 |
| Rev. Brent Russett |
Pastor of
Sunnyside Wesleyan Church in Ottawa:
http://www.sunnysidechurchottawa.com/ _______________________________________________________
PODCAST LINK to CFRA broadcast - Sunday, October 26th, 2014:
‘When God Says "Wait"’
Good
morning. And welcome to good news in the morning. My name is Brent Russett. I am the Senior
Pastor at Sunnyside Wesleyan Church. It is my pleasure to look at some of
life’s challenges, and then bring you some good news in the morning.
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This
morning I want to talk to you about ‘When
God says, “Wait”’.
I
remember one year while I was living in Edmonton, I wanted to fly home for
Christmas. It had been a particularly busy year. I had been working full time
on the grave yard shift and I had been going to school full time during the
day. Needless to say, I needed a holiday. And Christmas at my Grandmother’s
house in the Ottawa valley was the best.
I
couldn't get off work until the day before Christmas. So on December 24 I
boarded a plane at Edmonton International airport. I was to arrive in Ottawa
around 4 o'clock, just in time to celebrate Christmas Eve with my Grandma, and
Grandpa, and the whole family. The flight wasn't direct; I had to change planes
in Toronto.
My
plane arrived in Toronto in the early afternoon. While I was waiting to catch
my plane to Ottawa, the loud speakers boomed "Were sorry the plane has
been delayed." That's not that unusual. I went into waiting mode. The next
hour, the announcement came again. Again, I waited, this time more
impatiently. But the delay continued
throughout the afternoon. Finally, the announcement came that we didn't want to
hear: “We’re sorry, the flight has been cancelled due to fog.” I was fogged in
at the Toronto airport on Christmas Eve.
Do you
ever feel that way about life? You want to get on with life, but somehow you feel
grounded. You can't seem to get off the
ground because you can't see where you are going. And when you talk to God the
only answer that seems to come back is, “Wait”.
Come
with me to Acts 1. It is post Easter. Jesus has risen. And that is where Dr.
Luke, the author of the book of Acts picks up the story.
Acts 1, Verse 1:
1 ¶ In my former book,
Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach
2 until
the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy
Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.
3 After
his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs
that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke
about the kingdom of God.
4 On
one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command:
"Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which
you have heard me speak about.
5 For
John baptised with water, but in a few days you will be baptised with the Holy
Spirit."
6 ¶ So when they met together, they asked him,
"Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"
7 He
said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has
set by his own authority.
8 But
you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my
witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the
earth."
If we
were to keep reading, we would see how Jesus ascended into heaven. We would see
how the disciples went back to Jerusalem. Then we would see how they waited.
They prayed and waited. They organized and waited. They heard sermons and
waited. They waited.
I
hate waiting. I will drive around traffic jams, not because I will get there
any faster, but because I don’t have to wait. I will strategize on the best
time to go grocery shopping, so I don’t have to wait. But waiting is a part of
life.
How
do you respond when God says “Wait”? There are some of you who have been
praying for people that you love, for their healing, for their salvation, for
their circumstances and God has said wait. There are some of you who are in a
place of life that is uncomfortable, and you have asked God to do something,
but all you seem to hear back is wait. How does that square up with God’s
promise, that you shall receive power?
Waiting
seems to be a part of the spiritual journey.
Psalms
27:14 Wait on the LORD: be of good
courage, and he
Will strengthen your heart:
wait, I say, on the LORD.
Isaiah 40:31 But they that wait upon the LORD
shall renew
[their] strength; they
shall mount up with wings as eagles;
they shall run, and not be
weary; [and] they shall walk, and
not faint.
Lamentations 3:25 The LORD [is] good unto them that wait for him, to
the soul [that] seeketh him.
Waiting
is part of the spiritual journey.
I
have had to do my fair share of waiting. There are things that I have been
praying about for years. Things that are intensely important to me. And I
grieve over these things. But the fervency of my prayer does not seem to change
God's answer. How does that square up with you shall receive power –.
There
are some things in my personality that need to change so that I can be more
like Christ. But some things change easier than others. And I want God to take
the struggle away, but he has caused me to wait. How does that work with.. And
you shall receive power.
Have
you ever had to wait. Are you waiting now? I talk with people all the time, for
whom life is hard. They are waiting.
But
even if life isn’t hard, we often find ourselves waiting: Waiting for a
relationship to change; Waiting for a trip to happen; For something better;
Waiting for our ship to come in.
I have come to the conclusion that much of
life and much of the spiritual life is about waiting. But when we are in those
periods of waiting, the best question to ask is “What are you waiting for?”
Sometimes
when I ask that question I find that I am off track. Often times the answer to
that question is I am waiting for my comfort to be enhanced, and my happiness
to be fuller. I am waiting for my agenda to be met and my needs to be cared
for. And if I can get God to do that for me – well that is what I want.
When
I ask the question, “What am I waiting for?” things tend to come into
perspective. I want God to help me with my life. The problem in that of course is that my agenda is set ahead of God’s
agenda.
But
what I have found is that if I am waiting on God’s best, if I am waiting on
God’s power to accomplish his agenda, if I am waiting on God’s power for his
glory – that God has a way of coming through.
Acts chapter 1 again
4 On one occasion, while he was eating with
them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the
gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about....
8 But you will receive power when the Holy
Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all
Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
I
want you to wait. I want you to wait for a gift. The gift is the Holy Spirit.
And God wants to give you power not to set your own agenda ahead of God’s
agenda, but to allow God’s agenda to be fulfilled in you.
You
know the story. The day of Pentecost came. The power of God came. When God says
wait, I want you to know he has a plan.
What
do you do when God says wait? The disciples and the early church waited. They
waited and prayed. They waited and organized. They waited together. They
waited.
It
was the day of Pentecost and God gave them what they were waiting for. He
filled them with His Holy Spirit. He filled them with power. That was the day
the church was born.
I am
not sure what they expected when Jesus said wait. I think they might have
expected the spectacular – and there was some of that. But the power the early church received was
not so much about the spectacular. But it
was the power to really live.
Often
when we are waiting, we feel like our life is on hold. Could it be, that God is
putting one part of your life on hold, so he can give you the power to really
live.
When
I am in waiting mode, I find the story of the early church really encouraging.
Let me share the history of the early church that I learned from a teacher of mine named Leith Anderson.
The 1st
century Roman Empire was a pagan place where Christian values were not known or
honoured, where corruption was pervasive in business, where morality was at a
historic low, where divorce was so common that marriage was little known.
It
was a dirty, filthy place, riddled with disease and epidemics. Life expectancy
was less than half of what it is in Canada today. There were few families who had both parents,
and few parents who ever saw all their children grow up to adulthood.
Modern
methods of birth control were virtually unknown. Abortion was frequent. Because
medical procedures were primitive, and germ theory as not yet known, and no one
knew about soap, infection was common. Many of those who underwent abortions
ended up being infertile or dead.
However
a primary method of birth control was selective infanticide. They would
determine the gender of the child at birth, keep the male babies and take the
female babies either down to the seashore or out to the forest and leave them
to die of exposure. It caused enormous social upheaval in the Empire because
there was a huge disequilibrium between the number of males and the females.
Epidemics
swept through the cities to the point that up to half of the population of
major cities would periodically be destroyed by measles or smallpox or bubonic
plague. When the cities were depopulated, the policy of the government was to
move tens of thousands of people from different parts of the empire and
overnight repopulate those cities, resulting in communities where there were
scores of different languages spoken, and people could barely communicate.
In
A.D. 64 Rome burnt and to deflect suspicion from himself Emperor Nero blamed
the Christians.
Christians
were gathered up, some of them crucified, some of them sown into the skins of
animals and thrown to wild animals. Perhaps the most heinous act of them all,
recorded by Tacitus, a roman historian, was that they would take Christians and
dip them in pitch, hold them up on poles, and then light them on fire to
illuminate Nero’s gardens through the night.
Three
years after the fire Peter wrote this to the Christian in the middle of this
situation.
1
Peter 2:9-12
9 But
you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging
to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness
into his wonderful light.
10 Once
you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not
received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
11 Dear
friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from
sinful desires, which war against your soul.
12 Live
such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong,
they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
It
wasn’t easy being a Christian in the middle of the Roman Empire. But Peter
pointed to every Christian and said you are a chosen by God to be a minister.
You are chosen by God, in the middle of a dark world to be God’s very own
people. You are chosen by God to declare the praise of God. There is no way that they could do that
unless they waited on God – Because you need power to do that – that’s power.
Once you weren’t God’s people, and
you stood apart from the grace and mercy of God. But now God has called you his
very own. You are a people who have received the mercy of God.
This makes you different, than the
people you live amongst. You have the Holy Spirit at the core of who you are.
Jesus lives in you. You have a relationship with the God of the universe.
Because of that, You are strangers and alien in this world. You are set apart
from the people you live amongst.
So Peter says, I urge you to live
holy lives. Abstain from sinful desires. They war against your very personhood.
Live holy lives. … There is no way that
they could do that unless they waited on God – Because you need power to do
that – that’s power.
Live
in such a way that the pagans around you may see your good deeds. And yes they
will accuse you of doing wrong. But they will
know in the middle of the accusation, that it is really not the case.
They will know you as good people. When Christ comes they will have to say so.
So
how did the early church live. Christian husbands and wives were faithful to
each other. They avoided divorce. Women were treated with dignity and respect.
They didn’t have abortions. They kept and loved baby girls. They would look for
abandoned girls in the forest and along the seashore, and they would bring them
into their own homes and raise them as their own. … There is no way that they could do that unless they waited on God –
Because you need power to do that – that’s power.
In
that culture, especially with the growing shortage of women, pagans married
younger and younger. Many girls were never allowed out of their homes their
entire lives because they’d be kidnapped. They would be raped. They would be
taken as child brides.
Some
of them were married as young as 11 or 12 years old. But the church was
different. The church insisted that the women not marry until they were 18 to
20 years old, and they were to be virgins at the time of their wedding. … There
is no way that they could do that unless they waited on God – Because you need power
to do that – that’s power!
An
astonishing change came within the empire because increasingly it became
evident that the church had cornered the market on females. That is, they had a
disproportionate supply of marriageable women. As a result, single men in the
Roman empire by the tens of thousands started coming to church.
The
church insisted that they could not marry their women unless they were
converted to become Christians themselves. And becoming a Christian was no mere
recitation of a sinners prayer. It was often a 3 year intensive discipleship
program.
There
they would be instructed in the person and work of Jesus. Often they would have
to memorize the entire book of Mark. They would pray through their past life,
for the removal of any demonic spirit that had attached itself to them through
their actions. And they had to display the grace of God to the community. This
all culminated in their baptism, often on Easter Sunday. It was at their
baptism that they were received into the church. The men often weren’t allowed
to marry the men until they were baptized.
Remember
also that identifying with Christ, back then could get you killed. Yet, in
spite of all this, tens of thousands of young men flocked to the church and to
Christ. They found wives and Christ in the process.
When
the plagues hit the cities, the standard public health approach was to leave
town, even if you left the disabled, your children, the elderly behind. The
Christians, often at risk and loss of their own lives would stay behind and
take care of those that were abandoned. They would feed them. They would love
them. …There is no way that they could
do that unless they waited on God – Because you need power to do that – that’s
power!
What their family members discovered
when they come back three to six months later after the plague had subsided was
that family members they abandoned had converted, because they had discovered a
care and love among Christians that they could not find in their own families.
...
There is no way that they could do that
unless they waited on God – Because you need power to do that – that’s power!
The
people of God, walking in the power of God, saw the world change one person at
a time because they followed God.
If
you feel like your life is stuck on hold ask the question, What are you waiting
for? Do I want my agenda, or am I willing for God to give me the power to
fulfil his agenda in my life.
God
wants to give you the power and the opportunity to incredible things for him. He
is waiting for you to turn the steering wheel of your life over to him. I want
you to know that when God says wait – he has his reasons.
I am
going to leave your with:
Isa 30:18 Yet 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!
Let’s
pray,
Lord,
Thank you for our listeners. Thank you for how you’re at work in their live.
Lord, I would ask that you help them take the next step. I ask, Lord, that you
would show them, clearly, their heart and what they are waiting for, and show
them whether it’s about them, or whether it’s about you.
And,
Lord, as they start to step into your agenda that you’ll take care of the other
stuff. I pray, Lord, that as they start to move with you that you’ll take care
of their hearts’ desire.
But,
Lord, I’m praying that they would experience your blessing as they wait on you.
Lord, as they wait, I’m praying that by the power of your Holy Spirit, that you
would bless them, keep them and give them strength for what you call them to
do.
I
pray this in Jesus’ name, AMEN.
Thank
you for your words of encouragement, and for keeping us in your prayers.,
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May you know
Jesus Christ personally and profoundly.
May the Holy Spirit reside deep within your heart . And may the heavenly Father surround you with
His constant and abiding and accompanying love
MUSIC – Rock of Ages 3:14 Chris Rice
By Rev. Brent Russett
Pastor of Sunnyside Wesleyan Church in Ottawa:
_______________________________________________________
PODCAST LINK to CFRA broadcast - Sunday, October 26th, 2014:
PODCAST LINK to CFRA broadcast - Sunday, October 26th, 2014:
