How Do I Wait for God?

00:00:04.000 | God loves to work for those who wait for him.

00:00:08.000 | So how do we wait for God? Does waiting for God mean that we don't act?

00:00:13.000 | And when do we stop waiting and start acting?

00:00:16.000 | Those are really important questions and they were addressed in Pastor John's sermon on Isaiah 64, verses 1-4.

00:00:23.000 | In a sermon he preached way back in 1982.

00:00:28.000 | Here's what he said.

00:00:30.000 | In one sense God works for everybody.

00:00:33.000 | He makes that sun rise on the just and the unjust.

00:00:37.000 | He sends rain on the good and the evil.

00:00:40.000 | He brings seed time and harvest even for his rebellious creatures.

00:00:45.000 | God does work for all his creatures and all of this is meant to lead us to repentance.

00:00:51.000 | But in our text the work referred to is not that common grace given to all,

00:00:59.000 | but a special grace that is given to those who have a certain disposition.

00:01:05.000 | No eye has seen a God besides thee who works for those who wait, who wait for him.

00:01:17.000 | The work mentioned here clearly is not just the work of creation and preservation.

00:01:22.000 | It's not just the meeting of a few natural needs that he does for everybody.

00:01:26.000 | Rather it's the investment of all God's infinite sovereign power

00:01:33.000 | to do everything his people need to have done for their good.

00:01:37.000 | And for whom does he do it? He does it for those who wait for him.

00:01:43.000 | So the biggest question for us right now is, "What's that? How do you do that?"

00:01:51.000 | And I want to try to show you from Isaiah how you wait for the Lord.

00:01:57.000 | The people to whom Isaiah is talking are in trouble.

00:02:01.000 | They're in danger from enemies.

00:02:04.000 | Assyrians once, then Babylonians.

00:02:07.000 | Now, the danger that God sees is not so much the Assyrians and the Babylonians,

00:02:14.000 | but the temptation to run to Egypt for help instead of to God.

00:02:21.000 | Instead of waiting for God's help,

00:02:23.000 | he sees the temptation looming large that they're going to go after human help.

00:02:27.000 | And so he says in Isaiah 31.1,

00:02:30.000 | "Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses,

00:02:35.000 | who trust in chariots because they are many,

00:02:39.000 | or in horsemen because they are very strong,

00:02:42.000 | but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the Lord."

00:02:50.000 | So the first thing that waiting on God means is,

00:02:54.000 | before you make one peep of an effort to solve your own problem

00:02:59.000 | or hire a human agency, pray.

00:03:04.000 | Seek the counsel of God.

00:03:08.000 | What is His way to solve this problem and bring you out of trouble?

00:03:14.000 | It says in Psalm 106.13,

00:03:17.000 | "They soon forgot His works; they did not wait for His counsel."

00:03:24.000 | The first act of waiting, therefore, is prayer.

00:03:28.000 | Before we make one little move to solve our problem.

00:03:33.000 | And I know if you're like me, you've come through many efforts.

00:03:37.000 | And an hour into it, you say, "I forgot to pray."

00:03:41.000 | And we need to work to form the habit of stopping again and again and again.

00:03:48.000 | That's what Paul means, I think, when he says, "Pray without ceasing."

00:03:51.000 | Before you do anything, at every little occasion of your life,

00:03:54.000 | every interview, every encounter, whisper a prayer,

00:03:58.000 | "How would it go if I relied on you? What do you want me to do?"

00:04:02.000 | And then, do what the Lord says.

00:04:05.000 | We are like patients.

00:04:07.000 | Prayer is like getting on the phone and calling up your doctor and saying,

00:04:11.000 | "I'm in trouble. There's this pain. What should I do about it?"

00:04:15.000 | Before you gulp down any medicine or start doing jumping jacks,

00:04:19.000 | call the doctor.

00:04:21.000 | Now, the doctor might tell you, "Lie down. Don't do anything."

00:04:29.000 | Or he might tell you, "Take the pill. Do your exercises."

00:04:33.000 | Now, those two instructions from the Lord involve us in two different forms of waiting.

00:04:41.000 | We don't stop waiting once we've called. We wait.

00:04:45.000 | There is a waiting of two different sorts.

00:04:48.000 | Let's look at them just one at a time here.

00:04:51.000 | The first one is if the doctor says, "Lie down."

00:04:54.000 | Isaiah 30 verse 15 goes like this.

00:04:59.000 | God says to the people, "In returning and rest you shall be saved.

00:05:07.000 | In quietness and in trust shall be your strength.

00:05:14.000 | But you would not. You said, 'No, we will speed upon horses.'

00:05:21.000 | And therefore you shall speed away.

00:05:24.000 | And you said, 'We will ride upon swift steeds.'

00:05:28.000 | And therefore your pursuers shall be swift."

00:05:33.000 | In other words, God was saying on the phone, "Just sit down and I'm going to work for you.

00:05:39.000 | Take it easy and rest and I'll be your strength."

00:05:44.000 | But they wouldn't do it.

00:05:45.000 | They wanted to maneuver their own victory for their own glory on horses and chariots.

00:05:51.000 | Sometimes we have to be willing on the phone to accept the frustrating news, "Be still."

00:06:00.000 | We need to hear what Moses said to the people as they were about to cross the Red Sea,

00:06:05.000 | "Fear not. Stand firm and behold the salvation of the Lord which He will work for you today.

00:06:14.000 | The Lord will fight for you. You have only to be still."

00:06:21.000 | So the second thing that waiting for the Lord means is after you've prayed to the doctor

00:06:27.000 | and he says, "Be still," be still and rest.

00:06:33.000 | But there's a third way to wait for the Lord.

00:06:36.000 | And that is, he might say, "Get up. Do your exercises and take your pill."

00:06:42.000 | Or to bring it back into the Old Testament context, he might say, "Go into battle and fight."

00:06:50.000 | In my family, we've been reading 2 Samuel for devotions in the morning.

00:06:55.000 | And just a few days ago, we read 2 Samuel 5.19.

00:07:00.000 | Now the situation is that David has just taken over after Saul's death and the Philistines are besieging.

00:07:06.000 | And here's what he does.

00:07:08.000 | "David inquired of the Lord." He waited.

00:07:13.000 | "Shall I go up against the Philistines? Wilt thou give them into my hand?"

00:07:18.000 | "Wait. Answer."

00:07:21.000 | "And the Lord said to David, 'Go up, for I shall surely give them into your hands.'"

00:07:29.000 | So the word to David was not, "Lie still." The word to David was, "Fight."

00:07:34.000 | He didn't take matters into his own hands. He waited.

00:07:36.000 | But now here is the essence. Now get this carefully.

00:07:41.000 | Because we're so prone to think that waiting means stillness,

00:07:44.000 | but as soon as we start acting, preparing a sermon, a lesson, going to work, preparing a report, staying up late, work, work, work,

00:07:52.000 | we don't have to wait anymore.

00:07:54.000 | That's not the case.

00:07:56.000 | Because, and this changes all of life, there is a spirit of waiting in the midst of work.

00:08:05.000 | Proverbs 21, 31 says this, "The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord."

00:08:17.000 | You see the implication of that for the warrior?

00:08:21.000 | It means that when the Lord says, "Go," he doesn't stop waiting.

00:08:26.000 | He carries with him into battle a spirit of expectancy,

00:08:30.000 | a sense that, "Yes, I will fight with all my might, but I must wait on the one in whose hands alone is the victory."

00:08:41.000 | So that no matter how hard you work, there's a spirit of waiting, a spirit of expectancy,

00:08:47.000 | a spirit that out of and through all this activity is going to come lightning from heaven to do supernatural work.

00:08:56.000 | Here's the way the psalmist put it in Psalm 33, 16, "A king is not saved by his great army.

00:09:03.000 | A warrior is not delivered by his great strength.

00:09:06.000 | The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save.

00:09:11.000 | Our soul waits for the Lord.

00:09:17.000 | He is our help and our shield.

00:09:19.000 | Yea, our heart is glad in him because we trust in his holy name.

00:09:27.000 | Let thy steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us even as we hope in thee."

00:09:34.000 | If the Lord instructs us to take certain precautions, like locking the door at night,

00:09:41.000 | don't think that you can stop waiting on the Lord.

00:09:46.000 | For the psalm says, Psalm 127, 1, "Unless the Lord watches over the city, those who stay awake, stay awake in vain."

00:09:59.000 | Even when we are watchmen doing our duty, we must be waiting for the Lord, for he alone brings safety.

00:10:08.000 | So the third form of waiting is even when the Lord says, "Act," we act with a spirit of reliance on his work,

00:10:17.000 | and we wait for the Lord in a spirit of expectancy that even though our labor is vulnerable and paltry,

00:10:27.000 | the final result of all we do lies in the hands of the Lord, and on that we wait in all our work.

00:10:35.000 | So, in conclusion, those three things, let me sum them up again.

00:10:39.000 | When circumstances conspire to put you under pressure so that you feel something's got to be done,

00:10:45.000 | something's got to be done for safety, or something's got to be done for service, wait for the Lord.

00:10:53.000 | That is, pray. Before you do anything else, seek the Lord. Seek his counsel.

00:10:59.000 | What would he have you do, if anything? Second, if the Lord says, "Sit down and put your feet up."

00:11:07.000 | If the Lord says, "Don't go to church tonight to be at the council meeting. Stay home and pray.

00:11:15.000 | I will work better than your arguments. Stay home."

00:11:20.000 | And if the Lord says, "Go and argue with all your might," don't become self-reliant, but go.

00:11:28.000 | And let me stress in regard to that second point that I don't mean laziness or the shirking of duty.

00:11:37.000 | I mean the very frustrating experience that sometimes when you're most prepared,

00:11:43.000 | when you think most relies on you and your zeal is fired, the Lord may say to you,

00:11:49.000 | "You just stay home tonight and watch me work."

00:11:52.000 | And you're a little frustrated because you had it all planned. But he wants to work for you

00:11:59.000 | so that he gets the glory and not us.

00:12:03.000 | So, whether we lie still and sit or whether we work, let us have this in common,

00:12:10.000 | that we wait for the Lord, that we have a spirit of expectancy, that no matter how paltry our labors are,

00:12:19.000 | the final issue is in the hands of the Lord and he loves to work for those who wait for him.

00:12:26.000 | So good. That clip was taken from John Piper's sermon on September 5th, 1982,

00:12:30.000 | "God Works for Those Who Wait for Him." You can find the whole message at DesiringGod.org.

00:12:36.000 | And if you have a favorite sermon clip of Pastor John in a recent or an old message, send it to me.

00:12:41.000 | Email me, tell me what sermon and mention the timestamps in the audio of when the clip begins and ends

00:12:47.000 | and then email it to me at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.

00:12:51.000 | That's AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.

00:12:55.000 | And put the word "clip" in the subject line if you wouldn't mind.

00:12:58.000 | I'm always interested to hear your favorite clips. I'd love to listen to what blesses you,

00:13:03.000 | and maybe we can share it here on the podcast.

00:13:06.000 | I'm Tony Reinke. Pastor John is back with us in studio on Friday to talk about

00:13:10.000 | whether or not you can be a good Christian hedonist if you battle seasons of depression.

00:13:15.000 | It's an important conversation coming up on Friday. We'll see you then.

00:13:20.000 | [Pastor John]

00:13:22.000 | [Pastor John]

00:13:24.000 | [Pastor John]

00:13:26.000 | [Pastor John]

00:13:28.000 | [Pastor John]

How Do I Wait for God?

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