.  Living Hope Fellowship Church....Sermons by the Pastor 

WAIT & SEE

by Pastor Kevin Badgley

            Isaiah 40:31 says, “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.”

            Many Christians are weak and heavy laden, because they have not waited on the Lord. I want every one of you to make a date to spend an hour with the Lord. I’m talking about a specific waiting on God, shutting yourself away somewhere and just wait on Him in prayer. Matthew 26:40 says this about Jesus - “And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” 

            Understand that not always does the answer appear immediately. There is a time span, sometimes, for the answer from God. As you wait this hour on God, you’ll see how long thirty-six hundred seconds are! You start thinking! Why am I here? Who is Brother Kevin, anyway, to tell me what to do? The next thought will probably be, Well, it wasn’t divinely prescribed by God, so I don’t have to do it. However, if you wait upon the Lord, you will find what keeps you from the blessings of God. You will be surprised what kind of trash is in your mind or heart. 

            We have to learn to wait. Psalm 25:5 says, “Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day.” When God is talking to you, everything else needs to be put aside, and you need to listen to what God says. I might spend most of the night trying to get the message, but sometimes it doesn’t come until about ten minutes before the service starts! He proves us to see if we are going to be attentive, if we are going to cleave to Him, and if we are going to hold Him above anything else in our priorities. We have to discipline ourselves to put the Lord first.   

            The reason people do not hear from God is that they do not wait on Him. God can’t get a word in edgewise!  It is not always us doing the talking, but we are listening to so many OTHER things. It could be the radio, the television, or maybe you are reading something else besides the Word of God. Words and thoughts come at you, and it is like someone speaking to you all the time. It fills your mind. God usually is not going to talk to you in the middle of your conversation with someone or something else. He is going to speak to you when you are quiet, and listening, and waiting for His voice. 

God is well able to speak clearly, but if you are listening to everything else, are you going to hear God’s voice? God wants us to be still and listen for Him. Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God. . . .” If we aren’t still, then we can’t know that God is talking to us. We are not going to know why we are having trouble, and we won’t know His timing for things, so we might get impatient. If we listen, He might give us little excerpts of things that are going to come, so it can calm down our nerves. However, people are so busy running and doing that sometimes God has to chase them down to get their attention so He can talk to them (see Job, Chapter 33).

I can tell you from experience, when I work all day long, I feel like I have accomplished something. When I have waited on the Lord all day long, I also know I have accomplished something in the Spirit. As you wait upon God, you will ask yourself, Why am I doing this? Then, pretty soon it goes deeper than that. You may even ask yourself, Why do I even believe in God at all? Renounce the devil and your own carnal thinking. If we don’t get the trash out by waiting upon the Lord, it will come out in public sooner or later. Pray, Lord, crucify these things, and get them out of me.

Do you want the Lord to answer your prayer? Many people remind the Lord of Psalm 84:11 that says, “. . . no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly,” but they also need to remember Lamentations 3:25 - “The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.”

Lamentations 3:26 says, “It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.” Some people say, Well, I have prayed and prayed, and I don’t know what else to pray. I have prayed in the Holy Ghost until I have no more breath, and I’m afraid I will just keel over. Then, you need to quietly wait on the Lord, even though it might take several hours, days, or years. 

            I’m just asking you to pray for an hour a day!  Daniel waited twenty-one days. He prayed and sought God for three weeks. In Daniel 10:12 the angel said, “. . . Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.” He was heard the first day, but it took twenty more days to get the answer. 

Many times I have prayed deep into the night, praying many hours. Sometimes it takes three to six hours just to clear the air! The church is waiting on God to come and take them out of all of their troubles, but God will not come until His people learn to wait on Him for their needs and their deliverance. 

In Isaiah 25:9 it says, “And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the LORD; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” 

This is revival after waiting on the Lord. Then you will say, I knew He would do it! Waiting on the Lord paid off! Remember even Jesus waited on God many times all night in prayer. He walked on water, and He cast out devils. He healed the sick and raised the dead. Let’s wait on God, so we can do the works Jesus did.

John 14:12 says, “. . . He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also. . . .” Let’s believe God for this.