Date: November 8, 2018 ()

Bible Text: |

Series:

How long have you been waiting for an answer to prayer? Did you notice that when you first came to the Lord it seemed like everything you asked for you got? Why are you having to wait longer now? Why are some of the things that are the most important to you seeming to take the longest to answer? What is that all about? When I do these lessons, I try to bring real Christianity for real people. I want to talk about things that people go through, that they are trying to find answers for to get a little hope and encouragement. I have a friend named Victor, and he has a girlfriend that is a very serious alcoholic. He prays for her, I pray for her and we cannot understand why God does not answer the prayer. God has his own reasons. This woman is a good woman and we have to believe that we cannot give up. God has a plan and God will answer. Victor is a new Christian and he said to me, “You know, God has answered prayers for me. I can’t figure out why he is not answering this. I am getting a little discouraged and I kind of want to quit.” I asked, “How long do you think I prayed for you to get saved? Five years. You did, and it was worth it wasn’t it. Look how much you love God now.” He said, “Yeah, that’s right, I do.” It is true, there has been a miraculous change in him. It is that salvation change that we all love to see and we all love to hear about. We just keep praying for his girlfriend, and you pray for his girlfriend, too. She needs a miracle.

How long are you willing to wait for an answer? The answer to that needs to be until the answer comes, “I will pray until the answer comes, I will not give up.” It might be for your children, in this case a friend. It might be for a relative, a business situation, a job change situation, retirement, schooling or waiting on the money to go to school and have a career. How long are you willing to wait when you know it is God. The secret is to know if it is really God’s will. Seek God and find out. Once you know in your heart, “This is God’s will and I know it, He has let me know that,” then you can dig in until doom’s day, until it is over, you will not quit. Have you seen any changes occur in you while you were waiting? I have. There is something about waiting that brings about changes. We are going to talk about what kind of changes it does bring about.

Waiting is not doing nothing. When it involves God, it has a strange dynamic to it. There is action going on, you are just not going anywhere. You are changing, but it is more than that. You are learning how to really listen to God. Maybe even your priorities are getting in order. Maybe you are making an impact on somebody else. It makes perfect sense to God to make you wait. I have told you many times that I had a jail ministry for a long time. Once a lady in jail said to me, “Yeah, I am a Christian. Yes, I have messed up and that is why I am in here. But, I will tell you something about God that I do know, God may not be early, but He is never late.” I thought, “That is right. In fact, I think that he comes at 11:59:59.” I could have titled this lesson “11:59:59”. Sometimes it seems to me that God waits until the absolute last minute. Why does He do that? He does it to stretch your faith. Your faith would not grow if you did not have to wait, if He just did it. Besides that, God is not your servant, you are His servant. He answers the way He wants it to happen, not the way you want it to happen.

Look at Psalm 3. He says, “In the morning, oh Lord, You hear my voice. In the morning I lay my requests before You and I wait in expectation.” You do not always have to have it happen fast, but there are a lot of times that God answers it so fast it makes your head spin. You are expecting Him to do it and He does it. Psalms 33:20 says, “We wait in hope.” Those are two things that God wants you to do when you are waiting, wait in expectation, expect God to act, and wait in hope. Hope is different from faith. Did you know that? Have you ever studied the difference in the two. It says in the Bible, three things will remain – faith, hope and love. Faith and hope are different. God is our help and He is our shield. I believe that the reason we have to wait is because changes are so needed in us. If we want something bad enough, we will wait, and wait and wait, until we can get it. In the process, those great changes occur.

Look at Psalm 37:34. “Wait passionately for God. Do not leave the path. He will give you your place in the sun while you watch the wicked lose it.” That is encouraging, is it not? One of the things that frustrates all of us so much is when we see wicked people succeeding. We say, “Lord they don’t serve You, they don’t love You, what is this?” God has to lead you to that verse in Psalm where it says “In this life they are, but in the life to come they are like somebody falling off a cliff.” God will give you good things. He wants to give you good things but He just might make you wait and He has good reason to do it.

What do you learn by having to wait? Did anyone in the Bible have to wait? Certainly. Do you ever think about how long they had to wait for Jesus to even come? The entire Old Testament, over thousands of years, was written and through it all, waiting, waiting, waiting. They waited in faith. The Bible says, “Even the prophets of old long to see what you have seen, long to hear what your ears have heard.” They never saw it, but they never gave up. In Hebrews it talks about Abraham looked for a city. He never found that city but he is in it now. It paid off to wait. Who else had to wait and wait? It says in the fullness of time, Jesus came. God has his own timing. Sometimes you are waiting and you think, “God I am believing and it isn’t happening.” God is having to say to you, “It is bigger than you, it involves more people than just you. I have to get everything in order.” Once, my husband wanted to get a new job. He is a veterinarian and he wanted to have his own practice. We were young and we did not have the money to buy a practice because of everything that you go through. We had a teacher in a class that we were in. This man said, “If you are praying and praying for God to give you a job and it doesn’t happen, it is because He is working on the person on the other end. When that is in order, then He will open the door for you.” I cannot even begin to tell you how much hope that gave us because that was all we had to go on. Actually, it was the only hope we had but God did send that piece of hope. That is exactly what happened to us. In just a matter of a week or two, a man decided “I am ready to move back to Panama, I am ready to sell this thing.” We bought the clinic before he even was able to put it in a publication and have the publication come out. God moved when God was ready. I could write a book on how we changed in all of that waiting. You learn patience. People say, “Don’t pray for patience because you will sure be put in situations where you get it.” Do you not want patience? How are you going to get it? Do you think God is going to sprinkle some whiffle dust on you and all of a sudden you have patience and other people did not get the dust, so they do not have it? You learn patience by going through things and staying steady and hanging in there. Psalm 41 says, “I waited patiently for the Lord.”

What have we learned about waiting that you need to be doing? Expectantly, hopefully, patiently. Can you do that? It said, “When I did that He turned to me and heard my cry.” Once we were going through a really hard situation. It was a lot of pressure and I was crying. I said, “Lord You just have to do something. I can’t take this anymore.” I heard the Lord say to me, “I am not moved by your tears, Betty.” It was said in a very kind, deep, soft, in my heart voice. I knew He was not saying, “I have no compassion for your tears.” He was not saying that. I knew what He was saying was, “I am going to move when I am going to move. Your tears can’t make Me move ahead My of time.” I had to learn to wait patiently. It is hard. I am not saying it is easy, I am saying it is hard; but, it is worth it.

What else does waiting produce in you? It teaches your soul to wait. What is your soul and how is that different from your spirit? Your soul is your mind, will and your emotions. Psalm 135 says, “I wait for the Lord. My soul waits and in His Word I put my hope.” How do you teach your soul to wait? Your mind is racing, it is going crazy, it has doubts, it has indecision and it has fear. How do you teach that to wait? In the Word. That is what it says, “In His Word I put my hope.” You get into the Bible and you find those verses that tell you to just calm down, it is going to happen. Then your will gets involved. How do you get your will to wait? Your will is like, “Come on, let’s get it done. Come on, let’s go. I am going to do something, I don’t even care if it is wrong, I am going to do something.” You make up your mind you are going to do that. Then you get in the Word, and the Word says wait. You think, “Okay God, I will.” Maybe you have not been there, but I have. Like I was telling you, “God please, I can’t take it anymore,” and He said, “Your tears don’t move Me, Betty.” I had to say to myself, “Yes, you are sad, you are under pressure, and you want this to be over. You are just going to have to knuckle down and bear with it, Betty.” I heard Pat Robertson telling about when they first moved to Virginia and they were going to start the 700 Club. They did not have any money. Their house had holes in the wall and dust came through. His wife was just going crazy, saying “I can’t do this, I can’t live with this, I can’t stand this.” He would say, “Don’t murmur and don’t complain, DeeDee. Don’t murmur and don’t complain.” Why was he saying that? Because every time the children of Israel murmured and complained, they had to go another lap around the wilderness. You do not want to do that. You have to get your soul under control. That is a good thought, isn’t it.

What is another thing waiting does? It teaches others how to wait by watching how you do it. Do you still laugh? Do you still have a good time? Once, I said, “Lord I know I am having to wait a long time, but it is hard. What do I do?” I felt like the Lord said, “Occupy yourself with something else, get your mind on something else.” I did and it was not hard at all to wait because I was all caught up in something else I was interested in. It made the time pass faster. Psalm 136 says, “My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning.”

Waiting also teaches you to trust God. How do you learn how to trust God, how do you learn how to trust anyone? You get it situations that take longer than you think, they have to come through for you, and you wonder if they are going to and they do. It teaches you how to trust them. It is the same way with God. Trust has to grow. Usually trust involves waiting. It is almost like they are not Siamese twins but they really go closely together. Isaiah 8:17 says, “I will wait for the Lord who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob. I will put my trust in Him.” I think that is when it is hardest to wait. “I don’t hear God, I don’t feel God, I don’t see God. God, are You there? I know You are there because your Word says You are there. Why can’t I feel anything?” Even then, you need to remember this verse, “I will wait for the Lord who is hiding Himself.” One thing God really wants to show you in waiting is his justice. You know, don’t you, that the Lord is just. In Isaiah 38 it says, “The Lord longs to be gracious to you. He rises to show you compassion for the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for Him.” In Isaiah 64:4 it says, “Since ancient times, no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides You God, who acts on the behalf of those who wait for it.” You do not really hear that about other religions of the world about what their leader is like. You know they are false, there is only one God, Jehovah.

In Isaiah 40:31 it says, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” You think, “Lord I am running out of strength.” God says, “You are going to get strength. You are going to renew. You got it, it is flagged, worn out but you can renew it.” How can you do that? By being in the Word, by being around other Christians and hearing their victory stories that encourage you. What else does that verse say you will do? It says, “You will mount up with wings as eagles.” There is a point in the career or life of an eagle when they pull all their feathers out, they get news ones, and they start up again. It is amazing. “They shall run and not be weary.” If you are a runner, you know what this verse is talking about. You have to train, you have to discipline yourself. You cannot give up. You have to stay steady with it. You run and you are not weary. “They shall walk and not faint.” Why did it not say run and not faint. It is talking about something else. When it says “walk and not faint” it means it takes a long time, you have a long distance to go. In Africa, you see lots of people on the road walking, lots of them all of the time, just walking down the highway. They are never overweight, they are in good shape. You will even see the ladies carrying those bushels on their heads. They have a big heavy weight on their head, have a baby on their back, and holding the hand of a little child. Some of the friends I have made in Africa are very elegant women. They drive nice cars, they are very pretty and wear pretty clothes. I have said to them, “Can you carry that stuff on your head like those other ladies we are seeing?” They say, “Sure.” To them, it is like “Of course I can. I was trained to do it.” I asked, “Does it give back problems or neck problems?” “No, we have been doing it since we were little children. Our mothers started us out when we were little.” That is the same way God does with you. When you are a new Christian, He gives you just a little bit. The older you get and the further you walk with the Lord, He increases it more and more and more. I wish I had a picture to show you of me trying to carry some of those tree branches on my head. I was going down the road in a car and I saw a lady carrying tree branches. In the back of my mind I was thinking, “I wonder what that really feels like.” We pulled over and gave this lady some money and I asked if I could try carrying those branches. It is hilarious. They are really heavy. You ask, “How do you do this?” The last time I was in Africa, I saw some men carrying big, long pieces of timber, sawed wood, maybe 20 feet long. They had four or five on their head. It was amazing.

What else does waiting teach us? (Look at this businessman praying. Look at this woman praying.) What does it teach us when we do not get the answer very fast? It teaches us that God can answer without interference from us, without manipulation from us. Have you ever tried to do that, make promises? It is hard to get our will and our time schedule out of the way. This is how we learn, “This is God, He is in control, I am not.” It is a struggle to keep believing that it is his will to answer us. However, astonishing spiritual growth can take place in that waiting. You look back, when the answer finally comes, and you say, “Lord, I really got to know you in that time didn’t I.” You can even have it come out of your mouth, “Lord, I am going to miss that. I am going to miss that specialness I had with You.” That is how sweet waiting can get.

Remember, you are going to gain some things from waiting. There are gifts that go with waiting. You gain that patience that you say you wish you had. You gain more love for the Lord because you have to examine your motives, you have to examine your faith, you have to examine your hope, and you have to examine the Word. Out of it, you love God more than ever. You even love people around you more than ever because you wait, and you wait, and you wait. You see God work. You also gain a greater ability to hear His voice. Is that not what you have been asking for? At times, you ask God for something and in the way He gives you the answer you think, “I didn’t plan on that.” God says, “You asked me for it, didn’t you? What did you want?” Out of waiting, you can get answers but you may not get them the way you thought you were going to get them.

You can also get a greater willingness to obey. How could that come from waiting? If you will occupy yourself with the Word of God a lot during the waiting time, then you will want to obey Him because you see who the Bible says He is. You see He is somebody you can completely give your life to. I recently talked to a man that I do not even know. I have the Pennies from Heaven Project. Someone sent an e-mail to someone about it, who sent an e-mail to this man in California. He called me and asked how he can give some money for Pennies from Heaven. We got in a conversation that lasted nearly an hour long distance about God in his life; and was he willing to give up everything and obey God. He said, “I am scared to. I don’t know what He would ask me to do.” I asked him, “Do you really believe He loves you.” “Oh, yes, I do.” “Do you believe He knows it better than you do, what will make you happen.” “Maybe.” I said, “Do you read the Bible, does it say that? Do you believe it?” He said, “Yes.” I told him, “Then you need to think long and hard about giving your whole life to God. I know you are waiting for things to happen in your life, but maybe God is waiting on you.” How about that, what if God is waiting on you? What would that mean? You are saying, “Now God when are You going to do it?” He says, “I am just waiting on you. When are you going to change?”

There is a God-given rate of growth in the world and how He does things. He even has a verse about it. Mark 4:28 says, “The earth produces by itself first the blade.” We want the ear of corn, but God says, “First the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.” Think about Mark 1:15, “The time promised by God has come at last,” He announced. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent of your sins and believe the good news.” What is the good news? God loves you, God forgives you, God can heal you, God can deliver you. God can change your life, He can change your marriage, He can change your children. He can change everything. That is the good news. In John 7:6, people tried to pressure Jesus to get out of waiting on God’s timing and act too soon. People will try to do that to you. Jesus’ brother said to him, “Why don’t You go to Judea and do those miracles where Your followers can see it. You can’t become famous if you hide like this. If you do such wonderful things, show yourself to the world.” Even his brothers did not believe in Him. Jesus replied, “Now is not the right time for me to go, but you can go anytime.” What did that mean? They were not living in the will of God, they could just do whatever they wanted to do. Jesus was determined to live in the will of God, and so therefore, He waited. He made sure He knew, now wait, now go. Have you ever noticed that God often answers other prayers while you are waiting for the big one to be answered. “God, why did You answer this one? Why didn’t You answer the one I was waiting on?” I think He does it to encourage you. “I answered this one, and if I answered this one, I am going to answer the other one if you just give me enough time to do what I need to do.”

Waiting develops all the qualities you want, everything we are crying out to God for. “Oh God make me a good person.” “Oh God make me full of love.” “Oh God make me care about things, let me do things for You.” God develops it in you through waiting. I have a friend who says , “It develops frustration, grief, suicidal tendencies, homicidal tendencies.” That is not correct. It develops God in you, the blessed presence of Jesus, the tender fruit of Jesus coming through you.

Have you ever asked Jesus into your life? All over the world you are watching this show. Do it right now.

 

QUIET TIME QUESTIONS

1. How long do you wait for God to answer your prayers?
2. What two things is it necessary to have while you wait?
3. How does your relationship with God grow while you wait?
4. What personal qualities do we develop while we wait?
5. What Scriptures in this lesson are encouraging to you?

Topics: