God Is Never Late: How to Wait with Courage and Confidence
Hey, good morning everybody. Happy Monday. Hope you had a great weekend. I’m looking forward to a morning Bible devotion with you together with my son James. James, hello. Good morning. You got your cold brew? I’m all out. I drank it already. All right. Well, that’s why you have such a good attitude. I know.
It’s not always like that. I can’t get to you too early in the morning. So, this morning, I want to talk with you about what it means to wait on the Lord. Some people hate the phrase because waiting is just excruciating. It It just takes too long. Waiting on the Lord is not sitting around doing nothing, waiting for God to do his part.
No, waiting on God is actively believing that God is keeping his promises in his perfect time and then you acting with confidence. Waiting on God is not at all like the meaningless, boring waiting that you do at a dentist’s office or a chiropractor’s office where you find yourself sitting there because you know that the doctor’s over booked.
It’s an hour past your scheduled appointment time and you find yourself reading the books uh and the magazines on the coffee table and before you know it, you’re you’re you’re deep into Home and Garden magazine and you’re reading an article about the seven best chicken recipes that you could make for dinner this weekend.
When you’re a man and you are reading Home and Garden and you find yourself tearing out a chicken recipe because it looks so good, you know you’ve been waiting too long. But waiting on God is not like that. Waiting on God is not passive. It’s active. Waiting on God is not an internal torment that results in paralysis and frustration.
It’s an internal rest that results in courageous action. Waiting is what you and I have been called to. It’s our blessing. God is writing a story and he has placed us in the middle of the already and the not yet. Already the world is broken and not yet has it been fully healed and restored. Already your sin has been forgiven, but not yet are you fully delivered from it.
Already the devil has been overthrown. Jesus came to destroy his works and crush the serpent’s head, but not yet have you been fully delivered from your love of his bait. and you keep going back to it. Already the Holy Spirit has come to you, but not yet are you fully conformed to look and live like Jesus. Already Jesus is reigning, but his kingdom is not fully manifested and developed yet.
You and I are called to wait because God has dropped us right in the middle between the already and the not yet of the story. God is faithful and he’s going to finish the work that he has begun in us while we wait. So as believers, we don’t just wait. We wait with hope and with confidence and with great expectation because God always keeps his promises.
Listen to this story of Abraham in the scriptures reading out of Romans chapter 4. Abraham was old. He’s like 100 years old. And it says here in verse 18, even when there was no reason for hope because he was the past the age of childbearing with his wife Sarah, Abraham kept hoping believing that he would become the father of many nations.
