GOD UNFILTERED | God, When We Are Waiting

0:11 Discovering God's Unchanging Goodness in Seasons of Waiting Yeah, we've been doing this series of Psalms and looking at the way that we see God in seasons of life and how, as Jeff said, our experiences, our upbringing, our pain, our relationships, and what we've heard affects the lens that we view God through. 0:32 So Week 1, Jeff talked about God when life sucks, Brad talked about last week about God when we can't fix it. And today we're going to speak about God when we are waiting. And hopefully what you've been discovering is that God is unchanging, He's good. 0:52 And so often it's that our perspective, a lens that needs to change in order in order to see God in our circumstances and that he is actually a work at work within them. And often he uses these circumstances to grow us and it becomes an opportunity to draw closer to Jesus so that he can peel back the layers of what we believe about ourselves and God. 1:21 Finding Language for Your Experience in the Comfort of Psalms And honestly, I'm really excited to preach on Psalms. I they hold a very special place in my heart. And I think it's, I think the Psalms are really an invitation to, to prayer. And you know, as I've walked with with Jesus, a lot of people have have shared with me, can we start the timer again just so I can thank you keep on time. 1:50 And, and I've had people share, you know, if you're struggling with something, if you're wrestling with something, go to the Psalms and and read through until you find a Psalm that gives language to your experience. And, and I found that to be to be really true and really a great comfort in many seasons of life. 2:12 And so I'm going to read through Psalm 27. And as I read, I want you to just notice the shifts that happen in in the scripture, notice the the shifts and the changes that happen in perspective from, from David and the way that he's writing and maybe that the dialogue that's that's happening. 2:36 So this is Psalm 27, the Psalm of David. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? 2:53 When the wicked advance against me to devour me? It is my enemies and my foes who will stumble and fall. Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear. Though war break out against me, even then I will be confident. 3:10 One thing I ask from the Lord. This only do I seek, that I may dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord, and to seek Him in His temple. 3:26 For in the day of trouble He will keep me safe in His dwelling. He will hide me in the shelter of His sacred tent and set me high upon a rock. Then my head will be exalted above the enemies who surround me, and at His sacred tent. 3:42 I will sacrifice with shouts of joy. I will sing and make music to the Lord. Hear my voice when I call Lord, be merciful to me and answer me. My heart says, If you seek His face, your face I will seek. 4:00 Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger. You have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me. God, my Saviour, though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me. 4:16 Teach me your way, Lord. Lead me in a straight path because of my oppressors. Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes, for false witnesses rise up against me spouting malicious accusations. 4:32 I remain confident of this. I will see the goodness of the Lord and the land of the living. Wait for the Lord, Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. 4:50 Navigating Seasons of Waiting for Breakthrough and Change So one of the things that you'll experience and probably realise if you've walked with God for a while is that there are many seasons of waiting with Him. I can't say I like it, but it's true. 5:07 And and we're sometimes we're in seasons of waiting for healing or some kind of breakthrough, be it physical, mental or emotional. 5:23 It might be seeing an answer to prayer for someone or something, or waiting for circumstances to shift, be it in your career or vocation or relationships or relationship status. And you know, as Jess said a few weeks ago, the Bible talks about in this life you have trouble of many kinds. 5:44 And sometimes for some of us, trouble looks like waiting. Not necessarily a full on struggle or something particularly hard is happening. It's just that something that you want, you desperately want to move towards simply isn't there. 6:03 And it seems that there is. There is nothing you can do to make it happen. Because goodness knows that many of us try. And it's challenging because our world celebrates the hustle and successive achievement. 6:18 Being able to know your way through circumstances by accumulating more and better strategies for getting there wherever there is, be it career, success, money, influence, relationship status, parental status, or change or improvement in some kind of way. 6:39 There's this inherent yearning within us and, and waiting for anything kind of feels offensive, like failure of some kind or like we're not enough. 6:55 David's Declaration: The Lord is My Light and Salvation And the first thing I want to point out in the scripture is how David runs to the Lord. And it's almost like he's in the language that he's using. He's speaking to his own heart in this, reminding himself of who God is. 7:14 And I think that's a theme that hopefully you've seen through Jeff, what Jeff and Brad have talked about, this thing of shifting your reality to who actually God is. We can create these stories that just simply aren't true. 7:31 He says the Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is my light. It's not like he needs to find the light. The Lord is actually his light. The Lord is the one who lights the way. 7:47 Jesus is the one who lights the way and my salvation. He is the one who saves. He is the one who is the safe place. The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Some translations say fortress. 8:03 We have a lot of fortresses in Portugal, so it's this place of protection, of safety. But he's reminding himself of who God is and his circumstances. 8:21 How We Respond to Waiting: Control, Abandonment, or Withdrawal And I think we have, we can have different responses to to waiting seasons. Some of us want to take matters into our own hands. And it's like, that's how we've learned to survive in the world through control. 8:37 This idea that my survival was up to me and I've got this, or I have to have this, right? And maybe you've gotten really good at that. You make things happen, you research your way through things, you figure things out, and that's worked really well for you. 8:54 And then you come to a season with God or simply in life when nothing you do seems to work the same way. And so you feel absolutely out of control. And maybe you you do all the things you know, like religiously to do. 9:14 And even that doesn't like work. You're still just waiting. And for some, waiting seasons can feel like punishment, like God has abandoned you. And questions come up like, what have I done wrong? 9:31 Why are you silent? And what more can I be doing? Can I actually trust you And you question who he is because things look differently to how they were in the past or what people have told you about God or maybe what you'd hoped for. 9:55 And for some that may lead to withdrawing from God. It feels scary to engage because you don't know what's going to happen if you do. Maybe it's that you don't want to face the disappointment of your circum if your circumstances don't shift, so it actually feels too painful to hope. 10:15 It feels too painful to lean in. Or maybe it's that your experience of love has looked kind of distant, and so pulling away and withdrawing from God feels like the safest default. 10:31 I mean, you don't. You can't get hurt if you don't try or engage, right? And so sometimes I think in waiting seasons, we misplace our hope, but kind of still have the belief that we're pursuing God. 10:49 And so we wrestle and struggle and feel like we've failed when we're waiting because we're looking at God through this distorted view. And I think the beauty of the Psalms is that it, it puts language to this journey of reshaping our perspective of God and what it looks like to actually engage with God and to lean in. 11:14 But I think also what I see in the Psalms is it redirects our hope. It puts language to what it looks like to redirect our hope. Because sometimes we we think we're putting our hope in the law, but we're actually so fixated on what we can do so that God will change our lives to what we want. 11:34 And so we're actually still putting our hope and how we can control our circumstances. Find the right insight, read the right scripture passage, listen to the right podcast or teaching, Find the right thing rather than actually finding out what he is doing in the waiting. 12:00 And it looks different. It's putting our hope in ourselves and our own abilities rather than our hope and actually Him, and allowing Him to be our light and our salvation, as the summer says. 12:20 Sehnsucht: Longing for Another World and Jesus' Return And so, just to switch gears a little bit, let's look at waiting from a different perspective. So what about the promise that Jesus gave us when he came? He lived as a man. 12:35 This is like a rundown of the gospel. Let's go. He lived as a a perfect life, as our sin for us. He offered himself as a sacrifice, suffered humiliation, rejection, physical and emotional pain, paid the price for all the ways we've fallen short. 12:53 The Bible calls it sin done, jacked up things, thought jacked up things past, present and future, all of the things that separate us from a perfect God who wanted to make a way for us to be near to him and for him to be with us. 13:11 And so Jesus was that way and then he came. He died on a cross, overcame death by rising on the third day, was witnessed alive by many, including his disciples. He spent time with them and it was like, wow, when you were you were the Messiah, but you are actually are who you say you are. 13:34 People have been waiting for thousands of years for the guy. And then the guy shows up and then he leaves. He goes back to heaven. He leaves humanity but says that he promises to be with them. 13:50 So oh good, right? But he also says that he will return one day. So here is a God, here is God in the flesh, fulfilling the promise that people waited for for thousands of years, but then leaving. 14:07 And so we're still waiting for his return. And I kind of say this with with humour, but I want to highlight that these maybe there's this larger yearning that we all have. 14:24 Yes, there's this yearning for within the waiting of life circumstances, but in a way there's a there's a deeper yearning for being with God as Adam and Eve were in the garden of even Eden. There's waiting to return to paradise, to return to God's presence and its fullness. 14:47 And so this, there's this word sang soot, the Germans. It's a German word and so I'm sorry if I've just butchered it. You can tell, you can give me a lesson later on. But it's this word that talks about a deep longing, A yearning for an alternate life, a distant place or a missing piece of the soul that you cannot quite name. 15:14 But this pain and longing is mixed with the sense of beauty and hope or nostalgia. And I feel as Christians, but also I think just people in the world, there is something that we long for and yearn for that is kind of kind of unattainable in this life. 15:39 And CS Lewis puts it really beautifully in this in this quote. This is a short version, but I actually want to read to you the the longer version, and many of you probably know it. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. 16:04 If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. 16:20 If that is so, I must take care on the one hand never to despise or be unthankful for these earthly blessings, and on the other never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy or echo or mirage. 16:40 I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death. I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside. I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same. 17:05 One Thing I Ask: To Dwell in the House of the Lord I mean, I just love the way that CS Lewis writes it so. But I think this is something that David really understood at the deepest level when he writes in verse, specifically verse four. 17:21 One thing I asked for the Lord, this only do I seek that I may dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple. And I read this and I wonder what had David's seen of God to say this? 17:42 What he had he come to know from his understanding, experience, and story with God that he could speak like this or have this kind of expectation and level of hope in the face of struggle? 17:59 And in so many of my hard moments, I've gone to many Psalms, but this is one of the scriptures I've gone to. And there's something about this specific verse and about the heart that David wrote it from that feels like, it feels like an exhale. 18:17 It feels like like a drink of water or when you're just like super parched. It's like refreshing to read. And often I would just read the specific verse and just like cry because it just does something in my heart and it feels like I can hope again. 18:40 And it's, it's hard to articulate why. I mean, I think CS Lewis did it, did it so much better. But if I was to try it, it's like the Scripture gives me a vision of someone whose sole focus was to be with the Lord, who had experienced something of God that was so profound and moving and transformational that it had to be his one thing. 19:06 And you know, David was king. I mean, he had some crazy things happen in his life. I'm sure he had access to a lot of things. But in all of it, he's like, you are my one thing. And he knew the source of hope and difficult moments. 19:21 And because of that, it became his one ask of God just to be with him in his temple, in his presence. And as I said before, because of Jesus work on the on the cross, we became the temple. 19:42 It's no longer an external place we go to experience God's presence. He is actually with us in the mundaneness of our lives in our hearts. When we accept Jesus, we become his temple. We can dwell with him and him with us through the Holy Spirit. 20:02 But. It's in part, you know, there's still a bigger way and a bigger way and a kind of more macro way. We are waiting for Jesus return. We're waiting for eternity. We get a taste of it in the here and now. But there's there's still a tension. 20:20 Living in the Tension of God's Presence and Future Hope There's still the now and the not yet. And honestly, I find the scripture kind of convicting. I don't know about you, but often being with God is not my one desire. 20:39 There's many other things. I have moments where I want to be with him and for him to be my one thing. These moments where I I have experienced that or these moments that I want to want him to be my one thing. 20:55 But there are so many other priorities I have. I get distracted, I reach for things that numb me or provide temporary fixes or satisfactions, or I try to hold on to my questions of who he who he is or who I think he is without actually giving him my questions. 21:17 And so there's something in the heart of David crying out to God that I want. And as I said, I've experienced in moments and, and, and some really tangible ways. And then but then sometimes I'm waiting again for his presence to see his face, as David puts it, to actually feel something of God's character or nature to have him show up in my life in unexpected ways or for scripture to be alive. 21:53 And I think that's that's a tension that we live in as Christians. As I said, the now and the not yet. We can experience him in moments and then get distracted or wounded or distant. 22:08 And the beauty of it is that God has grace for that. 22:23 Understanding 'Kavah': Waiting as an Active Binding to God In verse 13 it says, I remain confident of this. I will see the goodness of the Lord and the land of the living. Wait for the Lord, Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord and the waiting. 22:47 In this text in the Hebrew is this word cover and probably if you speak Hebrew you can line up with our German friends and give me a lesson on that as well. But it means to look for eagerly to hope expect linger for lion wait for but the part of it I found the most interesting and this is where I get super nerdy with the the language in the Bible. 23:17 I think it's just like wild how the D level of detail that God just may. It's nuts, but it's like the word waiting in the Hebrew means to bind together, perhaps by twisting, leading to something that that has strength like a rope. 23:37 And so could it be that in the process of waiting is a process that has the intention of binding us to the Lord, or perhaps more accurately, him to us? 23:54 And in this process of waiting, we understand his heart, his nature, his character so much more, but also we get a new perspective on how we can relate to the world around us. 24:11 And so this waiting moment in Psalm 27 is really active. And the language that that David uses, there's nothing passive about it. Davis starts with reminding himself who God is, my light and my salvation. 24:28 Then he moves into kind of like this adoration or affection, a reflection of like what it is to be with God. And then he moves into like a petition or or prayer for that moment of time. 24:47 It's like this honest moment moment with him and God making this request, being honest about where he's at, crying out, but it's very active in nature and this word cava, this waiting is active in nature. 25:10 It's not like waiting for a bus, like you know, it's, it's, it's engaged, it's leaning in, but there's actually transformation within it. And so the question becomes, what is he binding into your heart in the waiting? 25:30 What part of his nature and his character is unravelling before you? What is he strengthening within you through the process of waiting? 25:47 Have you got disappointed with your circumstances and stopped looking at Jesus? Have you signed out a little in your heart? 25:58 Being Shaped by God's Hands in the Quiet Waiting Seasons And So what is he asking of you in this moment? Because friends, he's, he's always at work. He's always at work. He isn't over there in some unknown destination when you can reach perfection, accomplish a life level, get the right knowledge or insight about him, have some kind of crazy spiritual experience with him, although that can happen. 26:29 But God is in the here and now. He's in the waiting, the quiet liminal spaces, the in between spaces of life, the days you're struggling, the days you don't even have energy to open your Bible, the days you don't feel close to him. 26:51 He's still crafting a story with you and revealing more of himself. We're. In other seasons it might have been too noisy for you to notice or lean in. 27:08 And so this year I've I've started doing pottery. Is Kate here? No, Kate's not here. She'll be stoked about this, I'm sure. So this year I've started doing pottery with some of the women in church. 27:24 And what I've learned about the process is firstly, never do pottery when you're hungry, hangry or tired. It's a very frustrating process, but when you're starting with the clay, you take water and you have to compress the clay to itself by pressing and smoothing it. 27:49 And if you don't, when it goes into the kiln or the first furnace, because it's so hot, it's 1260°. I asked Kate. And if you haven't done this process, smoothed out all the cracks, it will simply crack and break in the furnace. 28:09 And so the Bible talks about this. It's an analogy used in the Bible of us being the clay and God being the Potter. And he smooths out the rough edges and cracks of our lives. 28:24 But you know the beautiful part of this process, the refining, the softening of the edges, the preparing us. We don't leave his hands and his fingerprints are all over us. 28:41 And so there's sometimes an ache and a deep loneliness in a waiting season. And we can ask these questions like, can I trust you? Are you actually trustworthy? Are you actually good? 28:57 Do you have the best in mind for me, or do I have to take matters into my own hands? Or have I screwed something up and you're leaving me to it? And so can I remind you that you haven't left his hands. 29:13 He's infusing his character and perspective and reality in your process of waiting. 29:27 Using Psalms as a Pathway to Honest Prayer and Hope And so I think with the Psalms, as I said, it's an invitation to prayer. And so my encouragement for you is, is to sit with the Psalms or sit with our Psalm. 29:52 It might be this one. It might be one of the ones that Brad and Jeff has shared or read through it and find one that speaks to your your moment in time and allow it to infuse hope in your hearts. 30:12 There is power in these words like God created everything with his word and those words in your Bible, they're alive. 30:31 And so sometimes we need to remind ourselves who God is. And the scriptures can be really powerful for that. And so I just encourage you to take the Psalms this week and and just sit with one and use it to say the things that you struggle to say to God or to give language to where you're at in your journey. 31:01 And I think of prayer is like a whole body experience, like it's not just reading the language, but there's something about like sitting with it and wrestling in your heart with it, allowing it to be a pathway to honesty with God. 31:30 And so I'm just going to pray as we wrap. Jesus, I thank you for I thank you, thank you for your word. I thank you for the gift that these scriptures are to us. 31:49 And Father, I pray that you would give us a new perspective of who you are, God and our moments of waiting. You would remind us that we do not wait alone, that you are with us, that you are our comfort. 32:16 And I pray that you would, as people sit with you this week, I pray that you would You would overwhelm us with your love. Lord, I pray that there would be new insight and new understanding of who You are. 32:43 Jesus name Amen.