Hate To Wait

You know, I'm of the opinion, and if you've been here any length of time at all you know that I believe that confession in the church house is always good, so I'm going to confess to something: I don't like to wait. I'm pretty bad at it. Does anybody here besides me hate to wait? Yeah, it just doesn't, I don't know, it, I get myself all worked up. It can just drive me crazy for having to wait for something. I feel like especially when I don't know the reason why, like what's what's going on, what's what's causing this delay. You know, oftentimes we find ourselves longing for now, but we live in the world of not yet, and that's, that can be an interesting place. You know what you want, but you can't get it, or it seems like something is preventing it, or someone, or some circumstance. Um, I've self-admitted this many times, but I don't do so good in traffic, which is unfortunate living in Murfreesboro. You know, you get stuck there, you feel like it's never gonna go on time. Anybody ever, does you ever, you ever call some place, a company or something, and then they answer the phone and and they say, "Do you mind if I put you on hold?" Like, what are you, what are you gonna say? What are you going to say, "No, I want to talk now"? I mean, you just, you feel obligated to say, "No, I don't mind," and you lied. You lied right there to a perfect stranger, and then you got to repent because you do mind. There's nobody out there, it's like, "No, I have nothing else to do. I would love to be on hold."

Do you ever listen to a sermon that just goes on and on and on, you think it's never going to end? If you haven't, just wait, today could be your day. I think one of the reasons why we don't like waiting is because when I'm waiting it makes it very obvious that I'm not in control, and that's a place where I'm uncomfortable, because I like to control my circumstances, and when I'm waiting I can't do any of the important things that I feel like I should be doing. I can't accomplish those things because I'm being held back. Nobody likes to do that. And just go to the doctor's office, right, and it's the waiting room. Why they always ask you to wait in the waiting room? If they say, don't you go to the doctor's office, but you know, you wait in the waiting room, and then when you're there you go back to another room, and guess what you do? You wait. Yeah, usually with less clothes on. Nobody likes this.

Have you ever been to Disney World? You have to wait so long they actually put up signs that say, "From this point on it will be another three days before you can ride Space Mountain." And there you are just happy at the opportunity that three days from now you can enjoy. Wouldn't it be great if life had signs like that? Like a sign that would say, "From this point, six months from now you'll found a spot, you'll find a spouse." That'd be maybe nice. Wouldn't it be kind of handy if you had those road signs along the way: "From this point on, four years from now to your kids are going to be out of the house." Some of your parents are like, "Yes, I need that sign. I'm trying to figure out what's going on. They moved back in with me. Where's that sign?" "From this point on, it, it's 10 years until your husband grows up." No point fingers.

The problem with waiting is it's not just that we don't know when now is going to come. The problem is now may never come, and it's living in the not yet. So for a little while today I want to kick off this Advent season and preach a message, simply say it, this titled Hate to Wait. Hate to wait.

If you guys seen that video, it went viral sometime last year, where the guy went into a nice restaurant, it's like a high-end classy place, you know, like one of those anniversary places you go, and he's there waiting, and he had waited so long he actually ordered a pizza, and the pizza delivery guy comes into the nice restaurant and drops off the pizza at the table, to the other patrons are actually clapping because it took so long, that in waiting he ordered a pizza. Then it shows what can be a bit of an extreme to the weight, because if you're going to pay that much for a meal, why would you ruin it with pizza? But he's making a point. See, there can be a a serious and difficult reality when it comes to waiting.

There's the waiting of a single person to see if God might have a marriage in store for them, but all they get when they pray is a simple not yet. There's the waiting of a childless couple: "God, will you let us start a family? It would be such a great thing. We want it so badly." But all they get is not yet. The waiting of somebody who who longs to have a job to support their family, but yet they get a simple not yet. The waiting of a deeply depressed person for one morning to come when they actually want to live another day. The waiting of a spouse who feels trapped in such a painful marriage, and they feel like it's never going to change. The waiting of an elderly person in a nursing home whose health is shattered, they seem to be waiting to simply die.

When you have to wait like that, and here's the reality: every one of us, everyone in this room, is going to wait for something. Waiting is a part of life. And when we begin to wait, it causes you and I to begin to question what's going on, and even question God: "Where are you?" Qui, we question God: "How long will I have to wait?"

This isn't new. This has been going on. In fact, there's there's scripture to support this very line of thinking. Psalms chapter 13, David writing here, verse number one says: "Oh Lord, how long will you forgive me forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with the anguish in my soul, with the sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand? Turn and answer me, O Lord my God. Restore the sparkle to my eyes, or I will die."

How long? How long, God, before things get to the way they ought to be? How long, God, before it's all set back right? How long do I have to endure all that I'm going through? How long, am I the only one that's ever asked God that question? How long has anybody else ever felt that way? Anybody else ever wondered, "Why I'm going through what I'm going through? God, where, where do you seem to be? You seem to be lost around here. Do you not even see what I'm going through in my life?"

Repeatedly in the Bible we see that that that are not yet go on and on, and in the Bible people ask questions, but God hardly ever answers those questions. It's very rare that they get a response back, very rare that they say it's just three more days, that God would say, you know, three more days or or two weeks from now. What God generally says is, "Just wait." Psalms 37 to 7: "Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him." There's the response: to rest in God and wait patiently. But I don't like waiting. I confess that at the very beginning of this message. I don't do good at the process of waiting. I don't like it when I can't be in control. But the command is to wait, wait patiently for him.

There's a lot of mystery in waiting, and there's a lot that I don't understand about it, but there is in the Bible a perspective about waiting, a a pattern, so to speak, to where we can understand, and when we understand, we get and we have changed our approach when it comes to waiting. I was thinking about this this weekend, as we were going through and finishing up Thanksgiving. We still have another one to go to this afternoon; I'm looking forward to it. But we we kick off the season, right? For those of you that know me and know that Thanksgiving Day is when Christmas music is allowed to be played in my car, to do so prematurely is to take away from Thanksgiving — just just my opinion. So we got in the car, we we cut on the Christmas music, and it it just makes me happy to start this time, this this Christmas time, this Advent season we're in. And and I was thinking to myself about this service and was already beginning to put together some things, and I was torn between two thoughts in which way the Lord wanted to direct me. I started to preach a message and I was going to title it The Ugly, but then yesterday God says, "No, we're not going to talk about ugly; we're going to talk about waiting." I said, "Okay." You know, I feel like it could be helpful to all of us who wait, and that's all of us, to maybe approach this Christmas time a little bit different.

Luke chapter two. You knew was gonna go there, right? If you're going to talk about Christmas, you got to go to Luke chapter 2. Now, this is not my Christmas message. Sunday from now, a week from now, I have a message I feel like God has for us as a church for the Christmas time, but today I feel like I'll I'll lay a little appetizer out there for us, talking about hating to wait.

Luke 2:25: "And behold, there was a man of Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him." So here we go. We got a guy, good man, Spirit of God's on him, and what's he doing? He's waiting. Well, there we go. We find somebody that we can identify with, those of us of little patients. We have somebody we can look to. God provided right here. He was waiting. And Luke is going to tell us what Simeon is waiting for, but I want to pause here and just think about this statement. I want to ask you a question, okay? I want you to look for your note taken. I want you to stop for a minute. If you're on your phone and Facebook, please get off. Look at me for just one second, all right? I'm going to ask you a question. It's not a hard question, but it will make you think: What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for in your life?

I think, well well, Pastor, that's a big question to ask. Like, what am I waiting for? Today I'm I'm waiting for you to wrap this message up so I can eat lunch. I'm waiting for, you know, something to come in to help me. It's whatever. What what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for?

So we're going to talk about a lot more Christmas stuff next Sunday, but a lot of times people think that waiting on the Lord — if I wait — don't you listen to these words, okay? I I was very purposeful when I typed this out, so I'm going to read it directly as I typed it, because I felt like this is a, this is a very thought-provoking. Just listen to me, okay, for just a minute.

A lot of times when we think about what it means to wait on the Lord, it means: if I wait for God to give me what I want, God has to do it. He will do, not deny my request if I wait. It's like we tell ourself, "Well, I want this to be over with, but I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to endure it, because if I endure it he's going to, he's going to see my suffering, he's going to see my discomfort, he's going to see my struggle, and because of that he's going to give it to me. That if I can just be good and patient long enough, then then then it's going to happen for me." And and it's a flawed way of thinking, because if I don't get the circumstances I want now, but I keep waiting on God, God's going to give me even better circumstances in the future.

It's a very dangerous place, because if you feel like there's some particular circumstance you have to have, then if you don't get it, then does that mean life's not worth living? See, if this is your way of thinking, you're going to have a couple of problems. The first one is: you might never get it. You might never get it. If you don't get it, what do you do then? If you don't get it, but you know you're waiting to get it, but then you never get it, what happens? Is it over for you? There's no more good. God doesn't care. It negates God's goodness because you didn't get what you thought he should give you. He said you got to be careful with that way of thinking. You may think, "Well, I would never think that way," but yet you live that way.

And then the other problem is this, is that you might get the thing you've always been waiting for and then find out you're still waiting for something else, because what you thought you needed, when you got it, you didn't want it. Ooh. "Oh, if I ever get this, it's going to be the best and my life's going to be perfect." If averages, if I ever just get, you know, "if I can just get married, it's going to solve all my problems. If I could just get a job that's going to pay X amount of dollars, I'm going to be on easy street. If I could just, if I could finish this degree, it's going to open more doors for me." Only to find out that those things are shallow and they're hollow and they don't fulfill what we thought they were going to do. And then we're on the other side of the very thing we thought was going to make our life so much better, only to find out I'm no better off. What do you do in that moment? Because then you're seemingly back to square one, where I'm having to wait, and I don't like to wait. I don't like the process of waiting.

But if I go back to Simeon, it says he was waiting on the consolation of Israel, and that's an interesting phrase, and I'll come back to it in just a minute. But Luke doesn't just stop there talking about this man waiting. In the very same chapter he introduces a second character to us that's there in this story. Verse 36: "Now there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of that guy, the tribe of Asher, and she was of great age and had lived with a husband seven years from a virginity. And this woman was a widow of about 84 years, who did not depart from the temple, but served God with fasting and prayers night and day."

So here we are. Interesting here that this story is being told. It's a part of the Christmas story. It's a part of the birth of Jesus Christ. It gets, it gets sometimes glazed over during the, during the Advent season. But I felt God directed me specifically to these two people to talk for just a few minutes, because here we have an old man and we have an old woman, and they're waiting. Now on the surface I look at this and think they probably don't have a lot more time. I mean, she's been a widow for 84 years. But here they are. They're not just waiting around. Simply, Luke, this story wants us to know that she's a real person. She showed up every day for work, Anna and Simeon. They're waiting. You've seen everything. What are you waiting for? What is it you're possibly waiting for so long in your life? Was it for their circumstances, their relationships? What is it that you and I are waiting for? Is it about that fulfillment? Is it about that job and about money? Is it about marriage? What is it about? It's about family. Something bigger was coming: the consolation of Israel. This is prophetic talk. It goes back to the book of Isaiah, that God's coming to set everything right, that God's going to come. Messiah is gonna come, and when he does he's gonna set all the wrongs right. He's gonna restore back what should have been. Man has made a mess of things. Sin has run rampant in the world. It's been the ugly. And that he's gonna come and he's gonna reset all these things back. That's what Simeon and Anna are waiting for. They're waiting for that to happen, and in the process of waiting they're telling themselves it's going to be worth it, because there's not going to be any more deceit, no more sin, and no more brokenness, no more violence.

And every day Simon goes in and says, "God, is today the day I'm going to see this?" But all he gets back is not yet. Anna goes in every day: "I'm here, I'm serving, I'm fulfilling, I'm doing all that I'm supposed to do, and the promise of Messiah is supposed to come. Is today going to be the day?" Not yet.

In my own life I spent countless hours praying, "God, when is it going to come to pass? When are you going to do this? When are you going to heal? When are you going to restore? When are we going to get through? When is this going to take place?" And I've received a not yet answer. Everything was a mess, till one day this man Simeon goes to the temple.

In verse 27 of Luke 2 we read this: "And he came by the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents" — that's Joseph and Mary — "bring the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the law, he took him up in his arms and he blessed God and said, 'Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word.'"

What's interesting about that, and you guys know I love doing the word study, is is when you read that verse there, in it it says, "Lord, now," but the actual Greek as it was written, the first word that was penned was now. It was in this moment that not yet became a now. He had, he had done the same routine over and over again. He'd been to the temple thousands of times, fulfilling his obligations, doing his due diligence for, uh, being persistent in all areas of his life, and there came a day when not yet became a now. And I wonder, where would he have been if he would have taken a day off? Where would he have been in his life if he would have said, "I'm sick and tired of this waiting; I'm going to go my own way"? He would have missed his now.

Oh, I'm speaking to somebody in the Holy Ghost right now. Somebody's been setting idol for a long time, wondering if God even cares or hears about you anymore. Somebody even here, as we head into this happy time of year, you're faced with so much frustration and sadness in your life, because all you've heard over and over and over and over and over and over again in your life is not yet, not yet, not yet. But I'm here to tell you there's going to come a day, when there'll be a moment, if you'll hang on and stay consistent and persistent in your life, if you'll be obedient to God's word, you're, you're not yet will turn into a now moment.

The first words out of his mouth after a lifetime of waiting was now. Why? Nothing had changed. Rome was still in charge, and justice was still rampant. Violence was everywhere. They were still suffering. They were still widows. There were still orphans. What was different? What was different? He was holding in his hand Emmanuel, God withered. Something inside of him, even though he had been frustrated, even though I know he had been disappointed time and time again, something in it said he was led by the Spirit. Something inside him, his Holy Ghost, woke up one morning and said, "Today feels a little bit different. I don't know how to explain it, but I need to go and be sure I'm continuing to do what I need to do day in and day out." And because of his faithful commitment, he got to see the Messiah. He held in his arms Emmanuel, God with us. It wasn't just an accident. It was because he was faithful and he was committed in his life. Even though he had heard not yet, not yet, not yet, there came a moment when he held his now.

Simeon, Luke was telling you and I, by talking about his life, that when Jesus comes into your life, when Jesus comes into your circumstances, when he comes into your pain, when he, when he comes and meets you where you are in the middle of your suffering, your aloneness, your failures, your loss, your divorce, your bankruptcy, your cancer, somehow you're not yet becomes a now. The circumstances may not have changed in the moment, but all of a sudden there's a hope that wasn't there before. All of a sudden there's a confidence that you didn't have this a few minutes ago. Why? Because you hold in your hands now. How thankful and happy Seaman is that he kept waiting. He didn't give up.

See, the danger of waiting, the danger of people who wait, is eventually they get tired. And when they get tired of waiting, if they're not careful, they'll give up on being faithful to God. It starts small. It's not big things, it's just small subtle things. They start skipping out and missing out on a few things. They don't come every time there's an opportunity to be in the house of God. It's, they they take a Sunday off here, there. They back away from their daily prayer time and reading of the Scriptures. It's not a big decision; it's just a few small things they back off of. When they get tired, they stop trusting. They decide they're going to take matters into their own hands and and go against the very thing at one time they would have stood and died defending. They get tired of waiting and they do their own thing.

Several years ago, I don't know how long it had been, at least 10 years, maybe 15 years ago, I was in, driving in Nashville, and I was going to downtown, and I got off of I-40 there on the Second Avenue exit. It's where 40 and 65 and 24 all come together right there. You know, you veer off onto 40 and then right there, I mean, you got to almost kill somebody to get across that to get over to 2nd Avenue. Anybody know exactly what I'm talking about? Yeah, right, there's just bananas. So there I am, I get over there and I come up there at that red light. I'm setting, and I was the only car there, and I'm sitting at that red light to turn on Second Avenue, and I'm sitting there for a minute, and I was like, "Man, this is crazy. Like, come on, just come on, turn green. There's nobody coming." So I look, you know, it's, you can turn right on red, so I turn right on red. But I wasn't the only car. There was another car that was hidden to me that I didn't see. It also had red and blue lights, and it pulled up behind me, and the nice officer began to explain to me that there was a big sign that was there that said no right turn on red. I mean, this is America. We can turn right on red, right? That's what makes us different than Europeans; we have that ability. But there was a sign that said I couldn't do that. I tried my best to explain the officer: there was nobody coming, I didn't see the harm, I didn't see, to see what was wrong. I did real good and all my lawyers to try to work my way out and use my Southern charm and drag out my words, but I got a ticket, because I refused to wait long enough for the light to turn green. I took matters into my own hands.

Be careful when God has a red light in your life, that you don't try to force it green. There's another couple in the Bible that I felt like really exemplified this, the classic scene of somebody who got tired of waiting on the Lord: that's Abraham and Sarah. Originally they was named Abram and Sarah. God changed their names later. One day he comes to Abram and says, "I'm going to be with you. I'm going to do something special in you. I'm going to, from you, create a nation." Even change his name to Abraham, meaning the father of many nations. He's going to do this for him. He tells him that you're going to have a son with your wife. Now all this is going down, he's 75 years old. Now to those that are 75 or older in the room, if God told you you're going to have a baby, some of y'all would check out. I'd probably maybe even have to preach a funeral. But he tells him, "I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this through you and your wife." So naturally he, he asked, you know, "Hey, when's this going to happen? Because the way, the rate we're going right now, we're all going to be in diapers and nobody's got any teeth. I've been waiting all my life to have a child, and all you've ever told me is not yet. So now, is it, is it now, is it now?" To which he gets another not yet. And the days turn into weeks, and the weeks turn into months, and the months turn into years, and eventually more than a decade he's gone by, and Abram is now in his mid-80s, his wife's in her mid-70s. Things aren't going — he still remembers the conversation when he said, "Hey, I'm going to change your name." How embarrassing is it to go around being the father of many nations is how you introduce you? "How you doing? My name is Father of Many Nations." "That's awesome. How many kids you got?" "I don't have any. I don't have any. I got a promise. I got a promise, but I don't have any kids."

Then his wife makes this statement in Genesis 16 and 2. She talks to Abraham, says, "The Lord has prevented me from having children. Go and sleep with my servant. Perhaps I can have children through her." And Abraham agreed. In other words, "The red light's never going to turn green. God's promise is broken. I know what you said, I know what you said, God, but but but time's passing. I don't see how this is even physically possible to start with, but but it hasn't happened yet. It's like you forgot us." So they run the red light.

The next verse, Abraham agrees there. Verse number two, Abraham agrees: "Well, honey, if that's what you want." But look what happens, verse 4: "So Abraham had relations with Hagar. She became pregnant. But Hagar knew she was pregnant, she began to treat her mistress Sarah with contempt. And Sarah said to Abram, 'This is all your fault. I put my servant in your arms, but now that she's pregnant she treats me with contempt. The Lord will show you who's wrong, you or me.' And Abram replied, 'Look, she is your servant, so you deal with her as you see fit.'"

And people, they don't read the Bible, don't know that these stories are in there. This is like The Real Housewives of Abraham. It's like reality show stuff's not new. It's been in the Scriptures for years. I know this stuff doesn't work. You can't do this. You you, you can't, you can't go around what God is trying to do, because every time you try to run the red light you get yourself in trouble. Every time you try to push through where he's telling you to stop, you're going to run off a cliff. You're going to cause yourself more harm, more damage, than if you'd have just set and waited for him to accomplish what he said from the beginning he was going to do in your life. But when you get frustrated in the waiting, when you decide, "Hey, I don't know what's going on. God, maybe you forgot you even said something to me, so I'm going to take matters into my home," every time that happens, just know this: it's going to turn out to be a train wreck. It's going to be a problem you're going to deal with probably for the rest of your life, because that's exactly what's going on right now. We're still dealing with a fallout from this one thing right here, still to this day. Brothers are fighting because of this.

God hasn't forgotten you. I know, I know it can be frustrating in those times. I remember we have been through things, Chastening, have we faced some stuff. And there's been times when we didn't understand what was going on, but we waited. I didn't like the waiting. I just told you I titled this message Hating to Wait. It's like my personal memoirs, this message, because I don't like it. I am the king of figuring something out. I will make a way where there seems to be no way. That is me. But I'll tell you, I've driven in my fair share of ditches. I've made a mess out of a lot of stuff. I've had to go back and ask God time and time again, "Please forgive me, Lord, for running the red light."

So what happens when people take things into their own hands? "I'm going to sleep with this person even though we're not married, because I'm tired of waiting for intimacy. I want to be close to somebody. I'm tired of waiting. I'm afraid it'll never come, so I'm going to run the red light. I'm tired of waiting. I'll take matters into my own hands."

Isaiah, he addressed this issue in in in chapter 40 verse 31: "But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength." A lot about waiting I don't understand, but one thing I I do is God uses waiting in people's, people's lives for a reason. He does it over and over and over again. The Scriptures, he goes to Moses and he says, "You're going to have to wait." He comes to Abram, says, "You're going to have to wait." He, he's trying to teach patients in order to develop the the opportunity for trusting.

Every parent knows the power of waiting. We do. We do this with our kids: "Go over there and sit in the corner, and I want you to think about what you did." "That's terrible. Just beat me right now. I don't want to think about what I did. I want to keep playing." But you got to go wait. Got to go to timeout. "I'm an adult. I want to go to timeout now. This, let me go to my room and think about what I did, me involving a little sleeping, so I can really understand what I should do better next time."

In Abram's case, what person of good character and deep faith and great wisdom would sleep with their wife's personal assistant, even if she did suggest it? The answer is no. You people scare me sometimes. The answer is no. We don't know. I don't care what, what she said. It's not going to end well. No, no, no, no.

Waiting on the Lord is not automatically assuming that that a passive inaction is the more spiritual road to go down. He gave you a brain to use, to think through, to use what seemingly used to be common but is not common anymore in that sense. "God, I will obey you. I will exercise judgment. I will try to, to do what wisdom and good character would do. I'm not going to run the red light. I'm not gonna violate your word. I'm not gonna go against your principles."

See, how you feel about waiting depends mostly on what you're waiting for. There's actually been a whole lot of research and study done into this, that that there are certain things that we don't mind waiting for, because we love the anticipation that comes with it. In our household we often talk about what, what our next trip is going to be. And when my girls especially, they don't, my oldest dude don't ride with me to school anymore, but Emery still does. I drop her off in the mornings. Sometimes when they're having a bad day I'll say, "Look, I know, I know you got a test today, or I know something's coming up, but just think, in two weeks we're gonna, we're gonna go on spring break." Or just a reminder, because often having something just ahead helps us there.

Do you know they did this crazy study that showed that that if, if people had the opportunity to meet the celebrity of their choice, they would choose to wait three days to meet them versus meeting them in the moment? Three days, because there's something about the anticipation of meeting them that brought more joy into the equation. Now, you don't want to wait too long, because they might get all wrinkly and old, or the Botox might wear out there, don't look like they did in their picture.

See, we don't mind waiting, depending on what we're waiting for. Case in point, go back to the Disney World thing: people pay a ridiculous amount of money to stand in the heat and sweat their shoes off to only ride four rides in a 12-hour day, and they're happy when they go home. It all depends on what you're waiting for.

So now I'll go back to the question I asked you earlier: What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? Because it makes all the difference in what you do with your time. If you find yourself constantly ramped up and just dealing with all these pressures and anxieties and stresses and all these things that are outside of your control, but they seemingly are controlling you, your thoughts, your actions, your moods, I'm asking you again: What are you waiting for?

You have to wait. We need to understand that there can be spiritual disciplines in the weight. And what I have discovered in my own life, that more often than not the process of waiting was more beneficial than the thing I was waiting for. As I was praying for God to bring this to my life, to answer this prayer, to to to to work out this situation, it was the process of waiting that did far more for me than what I, what I got on the other side. Because it's in the waiting period that God does some of his best work. What I have discovered for myself, that is in the process of waiting I discover a whole lot about me. And I will say I have gotten some better with age, some. I used to be a really impatient person. Now I'm just impatient. I'm going to work my way up to almost patient. But I've discovered inside of me areas that I needed to work on myself.

So here's the deal: it's Christmas. It's the Christmas season. It's the Advent season. Instead of fighting it, instead of being all hurried and focused on yourself and the important things that you have to do, what if we took this initiative and remind ourselves: I'm not in control. What if we decided, you know, I'm going to wait in peace. I'm going to wait. I'm going to do this because I have hope in what's to come. I, I don't like the situation I'm in right now. I don't want to go through this struggle. I don't want to face this financial issue. I don't want to go through this relationship difficulty. I don't want to — what if you just stopped and said, "You know what, God? I can't control these things. I can't control all the things outside, but I can't control what I do. I can't control what I think. I can't control the attitude I have." What if we decided, you know what, I'm gonna wait in peace, because the world's not on my shoulders.

We go on vacation. I know we like taking vacations, but here's the deal: when I go on vacation, it, it takes me two to three days before I'm really on vacation, because I'm, I'm, I'm, I know I look like I'm really put together and nice, but like inside I'm all spun up. My wife will tell you, she lives with me. I'm like, I wake up, I mean, I'm an instant home, and I'm on a 10 right there instantly, and I want to accomplish everything I got to get done today. I'm a very structured person, to a fault. I've admitted that over and over again. I know this. See, this, this, the problem with this is, this transitions over into vacation time. So when I get into vacation mode I'm like, "Alright, what are we going to do?" Well, vacation oftentimes is for you to do nothing. Now, for someone who's programmed a do-nothing, I, I don't know how to do that, because I get him to do nothing, and I'm like, "Well, we should do something." Like, why? Like, I don't know, but everything in me says we have to do something. So it takes me two to three days to get into do-nothing mode. Now some of you be like, "I live there. I ain't done nothing in years." We know. And for those of us who do something, we look at you and you stress us out. But I can get there; it just takes me a long time.

Now where I'm going, this is, is I've discovered that I have to start working on my mindset before we leave, because the problem is, if I don't, then I'm robbing my family of their time with me, because I'm still spun up, and I'm still like, "Okay, well, we have, we have to go now." I've gotten better through the years, because you used to be like, "All right, let's get up. We're going to leave this time. We're going to be there at this time." And then when it's the last day to go, I'm like, "All right, let's go ahead and leave now so we can get back." And I was robbing, robbing my family, probably my family, of time. So I had to learn how to stop.

Now why do I bring this up? Because some of you, you're so wound up by circumstances out of your control that it's not only robbing you, but it's robbing everybody around you. And then here we go, we're heading into the Christmas time, a time when we're going to reflect on, on the birth of Jesus Christ. Okay, he came. We'll talk a lot about that next Sunday, what the miracle was. Emmanuel, God with us. At all came, we had to come, all right. But we, we, we can't get to Easter until you celebrate the births. Okay, I love the resurrection, but, but if we didn't have the birth, there's no resurrection. He had to come first. It's awesome. But some, some of you, somebody needs to hear this: some of you are so wound tight to try to have the best Christmas that you miss Christmas. Okay, look, it's okay if your table's not perfect. It's okay if you didn't get equal amount of gifts for everybody. It's okay. It's, it's all right if your wrapping of one gift comes up this much short and there's a little bit of the box showing. It's okay. I'm just talking about my own flaws, right. It's okay. It's all right if you have to tell somebody, "We can't make it this year." It's okay if you doing all those things makes you miss the very thing we're celebrating.

So when you're shopping — I'm gonna end this. You may think, "Man, we're not very spiritual today." It's not true, because God's fixing to do something. I'm gonna end, let me end like this: when you're out and about for the next 30 days, there's, there's a lot going on. It's, it's, it's year in a lot of companies are, are trying to get stuff done. A lot of workplaces are, especially if you're involved with anything around the retail market, you know, it's, everything's ramped up. It's really high. Just, just driving from here home can, can be a lot, trying to, trying to do all these things we have to do. But, but during this time, there's going to be traffic. There's going to be, there's going to be some places where you're not going to get the service you're used to. There's going to be restaurants where you're going to have to wait. There's all this stuff's going to be. There's going to be, you know, there's gonna be moments where you and your spouse are gonna sit in the car, and that question is gonna be asked, "How long?" And you know what it refers to.

It's like, "How long are we gonna be in there with your nutjob family?" All these things come into play. But you need to learn to rejoice. You need to learn to be thankful for what you have. You need to remember the real reason why we're doing what we're doing. Don't let thankfulness just be what we did around the meal, but to be a part of your everyday life.

Maybe it's time you let somebody else in front of you in the line. "Well, Pastor, you may be borderline there being a little crazy." No. What if you just let somebody in? What if instead of you taking the paint off the bumper in front of you to prevent that person from merging in, you just backed up? What if you purposely got in the longest of the two lines at Walmart? You got the longest one. What if you did that? What if when you come to a stoplight — I mean, come on, even at a stoplight it should remind you of this time, right? The red light, we have red at Christmas. What if you just remember: "God, I don't, I don't have to will this light to change. I know it's going to change, and I can't stop it, so you have me stop for a minute, so I'm going to find something in this few minutes to thank you for."

The green light, right? The green light's there for a reason. It's meant to go. What if you, what if you in that moment said, "Thank you, God, for all the green lights you've given me in my life, the chances and the opportunities I had to do something great." And even the yellow light — "What, yellow is not in Christmas." Well, it is this year, because sometimes you need to be cautious. What about all the times that he allowed you to be cautious about what you were doing?

I was reading about this this week: over 85 percent of us now go to sleep with our cell phones by our bed, so the first thing we can do is look at all the emails and texts and all the things that we need to get caught up on, and then instantly we are spun up into a fit of anxiety, pressure, stress. Routes are bad. What if, what if just between now and the first year, what if you put that phone somewhere else? Let's put it somewhere else, somewhere where that's not the first thing that you do. It's going to be okay if you don't check your social media first thing you wake up. It's gonna be okay if you don't check your email. It's gonna be okay. It will, I promise you. You know what? The world will still turn. The sun's still gonna rise. Yeah, it's still gonna go on. You can do this, because you're robbing yourself for this Christmas season.

If you have a problem, if you have a pain, if you have a heartbreak, if you have a challenge, if you're carrying a burden and you're not in control and you can't fix it, I'm asking you to take time in the waiting period, to hope, that you take time to understand what it is you're truly waiting for. And if it gets hard, then talk to God about it, because we have the opportunity to talk to him. How often do we take that for granted, that I can talk to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, that I have an audience with the Creator of the universe?

God waited thousands of years after the fall, after the sin, before he came to earth. He waited. Then he waited, just like we all do, 30 years before he started his ministry, and then they crucified him and they put his body in a tomb, and he decided to wait three days. And now we patiently wait for his return.

So I ask you again: What are you waiting for? As the musicians come, as I get ready to close this out today, what are you waiting for? Because understanding that in the process of the waiting makes all the difference in the world.

When I go to a nice restaurant, I carry my wife on a date, and they're taking a little extra time to prepare the meal, I know it's going to be so good. But I'm, when I'm waiting for something special, the anticipation builds, and it gets me through to where I don't get so caught up in the process of the weight. See, I know in this room today there's so many of you that are dealing with things. You look good right now. You got the smile on, you, you're doing okay on the outside, but inside your wreck, your wreck, and you're tired of waiting, and you're starting to compromise. You're starting to drop down some things. You're starting to, to, to walk away from some stuff that you know you shouldn't be walking away from. You're starting to make some decisions you know you shouldn't be making, and you're drifting.

You're sitting there and the red, the light is still red, but you keep easing off the break just a little bit. You're fixing to let it go. You're, you're tired of waiting there. Don't. I promise you, from my own personal life, that every red light I've ran, I've regretted — every one of them. Every one of them, I've regretted it. Some of them have been real bad. I can't go back and undo anything that I've done, but I can look forward in the moment and know, "God, I don't know why the light's still red, but I trust that when the time is right you'll let it turn green. I know that you'll take my not yets and you'll turn them into a now."

"Jesus, I love you, and I thank you for the moment we're in right now, and the truth that is in your Scriptures. God, I know the process of waiting is not something that we like to do. It's uncomfortable. It's frustrating, God. Even, it's even disappointing sometimes. Lord, I know you know what's best for me. I know you know what's best for all of us. And I pray, God, that we can learn to shift our focus on what's important, and that is we're waiting on you, for one day you're coming back to take us home, and all of this stuff we deal with will not be a concern anymore, that we'll get to spend eternity with you and all that you have for us. God, I pray in this moment right now, those that are struggling with decisions, struggling with, with, with, with outcomes, struggling with relationships, struggling with, with all of this that we juggle this time of year, I pray in this moment that you would allow your presence to pierce through all the noise, that we could feel and know, Lord, are you desiring to remind us that you are here? How long, God? How long will we have to wait until the time is right?"

Church, this altar is open. I ask you: What do you wait for? Are you waiting for his return? I hope that's your answer. Are you waiting for when he comes back and makes all things new? If you're unsure, I invite you to an altar. If you're struggling with the pressures and stresses of life, if you're struggling with areas where you've been tempted to compromise, I invite you to come to an altar, to invite God to do what he does best, to do work inside of you. I think it's time for us to spend a few moments reflecting.