there.”
True story.
So Daniel was definitely looking, but looking in the wrong direction, not looking in the direction of the Lord’s character. And in the Pharisees’ time, they were waiting for the Messiah, and they were watching for the Messiah, but they were watching based on their own biases.
They were looking for a Messiah that had a character that matched theirs, a Messiah that was harsh and legalistic. They completely missed the mercy side of God. They missed the side where God valued mercy more than sacrifice. So they missed the Messiah when He did come.
Maybe this is one of the insidious dangers of the whole prosperity movement or “love wins” movement that plagues modern churches. It teaches people that God is just a rich grandpa. There’s a quote from C. S. Lewis. You know, grandpas just give us stuff.
I look forward to giving my grandchild stuff. And grandpas don’t discipline. We just take the baby and hand it back to the parents. We don’t discipline. So we’re looking for just a cuddly, avuncular God that just gives us good stuff.
And if that’s all we’re looking for in God, the God that gives us stuff, when the Antichrist appears and he brings peace and fixes the economy, we may fall for that. If we’re following the prosperity gospel, prosperity doctrine, and all we expect is a God that gives us stuff, and somebody comes and gives us stuff—“Maybe that’s God”—we could fall for it.
Now, if we don’t expect righteousness and justice and mercy, in addition to love, we may miss God when He does move, because we’re waiting on the wrong thing, and we’re looking in the wrong direction.
Another warning about watching: a funny thing happens when you’re sitting in the woods hunting and watching, and I think this happens to everybody that hunts. After several hours of watching with hopeful expectation for an animal to appear, everything starts to look like that animal.
This is a scene I was looking at for several hours last fall. And if you imagine staring there, looking at that scene, you start to see deer. But I guarantee you there are no deer in that picture.
You know, when you’re sitting out looking, hunting for pigs, that stump you’ve been looking at for three hours—suddenly, that stump looks like a pig. You see the slightest movement: “Oh, that’s a deer. I’m gonna shoot it.” Or you hear this rustle behind you: “That’s the biggest bear in the woods.”
Yeah, we have such a strong expectation that our minds start to fill in the blanks. They start to see things that really don’t appear. You know, this is why many hunters are shot every year, even though they wear blaze orange. If somebody wants something badly enough, everything starts to look like it.
And this can happen when we’re waiting on the Lord also. We can become susceptible to false prophets and false teachers that will lead us to a false messiah because we are so eager. We start to fill in the blanks.
But we need to be like the Bereans in Acts, who, when they received a teaching, would take that teaching and examine it from all angles. They would examine it in light of the whole Scripture. And we need to do the same thing when we hear a teaching, especially the one today. You need to examine it in the light of Scripture, of full Scripture, and not just your favourite parts.
Another funny thing that happens when you’re hunting is that the noisiest animal in the woods is probably not the animal that you want. And the same thing could be true when we’re waiting on the Lord.
When you’re sitting in the woods, sitting in the blind, there can be a huge distraction, all kinds of noise, and you think, “This is the biggest animal I’ve ever seen in my life.” And then it’s just a tiny little squirrel. You could be looking at that squirrel over here, and what you really want is over there in a different place.
So when there’s a bunch of noise, that noise may not be what we’re looking for. Again, we need to examine things from all angles and look with intent detail at what’s happening.
But as an encouragement, if we’re waiting on the Lord and looking for Him, He will send encouragements that He is moving. If we’re praying for someone’s salvation, and they just mention something about the Lord or ask a question about the Lord, that can be an encouraging sign that the Lord is moving in their life, that the Lord is on their mind. But we only see these joyful signs if we’re actually looking and waiting with hopeful expectation.
The next thing is, don’t hinder.
Going back to our key verse in 2 Peter, we need to be looking for and hastening the day of the Lord. So what does it mean to hasten the day of the Lord? To answer this, I’ll revert back to some hunting analogies.
When you’re hunting, there are many things that you shouldn’t do in the woods. You know, if you’re hog hunting, you shouldn’t be eating, because hogs will smell it and they won’t come around. You’re hindering the arrival of the hogs, or you’re definitely not hastening the arrival of the hogs.
If you’re shuffling around and making noise, you’re hindering the arrival of the animal. And these things do not hasten the arrival of your prey. So the key principle here is that the things that we do while we’re waiting on the Lord need to be centred on what we’re waiting on.
You know, if I’m sitting in a stand hunting, and I’m eating potato chips, I’m centred on my hunger and not centred on my prey.
Yeah, we can take this analogy too far and say, “Well, we need to stop doing everything while we’re waiting on the Lord.” That’s not the case. But we do need to consider the things that we’re doing. Do those things hinder or hasten the arrival of the Lord?
We need to consider what impact the things we’re doing have on the church. We need to consider the things that we’re doing and what impact they have on our own spiritual life as part of the church.
We need to ask questions like, “Is this an encumbrance with the world, this thing that I’m doing? Or will this build the body of Christ?”
Again, the key principle here on not hindering is that we should take into consideration what we’re waiting on as we’re doing things.
So, actually, let me read: Our actions should take into consideration what we’re waiting on. And if the actions hinder what we’re waiting on, then we shouldn’t be doing that.
The next tip is to study. When you’re out hunting, you’re studying your surroundings. And this is, again, a deeper way of looking and of watching. And studying your surroundings can help you anticipate what’s going to happen when the animal shows up.
And likewise, when we’re waiting on the Lord, we need to be studying Him and understanding Him and the things that He may do. And this study can help us weed out impostors that can show up and take our attention. And studying the Lord and His character will help us recognise Him when He does move.
Sometimes, when I’m out hunting something new, something I’ve never hunted before or seen before in the wild, I wonder, “Will I really recognise this when it shows up? What is it gonna look like? How big is it gonna be?”
And studying beforehand helps me recognise that. It helps you know what this is gonna be like. But even if I know, “Okay, this is what bears look like”—everybody knows what bears look like—there’s always some surprise when the animal does show up. There’s something unique and something that you learn.
So when we’re waiting on the Lord, even after studying, there’s always some wonderful surprise that the Lord shows us when He does move, when He does show up.
Okay, the next tip: wait with others.
A couple of weeks ago, Brenda and I went up to Maine to go bear hunting. And I got up there, and I wasn’t really excited about going and sitting in the woods hunting bears. I was looking forward to being in Maine and viewing the beautiful scenery. I was looking forward to disconnecting from work for a week. I was looking forward to a lot of things, but I wasn’t excited about hunting bears.
Well, the first night—we got there in the afternoon—and that night after supper, we sat down with the guide and with the game warden. And for about an hour, with the other hunters, we talked about bears. We talked about how bears behaved, what they looked like, what you should do when a bear shows up, all these things about bears. And after that hour of talking about bears, I was excited to go sit in the woods and try to catch a bear.
You know, I think I’d been completely distracted by work and all the stuff going on with the trip and stuff. But it wasn’t until I actually started talking about bears with other people that I became excited about waiting for them.
So hopefully, you can see the analogy here. We can easily get distracted by the world and become weary and just lose sight of what we’re waiting on. And this fellowship with others, talking with other believers about what we’re waiting on, encourages our soul and our spirit to wait.
And then, when we’re waiting with others, when the Lord begins to move, we can share that with others. And others can share what they’re seeing with us, and it’s encouraging to us. And it strengthens our spirits, increases our faith, so we can continue to wait.
And also, this waiting, if it’s a shared experience, gives us the opportunity to recognise what’s real and what’s not real. Just the fellowship with others helps us see the actual detail and watch better.
There’s also another aspect of waiting with others. Going back to hunting, the first several hunts that I did, I did with other people. I sat with other people while we hunted. And that was really helpful for me as a novice, because I had no idea what to do while hunting, while sitting in a blind.
You know, “Do I keep my rifle loaded? Do I keep it up?” You know, all these things, all these questions. “What do I do when I’m waiting?”
Likewise, waiting on the Lord and waiting with others can be a great opportunity for older believers to encourage younger believers. We’re probably more experienced at waiting than younger believers.
So if you’re an older believer and you’re waiting on something, pull in a younger believer to help them wait with you as a way of instruction and discipling that younger believer, helping them know what it’s like to wait.
If you’re a younger believer and you’re waiting on something, feel free to reach out to an older believer and say, “Can you pray with me and wait with me on this thing?”
The next tip: trust your guide. In my short time of hunting, most of the hunts that I’ve done have involved guides. And these guides have always been men who have hunted since they were kids. They’ve been hunting almost all their lives. They hunt as often as they can. And they know the land, and they know the animals, because they’ve seen them so many times.
And best of all, they want you to get an animal. They want you to succeed at your hunting trip.
So hopefully, you can see the analogy here also. We have a Guide, a Guide to help us in our waiting. And this Guide has been guiding since the dawn of time. He knows the situation. He knows the land. He made the land. He knows us.
But best of all, He wants us to succeed. He wants us to receive the thing that we’re waiting on. So trust your Guide, the Holy Spirit, when you’re waiting.
The next tip from hunting is—this may sound kind of harsh, but believe me, it isn’t—don’t seek comfort.
And oftentimes, when you’re out hunting, you’re in uncomfortable situations. You’re sitting on the side of a tree. You’re cold, you’re hot, there are bugs. There’s all kinds of things that will make you uncomfortable, and these things happen all at the same time.
And when you’re sitting there, you can be tempted to try to get rid of that discomfort in any way possible. So you can try shifting around, try to find the perfect seating position. You can be swatting mosquitoes. You can put on bug spray.
If you’re not careful, these things that you’re doing are actually hindering the arrival of your quarry. You know, if you’re swatting mosquitoes, your quarry is never going to show up.
And when we’re doing this, when we’re working on seeking comfort, our focus has stopped being on the animal that we’re hunting, and the focus has started being on our comfort. And it’s easy, when you’re uncomfortable, to lose sight of that final goal of getting an animal, just for the relief of some discomfort.
So the spiritual analogy of this: waiting on the Lord can lead us to discomfort. You know, the cross. We can have people, both believers and unbelievers, who question our hesitancy to do something because we’re waiting. They can question our inexplicable desire for the Lord to return.
And that questioning brings some subtle and not-so-subtle pressure on us to conform, and that pressure can be uncomfortable. You know, Saul, when he was waiting on Samuel, was pretty uncomfortable about the thought of being defeated. So he looked for a way to relieve that discomfort.
So when we start to look for ways to relieve the discomfort, we’re focusing on our own comfort rather than focusing on the Lord. If we’re seeking comfort, we’re not seeking the Lord.
So if we’re looking for our own comfort, trying to get comfortable, we’re probably going to miss the Lord.
And the next tip: don’t settle for less.
When I was out bear hunting a couple of weeks ago, I’d waited for several days to see a bear. I hadn’t seen anything. Actually, I saw one bear. But by Thursday, I was ready to shoot anything. It was just, you know, “Something come along that I can shoot.” You know, a coyote. I decided, “If a coyote shows up, I’m going to shoot that coyote.”
But doing that would have been settling for something less. I was waiting on a bear, not waiting on a coyote.
So when we’re waiting on the Lord, sometimes other options will be presented to us. For Saul, the other option was to do the sacrifice himself. And that was a lesser thing that he chose.
And so this goes back to watching and studying, to know what is the thing that we’re waiting on and what is a lesser thing. And do we really desire the true answer, the true move, or a lesser move?
You know, studying can show us: “Is this option that’s appearing really from the Lord? Or is it a lesser thing?” Or do we just want to satisfy some instant gratification and have an answer now and move on?
You know, if we’re waiting for the Lord to move in our children, are we satisfied when they turn their own lives around without the Lord? You know, that can be a lesser thing that we’re waiting on.
You know, the enemy and the world will present to us many options to shorten our wait, but we need to be aware and discern whether those options are really the Lord.
Okay, the last tip. And your wait is almost over for lunch. Enjoy the wait.
Waiting can be hard. It can be a struggle to wait. But we should have joy in knowing that the Lord is working. We should have joy in knowing that He is doing the best things in His best timing, the proper time. We should have joy in knowing that He is working out transformation in us. And He’s transforming us into the image of His Son.
You know, sometimes we’re like Eeyore. Yeah, we’re so glum, so down. “Oh, woe is me. I’m so horrible.” But, you know, the Lord is so much better. And what we’re waiting on is so much better. And the things He’s doing in us and around us are so much better.
What do we really have to be glum about when the Lord is moving, even if we can’t see that move directly?
You know, we can be joyous in our waiting because He’s doing things in it, and that should be a joy to us. That joy is there even if we can’t see the Lord immediately moving.
So in conclusion, I just want to summarise things. The Lord wants us to wait. And in that waiting, He transforms us by leading us to dependence on and submission to Him.
He wants us to wait in hopeful expectation. And in that waiting, He’s gonna bring joy and gratification beyond what we can imagine.
So I hope that my talk today has been encouraging. Hopefully, it’s pointed you to the Lord. Let’s pray.
Father, just thank You, Lord, for You give us opportunity to wait, Lord. It may not make any sense that waiting is a good thing, Lord, but we know that Your timing is perfect, and Your timing is the best timing.
We just ask, Lord, that You would give us excitement and joy in our wait and help us to wait with each other. And we just pray this in Your name.