Thursday, June 9, 2011

Waiting on God

Not long ago in a sermon I told our church family the story of John Claypool. Claypool wrote a book, The Light Within You, where he recounts the story of his young daughter who had been diagnosed with Leukemia and was in a great deal of pain. One night in the hospital she asked him, “Daddy, when will my pain go away.” And John said, “Honey, we’re doing everything we can to get rid of it.” His daughter then asked, “Daddy have you asked God when my leukemia will go away. Have you asked Him daddy? What did God say?”

Claypool writes that he didn’t know what to say to her. “What do you say to a little girl when God seems as if he is not listening. What do you say,” he writes, “when the heavens seem silent.”

Some of the most difficult days of our lives are those times when God seems like He is a million miles away; when He seemingly is not answering our prayers. God promised in His word to always be with us, but all of us have had days when it seemed as though He were giving us the silent treatment. Job experienced those days and in Job 23:8 Job said, “I go east, but He is not there. I go west but I cannot find Him. I do not see Him in the north for He is hidden. I turn to the south, but I cannot find Him.”

Maybe right now there is some issue in your life and you have found yourself wondering where God is.
• Maybe it’s a disease you have been diagnosed with and are wondering if God notices
• Maybe it’s a rebellious child and you’ve asked God to help; but your child just dives deeper into rebellion
• Maybe you’ve been abused and the pain is deep and it just won’t go away and you wonder if God even cares
• Maybe you have a decision that you need to make but there is no clear picture as to what you should do. And God is not helping you see what you should do. He’s silent.

I’d like to suggest some lessons we can learn when God seems to be silent.

1. Expect it to be difficult – when you seem to have a promise from God and yet find yourself waiting on His perfect timing, it is difficult. But know this, God is using that difficult period to mature your faith. Harold Wilke was born with no arms and one time when he was a preschooler he was struggling to get his shirt over his head and shoulders. He said, “I was grunting and sweating and my mother just stood there and watched.” A relative turned to his mother and said, “Ida, why don’t you help the child?” His mother responded through gritted teeth, “I am helping him.” Sometimes God stands by in silence and does nothing because it actually helps us mature. James 1:2 says, “My brothers and sisters, think of the various tests you encounter as occasions for joy. After all, you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance” (CEB).

2. Be careful not to get ahead of God – when we take matters into our own hands rather than wait on god, disaster happens. Abraham and Sarah decided not to wait for God’s perfect timing and so Abraham had relations with Hagar. Today we still see the consequences of that sin as they got out in front of God. Sometimes the best way to determine God’s will for our lives is to do nothing but simply wait and allow things to play out. That is often hard to do; but it is the wisest thing we can do. Considers these verse in the book of Psalms about waiting. Psalm 27:14, “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Psalm 38:15 “I wait for you, O Lord; you will answer, O Lord my God.” Psalm 130:5, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I put my hope.” And you know what we should do while we wait on God? Pray.

3. Finally, when God is silent, don’t try to understand Him - We should never try to understand or interpret what God is doing because we will never fully understand His ways. In Isaiah 55:8 God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My way, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways.” In other words, don’t try to understand God because His ways are beyond our comprehension. I have found that we may never truly understand God’s plan for us completely in this life. God never promises us that we will understand fully what He is doing. He just asks us to trust. The apostle Paul was imprisoned, tortured, stoned, hated and rejected. And yet in great faith he penned Romans 8:28, “In all things God works for the good of those who love Him.” Paul just trusted that God was working things out for good.

On a wall in Cologne Germany were some Jews had been hiding from the Nazi’s these words were scratched, “I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when I don’t feel it. And I believe in God even when he is silent.” God has a plan for each of us. He loves us, the question is do we love Him enough to trust Him?

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

The clock ticks down and the end is near

No, I'm not going all "Harold Camping" on you. I'm talking about the fact that as of the next sunrise 50 will have dawned. I’m thinking I will likely wake up tomorrow and not feel much different than today when I was a mere 49.

Have you noticed that kids can’t wait to grow up? If you ask a young child how old they are, seldom do they say “6”. Instead you get something like “6 ½” or “6 ¾”. Or maybe they phrase it like this, “Well, I’m almost 7”. Thinking of kids and their desire to grow up I thought of the stages they go through. For those of us as adults, our “stages” are defined as “spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills, and wills” (I think I’m officially in between the bills and ills stage).

But as kids, man we were in such a hurry to “grow up.” As children, we couldn’t wait to:
• crawl
• walk
• run
• ride a bike
• stay up late (now we long to go to bed early)
• spend the night at a friend’s house
• wear make-up (I never really longed for this one)
• find a girl friend or boyfriend
• get our driver’s license
• get a job (now we fondly think of retirement)
• have our own cell phone (anyone besides me wonder how we lived without these and at the same time want to “chuck” yours some days)
• buy a car

We still have “stages” we long for as adults though I think they are a bit more intense and costly. We long to:
• have kids
• will they ever talk?
• are they ever quiet?
• kindergarten
• retirement
• grandkids

What if we desired and looked with anticipation to our “growing up” spiritually with the same fervor we long for all of these other things?

So with 50 here, today I have reflected (as we old people like to call thinking) on the “good old days” (not really any better today but our memories are selective).

So what time period qualify as the “good old days” for you? For you maybe it was …
• The 90’s – Beanie Babies; Teenie Beanies; Grunge; and the phrase cha-ching
• The 80’s – PacMan; Rubic’s cube; Leg Warmers; and fraggle rock
• The 70’s – 8 track Tapes; platform shoes; and leisure suits (they WILL come back some day … NOT!)
• The 60’s – LP’s; troll dolls; and lava lamps
• The 50’s – (I’ve only been told and read about these days) wax coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside, the 1st hula-hoops, and putting peanuts in your $.10 7 oz. glass coke bottle before you drank it
• The 40’s – party lines on your telephones; and “Big Band” music

All of us can remember some “good old days” … Days when we could spend an entire evening catching fireflies. Days when money issues were handled by whoever was the banker in "Monopoly." Days when it was not strange to have 3-4 "best" friends. Days when “old” referred to people past 30. Days when the worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "cooties". Days when you were finally be tall enough to ride the "big people" rides at the amusement park. Days when a foot of snow was a dream-come true. But what helped those days to be so “good” was the simple existence of “do-overs”; when a mistake could be easily corrected by simply yelling "do over".

So here’s the point in all this rambling (it’s what we old people do to entertain ourselves … ramble). The good ole days are not done! God has given us the opportunity of “do-overs”. The greatest do-over happens when someone is born-again. But even then the need for “do-overs” does not end, that is why God’s mercies are new every morning.

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